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Reason 4 sucks, an unbiased review.


Siamey
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Hey thanks propellerheads, reason 4 is pretty cool. So fucking cool that the sequencer is completely different and extremely frustrating to use if you are used to any other version of reason. Thanks a fucking lot.

WHOOPS there goes 80% of the fun of reason, out the damn window. WHOOPS there goes one of the reasons i switched from FL to reason in the first place; being able to get my ideas down.

Ya know what? I used to be able to tell what song I had open by LOOKING at the sequencer overview. I have hundreds of songs. I could tell what song it was by looking at the way the groups were arranged. Now I can't tell my latest song that I've been working on from fucking Sealed Away which is like 45 years old.

Thanks for sticking your big meddling dick in my workflow. If I wanted a sequencer that looked like it was torn messily and incompletely from Cubase, I would simply... well actually I would never want that, I would just go buy Cubase. Cubase is the only place you have to look, to see just what the fuck is wrong with Reason 4's sequencer.

FUCK vector automation. Not useful, never will be.

FUCK Thor. Bloated piece of anus that sounds like every other preset that is included with subtractor and malstroem. People claim that it has amazing potential; yea after you get a masters in what oscs sound good with what filters.

Do something right for once in your fucking life propellerhead, add vsti support.

At the very least add a realistic 303 module. Im sure you have the source code for rebirth sitting around somewhere; make it a fucking reason device. Hell, give the source to me, I know some guys who could do it.

Don't give me this shit about "rebirth input machine". I want some squelchy 303 in my songs without having to write a second song in rebirth that syncs up with it. I want to automate the dials in rebirth the same way I do in reason. I want it all in one package!!

I use reason cause its simple (or was) and logical (plug in some wires and go!), why do you think I want to learn rebirth too? Its one of the most frustratingly tedious ways of making music, apart from sampling a sesame street keyboard into windows sound recorder. For christ's sake, you ported the notoriously botch-able controls of the tb303 into the program for authenticity, and I am ALL for that! But times have changed, MAKE IT FUCKING ACCESSIBLE. It sounds almost like the real thing, let us use it in a way we never could the original!!!!

"I'm so glad that I can automate the tempo and time signature now!!! Thank god!!!"

Wow, specfuckingtacular. Guess what? Get fruityloops. Or Live. Or Cubase. Or any program that allows tempo automation. Its called rewire, its not hard.

Thanks for the regroove mixer too, I always wanted my band to sound like my drummer was drunk.

I won't go so far as to as to say that there are no redeeming qualities in Reason 4, but I will say that having 2 new buttons on the audio in/out device at the top, which allow you to nicely hide some of the few used features of the device, does not make up for the barrage of bullshit and updated skins that makes up the other 99% of the update.

Maybe I should be thanking them for this update, its really opened my eyes and made me look around for other programs; shocked me out of my little reason-only fairyland.

So there you have it. Im standing out in the cold and the rain, with my soaking bag of song ideas slung over my shoulder... abandoned by the program that got me where I am. I watched it become hard and metal and sleek, unfriendly and unusable. I need to get back to the basics.

If I don't find a new land, one with lush green sequencers, crystal streams of superfluid workflows and an open door policy for immigrant softsynths, then I'll be forced back to Reason 3.

Thank god I saved backups of all my version 3 song files songs onto a cd.

Stick around for the next couple months and watch me completely start to love R4 or some shit :/ LOWL

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Originally Posted by Siamey viewpost.gif

Do something right for once in your fucking life propellerhead, add vsti support.

I love it when people say this, cause it would be the single worst thing they could do to the program.

Wouldn't vst support make it way better? Right now it's only good as a rewired synthesizer. And I don't care to go out and buy refills.

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Wouldn't vst support make it way better? Right now it's only good as a rewired synthesizer. And I don't care to go out and buy refills.

Thats more or less what it was designed to be. People assume it was meant to be just like any other program. At the moment, Reason is the most stable and low resource application I know of, VSTi support would destroy that totally.

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on my computer reason seems to be a hog. I have the buffer set at 50ms and everything asio, but it can't even play the demo song.

I can play all the demo songs in FL studio/reaper just fine. I have a sonar, traktion, and live demo too, but I haven't messed around in them very much. From what I could tell, traktion and FL studio seem to own the crowd in intuitiveness without sacrificing power. Only problem with FL studio is that you can't view multiple piano rolls at once, but if you compose all the tracks in the same pattern using ghost notes, it works great.

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The easiest way to increase CPU usage in Reason is to add TONS of Combinators.

If you want a modular host that has VST go try out EnergyXT or Usine. They are both insanely cheap.

Besides the fact that introducing VST would create an enormous amount of code and debugging to rewrite the program. That's extra $ from hiring more people. Would they make more sales? Yeah, but they would also loose loyal customers. Also adding VST would annihilate the Refill market.

Seriously if you want to use say Sytrus in Reason for example. Find or create a nice sound in Sytrus. Play 7 notes all up and down the ranges. Just press and hold. Then rip to seperate Wav's each of the 7 notes. Open up Reason and the NN-XT. Expand the NN-XT. Click on the folder icon to where you can select wav files to drop into the NN-XT. Highlight the 7 notes you just made from Sytrus. Then highlight all 7 Wavs in the NN-XT's browser right click and there is an option to detect the pitch of the notes and then map them across the keyboard in order.

Frankly a middle ground to end this whole thing would be to add Audio In and Midi Out. Then Reason could act as a Rewire Host. Or act as an FX unit when in slave mode.

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Words cannot express how right you are. lmao.

Words cannot express how wrong he is. lmao.

on my computer reason seems to be a hog. I have the buffer set at 50ms and everything asio, but it can't even play the demo song.

I can play all the demo songs in FL studio/reaper just fine. I have a sonar, traktion, and live demo too, but I haven't messed around in them very much. From what I could tell, traktion and FL studio seem to own the crowd in intuitiveness without sacrificing power. Only problem with FL studio is that you can't view multiple piano rolls at once, but if you compose all the tracks in the same pattern using ghost notes, it works great.

also, Reason is what Reason is. don't go yelling "I want Reason to be FL", just use FL instead.

Another thing, Reason is in no sense of the word a CPU-hog. Ever. The fact that you can't play the demo song is.. well incredibly strange. Are you using a cracked version? Are you sure you've set it up right? When you say that FL works great, are using about the same things in FL? Reverbs, synths, plugs, many tracks, mastering..? Because you can't say that Reason hogs your CPU compared to FL if all you have in FL is a synth or two..

For a bit newer computers, if you use 20-30 combinators, all with separate fx chains including dynamics and a separate RV-7000 on every unit, yeah maybe you get a bit of a CPU problem. But who the fuck does that and what other progrma can handle it? :D No one in their right mind would use a separate reverb for every track, or compressors on everything, or maximizers on everything.. or 10 different delays. You can't do that in other programs. You can in Reason, and then it gets a bit CPU-intensive (not for me though and I use a 2.33GHz intel core duo macbook pro with 2GB Ram, not that much) and people complain? wtf!

In other news, if Thor was a VST plug (including it's modular capabilities with other audio inside the program) I can bet my right arm that many would pay a couple of hundred dollars for it. or more. And that's what Reason costs.

Also, what avaris said about EnergyXT. It's great. And Linux/Windows (soon mac os x).

Last but not least, and this is important boys and girls, never use software you don't like or think is bad in some way. Ever. There is no reason in the world to do that. Get the demo and try it out. Heck, I bet most of you didn't buy Reason anyway. And if you don't like it, try something else. It's kinda logical when you think about it. And if you don't like something, don't go around bitching about it or, even more important, don't go talk shit to or about other users just because you don't like their tools of choice.

done. awesome.

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well I only have 256mb of ram. I think that is the problem. The demo in FL studio has a lot of ogg files where the demo in reason has lots of live synthesizing. Even from a blank sheet though, it seems like FL is faster

now you're losing me.. FL is "faster" when you have nothing loaded up than Reason with nothing loaded up.. that is NOT what this is about ;P Saying that a program is faster because the UI takes more CPU/RAM than another programming is kinda missing the point. These are programs that you use to make music, the important thing is how they behave during this task. I promise you that if you make two tracks that are very similar regarding how many instruments/tracks/fx/automation lanes are used in Reason and FL, Reason will absolutely positively be more CPU efficient.

and honestly, you can play the demo in FL with 256mb RAM? :o now that's something! I've never seen that demo but wow, that demo is nice on your computer :D

*blushes* They wouldn't? =O

Want to know a secret? I do that :3 But only because I use Reason on a pretty decent music-makin' computer! I'm talking professionals, electro artists, sound engineers and whatnot.

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I have never seen so much ignorance in a thread. AS, Knives and Fishy are the only ones that know what the hell they're talking about.

As I've mentioned many times before (and burnt-out many threads before this one with my rants), vst support in Reason is like giving a $3 hooker a retarded step-brother named Warren and then spot-welding him to her face. Its completely un-necessary and not what Reason is used for. Reason is meant to be STAND ALONE! That means everything you could ever want can be used in Reason to some extent. The ReWire support is for when you want another kind of effect or synthesizer added to the output of Reason. That is also why Reason only takes up as many cpu cycles as a softsynth; because its meant to be the end-all softsynth/sampler module.

However, I do agree that the new sequencer in Reason is the sole reason (no pun intended) I haven't upgraded to R4 yet. If they gave the term "fucktardspacklestation with an anus-colored coat of un-needed fluff-paint" a definition, it would be that sequencer. Its the bastardized version of every other sequencer on the market vomited into one shitty envelope. And speaking of envelopes, its impossible to automate a damn envelope without making about 14 mouse clicks to get you there. Needless to say, I really do hate the new sequencer; and for that matter, I couldn't understand why everyone hated the original so strongly. You click on the track you want to edit, you click on the edit button, and then write in the little notes and automate with that straight-line tool. Its not difficult.

Anyway, not to get off on a tangent, but I suppose I may just skip this update and grab R5 when it comes out. I now use Live and love it and would highly recommend it to anyone.

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I'm confused, I dont see whats so hard about the vector automation. I find its about 100% quicker to vector automate, then with those steps. Plus its alot smoother. You want to automate a volume from min to max, just place a dot on the bottom left, place a dot on the top right, and your off to town. if ANYTHING the one thing I dont like is that they got rid of the line tool (unless I'm blind). I used that to do my velocities when I Wanted to do a fill, so it would smoothly go up, but now I need to do that somewhat manually. Thats about the only thing I dont like so far.

at first I didnt quite like the new sequencer, but afer a few days, I'm back to the same speed I could use the old one. I personally find it quite a bit better.

weird...

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I have never seen so much ignorance in a thread. AS, Knives and Fishy are the only ones that know what the hell they're talking about.

As I've mentioned many times before (and burnt-out many threads before this one with my rants), vst support in Reason is like giving a $3 hooker a retarded step-brother named Warren and then spot-welding him to her face. Its completely un-necessary and not what Reason is used for. Reason is meant to be STAND ALONE! That means everything you could ever want can be used in Reason to some extent. The ReWire support is for when you want another kind of effect or synthesizer added to the output of Reason. That is also why Reason only takes up as many cpu cycles as a softsynth; because its meant to be the end-all softsynth/sampler module.

However, I do agree that the new sequencer in Reason is the sole reason (no pun intended) I haven't upgraded to R4 yet. If they gave the term "fucktardspacklestation with an anus-colored coat of un-needed fluff-paint" a definition, it would be that sequencer. Its the bastardized version of every other sequencer on the market vomited into one shitty envelope. And speaking of envelopes, its impossible to automate a damn envelope without making about 14 mouse clicks to get you there. Needless to say, I really do hate the new sequencer; and for that matter, I couldn't understand why everyone hated the original so strongly. You click on the track you want to edit, you click on the edit button, and then write in the little notes and automate with that straight-line tool. Its not difficult.

Anyway, not to get off on a tangent, but I suppose I may just skip this update and grab R5 when it comes out. I now use Live and love it and would highly recommend it to anyone.

I like getting creds, thanks ;P

Also, I miss the straight-line tool a LOT! :( Otherwise I enjoy working with clips, foldable lanes and vector automation.

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