Comments on: Within Reason – Part 5: Other Shortcomings http://barbarism.net/2007/07/within-reason-part-5-other-shortcomings/ Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:08:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Blah! http://barbarism.net/2007/07/within-reason-part-5-other-shortcomings/comment-page-1/#comment-196 Blah! Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:52:10 +0000 http://localhost:8888/wordpress/2007/07/19/within-reason-part-5-other-shortcomings/#comment-196 <p>While I get where you're coming from, I disagree about the Word + typewriter metaphor. Coming from a software background, Reason taught me to be more comfortable with hardware. After all, once the hardware is virtualized you can't break it through user error, any mistake you make can be undone, any patch or knob position can be saved. But after being spoiled by Reason's best-of-both-worlds approach you find yourself playing with some awesome-sounding analog synth in a music store and thinking "yeah it sounds great, but I can't automate the knobs. And even if I get a great sound I have to record it into my DAW eventually anyway. If I decide to tweak something later I'll need to re-record."</p> <p>You ask yourself if the sound of hardware synths is really much better than soft synths. And if it is, is it worth having to deal with the jotting down of knob positions, backing up patches onto external media, syncing of MIDI time code, recording all of that into a DAW? The answer is usually NO. Especially when portability and cost also factor in.</p> <p>But I do agree that it's ludicrous for the Props to not include at least a simple audio playback lane in the sequencer window. Instead I am finding myself relying on Ableton Live more and more. And since I can't route audio from Live back into Reason, it becomes a one-way street - in Live's favor. So sadly you are right. Reason is moving more into the role of something like the Swiss Army knife of soft synths rather than a complete DAW solution. If only they would change their stance on audio track support...who cares if there would be feature overlap with Cubase/Live/Logic/etc? Better than having to buy those apps to fill that hole!</p> While I get where you’re coming from, I disagree about the Word + typewriter metaphor. Coming from a software background, Reason taught me to be more comfortable with hardware. After all, once the hardware is virtualized you can’t break it through user error, any mistake you make can be undone, any patch or knob position can be saved. But after being spoiled by Reason’s best-of-both-worlds approach you find yourself playing with some awesome-sounding analog synth in a music store and thinking “yeah it sounds great, but I can’t automate the knobs. And even if I get a great sound I have to record it into my DAW eventually anyway. If I decide to tweak something later I’ll need to re-record.”

You ask yourself if the sound of hardware synths is really much better than soft synths. And if it is, is it worth having to deal with the jotting down of knob positions, backing up patches onto external media, syncing of MIDI time code, recording all of that into a DAW? The answer is usually NO. Especially when portability and cost also factor in.

But I do agree that it’s ludicrous for the Props to not include at least a simple audio playback lane in the sequencer window. Instead I am finding myself relying on Ableton Live more and more. And since I can’t route audio from Live back into Reason, it becomes a one-way street – in Live’s favor. So sadly you are right. Reason is moving more into the role of something like the Swiss Army knife of soft synths rather than a complete DAW solution. If only they would change their stance on audio track support…who cares if there would be feature overlap with Cubase/Live/Logic/etc? Better than having to buy those apps to fill that hole!

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