Reason 10 Analysis

Reason to Me:

I use Reason and Ableton. Just about every 3rd or 4th project I do in Reason. To me they are very different. I don't need Reason to be feature equal with Ableton. I want Reason to continue to excel at it's weird modular workflow that made me love it, starting with version 1.0 17 years ago.

Ableton, to me is a mega workspace. I use it like pro-tools, but I sometimes also do clip launch. Because of this I have a large collection of VST's that I rely on. I multitrack there. I edit. I put ambitious projects into it.

Reason, I get weird. I put a few units in and try hooking them up in new ways. I try to innovate. I try to get unique interplay between units. I push the envelope. It has a lot of wonderful step sequencing and CV tools that let me create wild things. It occupies a totally different headspace. VST's included in reason are most exciting to me because they figured out a way to let you route CV and use the VST's somewhat in a way akin to other racks. But the thing is, those VST's increase the pallete. They don't compare to the native in the box instruments for modular weird build-ability. My biggest hope for R10, being that it's mostly content based, is that these new in-the-box includes allow for all sorts of new configurations and experimentation, being that this is the sort of thing that Reason has always excelled at. Reason has indeed become a fully featured DAW, but this will always be it's strength. To me, the only competition out there is Reaktor blocks.

The most legit gripe I've seen from people is that VST's aren't stable, and there's concern that moving to R10 will mean that they don't finish stabilizing VST's. I'm going to have to take your word for it on that one, because for me, VST's are very stable, and perform roughly as well as they do in Ableton.

If I may, I'd like to offer my one suggestion. Reason is uniquely suited to take advantage of the growing modular craze. I know some people would like to see R-Mobile, but I personally think that's the wrong way to go. I'd rather see Props partner with a hardware OEM and release a Reason CV multi IO, so that a computer running reason can be integrated right into the heart of a modular environment. That alone would put Reason right into the heart of the most important and growing trend in synthesis.

To the people who use Reason to create other styles- I'm sure that your issues are legit, but I just can't wrap my head around them. If I was going to make jazz or hip hop or rock, I'd probably reach for a more traditional DAW. With Reason I want to get weird.