reason verses - ableton, logic, cubase

[techno_smack]

obviously with no plug ins available unless u rewire it .

how would you say reason rates as a music production tool compared to cubase, logic and in particular ableton?

if you are mainly using reason for productions would u say u are holding urself back alot?


and does reason have any benifits over the other programs?

[p_brane]

id say reason rates just as well as any other DAW. its what you put into it that counts.

you could know protools inside out but it aint gonna mean you are a good producer. the ideas have to be there first.

i've never used reason but i can imagine you can get a professional sounding product out of it, you can out of most of them.

i would imagine that the synths, fx, etc in reason are of a decent quality

it all comes down to what program your comfortable with, what program makes your work flow effortless, its about familiarity.

[SlavikSvensk]

it's a phenomenal sketchpad. i use it to get my ideas down quickly and effectively. then i rework them in cubase with plugins...usually migrating some lines to better softsynths, sometimes keeping them as is.

[medusa]

Its a mute question since you are suposed to rewire it with either logic or cubase. there's no verses applicable. Reason is a virtual studio , cubase and logic are sequencers. Ableton is a completely different thing altogether. Using Reason alone you would find it difficult to get release quality tracks from in my opinion the EQ and compressors arent high quality enough as say the waves series of plugins. yet rewired reason can be a very powerfull tool. Its a bit like saying albino verses cubase or vanguard verses cubase not really aplicable to my mind.

[TechMouse]

Its a mute question since you are suposed to rewire it with either logic or cubase. there's no verses applicable. Reason is a virtual studio , cubase and logic are sequencers.... Using Reason alone you would find it difficult to get release quality tracks from in my opinion the EQ and compressors arent high quality enough as say the waves series of plugins.

This is changing though.

Version 3 of Reason added some pretty impressive mastering FX units to the rack.

Version 4 has added groove control functionality and massive improvements to the sequencer unit.

It's still far from offering the functionality of Logic or Cubase but it's come on in leaps and bounds.

After being a die-hard Cubase user for a long time I started messing around with Reason 3 on holiday earlier this year, and I was pretty blown away.

[SlavikSvensk]

i love reason, for what it is. every version gets MUCH better, as techmouse pointed out, from both a features and quality standpoint.

[Lag]

reasons sound sucks and effects arent really effective (meaning the eq and compressor)
i use rewire it to nuendo for effects and workable sound

[tekara]

you get out what you put in.

I don't think using Reason in comparison to the other dedicated host sequencers is a "step back".

I personally use it mainly to generate some ideas on the fly with the matrix pattern sequencer but everything always gets printed down and imported to audio. You can say that i treat Reason as another VST instrument of Cubase SX3.

I have seen some people make MASSIVE tracks with just Reason alone. My friend Mike can make a dirty techno track within 10 minutes with Reason; something he cannot do if he were to open up millions of VST's in Cubase.

It's all about workflow. If you are more comfortable with it, then stick with reason.

I personally started out using Reason 1.0 and thought it was amazing for what it was worth, but I always had a problem with the sequencer. That is why i decided to switch platforms to Cubase.

Sometimes less is more. After thousands of dollars in spending for VST plugins, I can honestly say that I am much LESS productive in Cubase than when I was using Reason. Reason forces you to be as creative as possible with as little tools as possible. Sometimes this works out to be better.

Just my thoughts.

[TechMouse]

Sometimes less is more. After thousands of dollars in spending for VST plugins, I can honestly say that I am much LESS productive in Cubase than when I was using Reason. Reason forces you to be as creative as possible with as little tools as possible. Sometimes this works out to be better.

Just my thoughts.

This is pretty much my sentiment.

I've never in my life been as creative as when I used to spend hours squeezing every last drop of flexibility out of tracker programs.

[Microdot]

reasons sound sucks and effects arent really effective (meaning the eq and compressor)
i use rewire it to nuendo for effects and workable sound

the sound on reason has improved alot since the earlier versions. but the mixer and effects that come with it are still pretty poor. (the mixer has virtually no seperation between trax).
it's still advisable to rewire it through cubase, nuendo or logic.

I write alot more Hip Hop than Techno these days, and as a result, find myself using Ableton more than anything else.

[FILTERZ]

moot point

use what you like


pencils or crayons

[TechMouse]

the sound on reason has improved alot since the earlier versions. but the mixer and effects that come with it are still pretty poor. (the mixer has virtually no seperation between trax).
it's still advisable to rewire it through cubase, nuendo or logic.

Absolutely agree.

I reckon for the money, Reason is the best virtual sound source you can buy.

The new unit (Thor) in Reason 4 looks awesome.

[force]

I've always been rather fond of 'Malstrom' and the nnxt sampler. The filters and modulation are lovely.

[SlavikSvensk]

the combiner is wicked too

[SlavikSvensk]

sh*t 4.0 is out already...guess i know what i'm doing this weekend...

[Elvio Neto]

i allways use reason sinze first version

i rewired in ableton or project5 and it sounds great

for hithats or percutions redrum machine is amazing

reason is fast simple intuitive and stable (i never saw reason crash in my life)

and the low cpu usage is amazing

another thing , for experts you can create really great machines on reason , i folow some tutorials in reason foruns and the possibelities and endless

i saw guys making tutorial tracks where you dont need to press play to start the music , you just load the music and the reason start generating perfect random textures and ambient sounds on the machines... crazy stuff

well explored reason is very very powerfull

[robin m]

Personally I regret spending a year or so trying to get Reason (3) nailed... I perservered but could never get the sound I wanted and when I switched to Ableton I was amazed how much easier I could get decent results. It's probably just that Ableton's more suited to the techniques I like using though, I know a lot of people who somehow get amazing stuff out of Reason. I'd say shop around, use whatever seems to work best with your approach and then learn it inside out.

[SamL]

i do like reason - its what i learned to sequence and make music on primarily. I found loads of workarounds to problems (for good separation on the mixer wire the left channel and right channel from each instrument to a channel each and pan each hard left/right - negates the awful reason panning law, which give reason that "sound")

if anyone can host, i have two very good combinator instant "go to" tools i have set up. the first is an nn-xt as a drum machine, just load your kicks in, route them to output 1-2, all mid sounds to 3-4 and high sounds to 5-6. i have routed these outs to their own compressor/e.q. stage and set the combi up to control the balance of each effected sound - i.e. multiband compressor.

also a general combi to put AFTER the main mixer and before the outputs, as a mastering combi, with the vocoder backwired to act as a crude spectral analyser.

if anyone can host these i'll mail the combi's to whoever wants

got to the point for me with reason that if i had to work THAT hard to do stuff other platforms could offer witha simple Click > Insert... that i had to migrate. still an amazing program, the speed of working on which i adore!