Using Reason With Live?

Grandmasterbird · Post by **Grandmasterbird** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 1:45 pm

Does anyone here use Reason alongside Ableton Live?

If so then what are the advantages/disadvantages of doing so?

I'm just curious as I'm not very knowledgable about Reason and I've heard very good things about it lately...

Thanks!

MacGuffin · Post by **MacGuffin** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 1:54 pm

It's mostly a difference in workflow. Reason is good for people who want an oldschool approach to making music. It's like being in a techno studio of the 1990's: a sampler similar to akai models, synths, mixers, step sequencing and everything pluggable with patchcords.

I you have Live suite, you have a sampler, effects, synths, etc... There's not much more you could do with Reason that I can think of.

In my humble opinion, Ableton have designed Live for people who make music with computers. There are menus, drag and drop actions, etc. On the other hand, Reason is like being in a hardware studio with only one arm and two fingers to use the gear. It was a cool concept back then, some people might like it, but it makes no sense to me.

That being said, if you like the interface Reason is a great product, you can do a lot of things with it. To use with Live just rewire your channels and voilà!

aisling · Post by **aisling** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 2:51 pm

I use reason with live, mainly out of habit, as I have been using reason since ver 1 and can't let it go. If I was "starting out" fresh, I would forgo reason and focus on the live instruments. A lot of people dis reason for what ever (valid, or subjective) 'reasons', I personally have gotten a tremendous amount of creativity and inspiration out of it. It was the first program that made computer music make sense for me (coming from pre computer days).

McQ714 · Post by **McQ714** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 6:32 pm

i still love programming shit on redrum.. although, i've strayed away to using Maschine more than anything for drums now. i used to have some great kits of atmospheres and glitches loaded on redrum ready to fire away. i have yet to redo those kits in another sampler.

julienb · Post by **julienb** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 7:13 pm

Grandmasterbird wrote:Does anyone here use Reason alongside Ableton Live?

If so then what are the advantages/disadvantages of doing so?

I'm just curious as I'm not very knowledgable about Reason and I've heard very good things about it lately...

Thanks!

I did it a long time ago.
but I forgot about it in order to keep more coherence in my production.

Now, I use reason outside of live, in order to design soundscapes that I use with sampler in Live after..

nuxnamon · Post by **nuxnamon** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 7:22 pm

mainly have it rewired using the Reason's instruments.. mainly Thor.. ReDrum sometimes.. other than that, I rarely fire up reason.. but if they were able to have Reason be the Master and Live and slave in rewire, I would probably take advantage of Record's SSL mixer interface..

mholloway · Post by **mholloway** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 7:52 pm

It's good as a giant instrument rack that you can very easily re-wire into live tracks, controlling each instrument just like a VST plugin. in this scenario you just bypass reason's sequencer (why bother, you're using live's....) and use the cool instruments. I do it all the time. there are the haters out there but I think the volume and quality of the instruments is mostly excellent. I mostly use Thor and NN19 in combinator formations...but there's a lot to mess around with.

-M

Cyberstar · Post by **Cyberstar** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 11:15 pm

mholloway wrote:It's good as a giant instrument rack that you can very easily re-wire into live tracks, controlling each instrument just like a VST plugin. in this scenario you just bypass reason's sequencer (why bother, you're using live's....) and use the cool instruments. I do it all the time. there are the haters out there but I think the volume and quality of the instruments is mostly excellent. I mostly use Thor and NN19 in combinator formations...but there's a lot to mess around with.

-M

+1

Grandmasterbird · Post by **Grandmasterbird** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 11:40 pm

Hmmmm....thanks guys.

I do like the thought of everything being 'self contained' if you know what I mean. Going on what I do know of it and what's been said here that maybe it's a bit less flexible, but I sometimes look on the narrowing of options as being a good thing.

To be honest though I cant see myself learning another DAW when the work flow in Live is so quick. I did play with Reason once or twice a few years back and I didnt much like the sequencer on it....

outershpongolia · Post by **outershpongolia** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:01 am

I like ReWiring Reason to Live when i'm writing and recording..

Then when I "perform" I don't load Reason.

So my Live set is 100% Live devices and audio/midi clips, but I still have the ability to use Reason in the studio sort of as a plug in, but still stay away from 3rd party stuff when I need the stability and CPU power to focus on Live when performing...

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:26 am

Reason is a closed in system. It's resource friendly but places limits on what you can do, with no 3rd party plugin support. Redrum - I liked it a lot, but then drum racks came along and now Cubase has a decent native drum sampler (Groove Agent One) in C5, it's pretty redundant.

Before I got into Live, I used Reason 1 and 2 up to 2.5, which I would often export out or rewire to Cubase. It was a good system in it's day, rex files and NNXT were powerful devices, but I always hated Subtractor, a synth I found to be very tinny and thin sounding.

Then I discovered Live at version 6 and apart from the odd bit of rewiring, have left it alone. I haven't even installed Reason on my newer Core2Duo laptop computer, since I got Live 7 Suite with Sampler, Operator, the 3 AAS synths and the ability to slice, sidechain, rex file support and drum racks, I felt no need to use Reason or upgrade it. I still think that Record should not be a seperate product, but incorporated within Reason (they could have added $50 - $100 on the price and still had it sell like hotcakes) and don't be fooled by the SSL mixer eye candy, the plugins are not officially endorsed by SSL and don't sound too much like them either...

Still, I was able to run about 10 tracks in Reason at a latency of 64 samples on a creaking Pentium 4 laptop, so it definately had some advantages. But I don't miss it much, if at all.

outershpongolia · Post by **outershpongolia** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 5:32 am

I like hitting the tab key and watching the cables jiggle..

theys · Post by **theys** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 7:29 am

Love them both, hate sequencing in Reason, so I Rewire into Live all the time for sequencing. I personally like a lot of the instruments in Reason better than those in Live, and I feel you have more minute control when creating/tweaking your instruments with the CV routings in Reason (and all those jiggling cables!). Lately I've figured out how to use Thor in Reason 4 as a MIDI routing tool for Performance Modulators, which has expanded the palette for me a bit. The Scream FX unit is an awesome distortion with tons of flexibility. And I've already got thousands of free instruments in Refills available on the web. But most important for my needs, Reason is MUCH more CPU-efficient than Live's instruments: I'm running an old Pentium 4 3.66gHz and two of the Live Samplification instruments can cripple my computer, whereas I can Rewire in 40 separate NN-XT samplers and not pass 40% on the CPU meter....

But yeah, the learning curve to becoming a power user of Reason is steep, and you might very well save yourself that headache and dedicate the time regained to making music with Live. The flip side of that coin is that Reason would likely be your most flexible and efficient VST-like instrument, certainly more so than any other program I can think of.

T

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 7:40 am

This is true. Although Operator is a better synth than anything in Reason except for Thor and to me, although Thor is flexible, it still has a bit of a light edge to it in spite of it's programmability - Something like Zebra is a better option as VST/AU really. NNXT is a decent sampler in Reason but Sampler gives you that functionality in Live, although you are also correct that Reason is far less taxing on CPU load. Reason's sequencer until v4 was truly first class suckage, and although improved in v4, is still not very conducive to creativity.

Rewire though is a far from ideal protocol and has it's limitations, so it's not as flexible as VST units or using Live's own devices (especially in Suite).

jasper · Post by **jasper** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 12:49 am

Just realized this is an old post.
Believe me when I say I've picked the bones out of probably every combination of DAW and reWiring.
I actually have found a great situation with ReWiring Ableton Live with Reason.
I just bounce the audio into Live's arrange window. Live's effects are instantly stackable
and it's clean with audio.
I used to hate Live.
But what Live can do with audio, it sometimes eliminates the need to re-midi-sequence a part.
Finding joy with this ReWire situation.

Using Reason With Live?

Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?

Re: Using Reason With Live?