Reason vs. Live

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:11 am

kramer wrote:I started out with Reason. I didn't even know what a softsynth or VST was at all until I got bored one day and popped in this neat looking orange demo CD that came with my M-Audio soundcard. I remember thinking "You mean I just connect the MIDI jack from my Alesis QS to this card and I can play this fake rack thing?...WTF" I had purchased the soundcard just to do simple multitracking with CoolEditPro....what a surprise. I went out the next week and bought Reason 2.5

Anyway...I've gone completely for Live5 now and I don't find the Rewire to function good enough. The only way I'd go back to using Reason at all is if there was more integration between the programs. If I could just bring Reason up like a regular VST in a regular Live MIDI channel I would feel a lot better about Reason.

As of right now...I would trade my Reason 2.5 for Operator.

Why not just have a preset template of paired audio and midi tracks and rewire individual Live devices and midi sequence and program them from within live it does indeed work a treat and from my tests uses less CPU than alot of VSTi's do IMHO.
I just use Combinators in Live 5 now and sequence them from live so it acts like a huge Rompler stack .
I can control all the combinator paramters via Lives clip envelopes also.
As well as letting Live handle all the midi notation duties also.
It's easy to render the results too audio and Live's effects really bring alot of Reason's patches too life.
Just using the Orkestra Refill with good delays and comp's makes a huge difference for example and the Mclass stauff in Reason 3 is a friggin godsend I might add.

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:20 am

MrYellow wrote:
AdamJay wrote:
MrYellow wrote:Reason's REX Player is a very handy tool for chopping/rearranging
breakbeat stuff.... very cool.

-Ben
did someone say clip envelopes?????
Yeah played with clip offsets a fair bit.... but Reason works for me better
visually when it comes to moving hits around....

-Ben

ben, did you know you can drag slections from clips to the impulse?

so in other words you can select the snare in a drum loop and just drag it to an impulse slot and it will load it in at the length you selected

then you can have your clip envelopes as well and edit it on the screen in exactly the same way as rex

stereomike · Post by **stereomike** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:39 pm

What do you guys think of Operator in comparison to the other synths out there?

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:28 pm

When you take account of features, value for money and easy of use, I would say that:

1) Live 5 is the best sequencer on the market
2) Reason is the best set of instruments on the market.

On its own Reason is limited but fun. It can't record audio, send MIDI out, or host the many great plugin effects that are now available. And personally I'm wquite happy for it to stay that way.

What Reason is fabulous or is providing a fairly complete collections of sound sources straight out of the box. I have not bethered investing in any VST instruments because there is very little that Reason (plus my hardware stuff) fails to provide.

In particular, the NN-XT sampler is great. It may not offer the same power as, say, NI Kontakt... but it uses very little CPU, doesn't crash, is far easier to get good results from, and has a massive amount of 3rd party support in the form of ReFills. What more does an ordinary user really need?

So to conclude, I recommend having Live as your Sequencer and Reason as your Instrument via ReWire. Together, you get a pretty complete solution.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:06 pm

I have to say I really dislike Reason v2.5 (haven't used v3). I don't think it has any redeeming features at all. It's awkward and it sounds like farting in a tin can and Rewire is stupid and it's made by Swedes*.

-Paws

*Scandinavian thing, pay no mind

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:15 pm

I, as many here, began my career using Reason about two years back. 6 months later, I started using LIVE3, and then with LIVE4 and thanks to all the great freeware/donationware VSTs, and a few commercial synths, I stopped using Reason altogether.

Then, after a re-format I decided to not waste the space with Reason.

But, a month ago (after more than a year on the shelf), I put Reason back on the DAW. I have been pretty pleased with the result to this point. I definitely don't need it, but sometimes for a really good bread-and-butter patch, I will go to Subtractor (especially now that you can put saturator on it!!). But I do have one problem that is probably fixable, but haven't gotten there yet....

There is now latency introduced in the audio from Reason. Since LIVE5's implementation of PDC, I have been so happy with this and my tracks sound better, but now it is back to resampling and having to fix the warp-markers in the audio from Reason. Pain in the arse, but maybe someone will help me out here.

Thanks,
my.02