Reason Sounds or HIgh-end keyboard?

  • Thread starter Thread starter slobizman
  • Start date Start date
Sonik Synth 2

If you want to spend a extra $120 or so @ Guitar Center, try Sonik Synth 2. Best synth I've ever had - I've had Ensoniq boards, Korg, Roland and I got rid of them all after sonik synth 2. The sounds on this thing (8GBs worth) are awesome. Look it up, your son may love it. In my opinion, it's the closest thing to an ES or Fantom in softsynth format. You can do anything with this synth plug-in.
 
I'll be the one to give dear ol dad the answer he wants: a controller is fine. it's plenty. If were you I'd make him get a damn job. Ok, I'm kidding. Yeah, hardware is still better if for no reason other than latency but there are so many groovy soft synths out there your son will be pleased for quite some time - particularly if he doesn't know better like some of us old hardware foggies.

that said, reason really does leave a little to be desired. Drop an extra 89 dollars on the VST>RTAS adapter from FxPansion and he'll be able to download free vst synth after free vst synth to use right inside of pro-tools. there's about 63426163 of them at http://kvraudio.com


Will
 
brzilian said:
That may be so, but I certainly would not trust the OS behind the app, drivers, etc... - especially in a live situation.
Click to expand...
DavidCrowder*Band uses a pretty trippy Reason/Ableton Live setup almost every night on a Powerbook G5 with no trouble at all...

Of course, they also took the time to really set everything up 100% correctly, and they don't have that Mac doing ANYTHING else...just their performance.
 
Music has and will continue to go Tech. Regardless of how much we refuse to put away the old Analog systems and other hardware. Computer has already surpassed many of the things we once did manually.....There is NO comparison between the two. Vintage equipment was some of the best ever.............But programs like Reason and a ton of others are rapidly replacing alot of HAll of Fame equipment. I hate to admit it and a lot of Old Schoolers hate to see it, but it is true! Look at the widespread use of Protools..... When people start comparing is when it becomes unfair.....
 
Trumpspade said:
Music has and will continue to go Tech. Regardless of how much we refuse to put away the old Analog systems and other hardware. Computer has already surpassed many of the things we once did manually.....There is NO comparison between the two. Vintage equipment was some of the best ever.............But programs like Reason and a ton of others are rapidly replacing alot of HAll of Fame equipment. I hate to admit it and a lot of Old Schoolers hate to see it, but it is true! Look at the widespread use of Protools..... When people start comparing is when it becomes unfair.....
Click to expand...

Sorry, but that's a load of crap.

Yeah, people use Pro Tools, Sonar and Nuendo, but that is not in a live situation.

When it comes down to it, I sure as hell DO NOT trust current OS's (WinXP, OS X) to perform flawlessly every time. Hardware synths are basically the same thing as a software synth, but the big difference is the fact that they have proprietary OS's which are specifically written to work with the proprietary hardware built into those same hardware synths.

The OS's behind the programs you use for DAW work are also designed to play games, do spreadsheets and surf the web. They are also designed to work with a multitude of hardware devices. Dealing with that kind of complexity will always lead to trouble and negatively affect reliability.
 
Brzilian
Pay attention:
You keep talking about Live situations...........Didn't I say Protools, Sonar, and things of that nature. I am obviously referring to Studio settings.....And if you don't think that you see these products in top notch studios, maybe you're due for a field trip............I hate when I am talking about one thing, which is only my opinion anyway, and you're harping about something else.
Disagree with me all day please........But don't twist things around to make it appear that I said something that I didn't say!
I spoke earlier in this thread about how technologic music has gotten, and how I am impressed with many of the new plugins etc. And again, you harp on Trusting OS, drivers, etc......in a live setting
No Sh*t Sherlock............You are referring to PC's not built to handle the programs it's running........Oh well, get a pc update......Mine runs just fine................What type of equipment do you have? If you don't have a pc, you have some type of computer related chip/memory or something. If not maybe you and Fred Flinstone can do a demo....... I guess my point in my responses is simply this: When you buy a product, any product, make sure you have the proper OS that is designed for that program to run properly. Now, do you still have a problem with that?
 
Yep, I do. Even in a non live situation, any little thing can throw off your "well tuned" system and cause hiccups, crashes and introduce latency.

I haven't heard of hardware synths from major manufactuers (Korg, Roland, Yamaha) experiencing these kind of problems since the days of the Roland D-70/U-20.
 
Oh and BTW, before you come to conclusions about my computer's capabilities - I use a Dual Xeon system for DAW work which also works as my NLE/3D animation workhorse.
 
One thing I don't do is, Jump to conclusions I will ask first. But you seem as if you doubt your own sytems capability. If there is a problem with your OS then change it. If there is a problem with your software Change that too! If there isn't a problem, be happy and make music and stop waiting for things to crash.
 
WHOOOOAAAAA!!!! GUYS!!!!
Take a deep breath. OK you agree to disagree let's move on. OK the Pat's beat the Eagles, but you guys can still be friends. Or not. I could care less if you drag each other to the firey pits of hell. That's your business. But I think you have both made your point, and I suggest if you would like to duke it out, you guys step into the Dragon Cave. This is the Keyboard forum. We can debate the merits of PC's all day, and when all is said and done, half this board will agree with you brzilian, and the other half with you Trumpspade. And I'll have you know I use a PC live (Specific built for live use. Never crashed yet. I use old Analog, never had one die live. I use modern hardware synths (Only had 1 incident live with a Korg). Am I lucky??? Probably. I say, use what you need to use live to get the job done. But be sure you have a back-up plan, in case something does go wrong, and have a system in place that will help minimize the chances that something will go wrong in the first place. What does that mean. Backups!!! Any musician who goes out on to stage regardless of instrument or technology, without redundacy, is rolling the dice every time. And even the luckiest will eventually have a failure. Your success of surviving on stage when it happens, will come down to how well you prepared for it to happen. Period.
 
You are correct! This is a forum for people to obtain help, it has helped me sooo much. I hate the fact that I try to share my experiences, and people take it to heart. I respect people opinions and only hope that they respect mine. I apologize to anyone whom I offended and promise to carry myself in a the manner in which I was raised.............Oh yeah, the PATS did beat Philly right? Just kidding..............Again I apologize!
 
This thread almost turned into one of my family reunions (LOL). We are all ultimately here to learn, to teach, to swap ideas. I feel we are all better served too respect one another. If we disagree, by all means we should speak up (God knows I'm not always right, and I'll be the first to admit it). But I think we are all civil enough to do it in a manner which is considered respectful (at least a little bit anyways). It happens again, and I'll have you guys clapping erasers during recess.
 
In the long run, if you want to be sucessful making hit records, you go with what gets you there. I have used Reason instead of the 24k in hardware I bought in '98 because I've been able to duplicate the level of commercial success of my music without the hardware. Now to a "purist" who cares more about the process than the outcome, that doesn't work. I too care about the process, but I care so much more about making good music and making it relatively fast. If I were into say country music, Reason doesn't seem to suit that genre. But you can pretty much tell that P-Head targeted Dance Music in particular and Hip-Hop, Pop and Some forms of Rock gravitated to it. I love Reason and honestly do not miss my big, heavy, bulky K-2600!!!!
 
A good Reason

Many of the keyboards on the market have MIDI in/out, which means you can control Reason AS WELL AS play internal sounds that came with the keyboard. Best of both worlds.

So I suggest finding a keyboard with sounds that your son likes,with knobs that can be assigned to control Reason parameters as well. I think Alesis has some new products that would fit the bill. Reason really shines when you can turn knobs and faders rather than using a mouse.

Reason is truly an incredible value in my opinion: drum machines, drum loops, samples, synths, effects, sequencer, mixers, etc. etc. -- thousands of sounds for just a few hundred bucks. Think how much it would cost to buy each device individually. Easily thousands!

For those thinking using a computer in a live situation is not a good idea:

Keyboards, drum machines, multi-effects processors, etc. have built in "computers". Difference is those chips inside are designed to do a specific job. If you tweak a Mac or PC to run only as an audio tool, you would also be designing it to do a specific job. An added bonus to Reason is controlling things from a computer screen, rather than the tiny screen that is built in to many of today's keyboards.

IMHO- you can get Reason to sound as good as many of the hardware synths under $1000, if you really learn how to process the sounds well. A decent keyboard with it's own sounds would give you the best of both worlds.

Hope this info helps. Cheers, Rez
 
i personally like reason....its so expandable...but you really gotta know what ur doin.......but on a larger scale both reason and a high end keyboard has the same sounds..... damn near.... truly...its up to the user to be versitile and creative...reasons and high end keyboard both have 16 bit samples and from my knowledge..reason also has 24 bit samples....most gear buffs think just cause dr.dre or any other multiplatinum producer uses an mpc that they'll be making hits over night....its not like that at all....you have to be really creative with anything you have...mess with different parameters and crap and im pretty sure that ur son will acheive what he wants... :)
 
To the orginal poster: get your kid an Alesis Ion!

It's cheap, it looks cool, and has VA synth sounds that will blow Subtractor (Reason's synth) away!
 
How much is that Alesis Ion running?
I'm asking out of curiosity, but I'm gonna try and locate it in a few...............
 
I don't really care one way or the other - I use Reason, GigaStudio, and an inexpensive MIDI keyboard because I'm primarily a home recordist. The Reason sequencer is easy to use and there are a lot of pretty good sounds to play with. The GigaStudio grand piano is stunning. But I don't know if I'd use any of this stuff live.

Anyway, here's my point: the hardware used to synthesize digitial sound on a modern computer is every bit as capable as that found in good dedicated synths (excluding analog, which is a completely different domain). As stated previously, it's the added version of an operating system that's the primary difficulty. I don't have problems with this myself. The only other variable is the quality of the preamplifiers and DSP's, which can be every bit as bad on a synth as they are in a low-buck sound card.

I use an outboard audio interface myself. The built-in sound on the computer is what it is and I never record it. Everything stays in the digital domain. Therefore the bit-depth, sampling rate, and (for samples) the quality of the original recording are all that matter. As long as I've got CPU cycles and I/O bandwidth, the sound will compare favorably to most any keyboard out there -- after all, they both use the same technology underneath the covers.

Unless you want to get into very expensive DSPs and boutique pre-amplifiers, you're not going to hear the diff. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top