What the hell is Propellerhead's "Reason, Recycle etc." anyway?

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pisces7378

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I have seen so much in all the British Magazines about how great Propellerhead software is. And that Reason is a complete trip to work with. I have gone to their website and seen all the marketing splashes in all the stores and magazines. And after all my hard research I have just one final small questions... What the fuck does it do? They market "Reason" as a complete studio package. What does that mean? Do I get a condensor microphone, a Solid State Logic Desk, and some acoustic foam in the box? Any near field monitors? I have been intersted in it for a long time just because so many people have carried on about how great it is. but no one can seem to break it all down to me and tell me what it does? Does it run along-side my Logic Audio Platinum of does it supliment it? Is it some sort of sampler, or does it help wioth sampling? Vocoder? Plug Ins? What is it... I mean besides being a complete studio package and all?

Thanks Girls,

Mike
 
Hey Pisces.....Try downloading the demo from the propellerheads site. I think it only "works" for 20 minutes at a time until you get the registered version. It is like having some drum machines, synths, and a sequencer, plus fx, all rolled into one piece of software. From my experience with the demo(limited), the program could be a bit more intuitive, but I'm not complaining...the demo is free after all, with no time limit on evaluation.
Some people really do believe it's the thang, though, and you should head here to find out about it:

http://samplecity.net/

They have a forum on the site that is devoted to Reason, and the people in there are completely hooked...they should be able to help you sort out the program. Hope this helps.
 
Recycle takes audio files, say wav, and automatically finds all the peaks and cuts it into a bunch of individual audio files. This means you can take an actual recorded drum kit and turn it into something you can manipulate like a MIDI file, for instance, change tempo, or move all the kicks, snares, etc. onto their own individual tracks for independent processing.

It was reviewed briefly in Homerecording Magazine March 2002.

You may have noticed that Logic 5 supports, oops, *will* support REX files, which is what Recycle puts out.

It seems to be unclear whether Logic 5 will support Reason. Check this link: http://community.sonikmatter.com/emagic/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=39;t=000092

I always get a kick out of how "oscwilde" tries to control things over there.
 
I have Reason and I love it!

No, you don't get mics or monitors. But you do get synths, samplers, drum machines, mixers and effects. I have it synced to my 880ex (which does the guitars, vocals). Wouldn't trade it for anything.
 
It has to do with the quality of the sounds, the tweakability, flexibility, etc. It is a great sounding all in one package for all kinds of electronica.
 
Personally I haven't been able to get any sounds I really like out of Reason. I always wind up with very methamphetamine rolling, pacifier sucking, glow stick waving House/Techno/Trance sounds ("rave" music in the worst sense on the word), when what I want are deep, thick, and groovy sounds.

I'm not saying what I consider to be "cool" sounds can't be made with Reason. I'm sure some artists that I really admire use it, or the hardware equivalents. But at least for me, cool sounds don't spring naturally from this app.

barefoot
 
Reason and Rebirth are definately for the TR808 crowd. The interface is horrible IMO because you have to program it like the orginal machines. Even the demo's sound very stale to my ears. I really wanted to like it but I cant see spending the money on it.

Recycle sounds pretty cool, though. I'll have to check that out.
 
Barefoot,

Cool sounds dont spring naturally from anything. You have to make them happen. Reason in conjunction with a good editor like CEP or cubase is all you need.

Recycle doesnt give you much more than what you can do to loops with any decent audio editor.
 
JuSumPilgrim said:
Cool sounds dont spring naturally from anything. You have to make them happen.
Click to expand...
I never said you didn't need to make it happen. But, come on. Most of us can pick up an instrument and quickly get a feel whether it's going to work for us or not. I played around quite a lot with Reason, thinking I was maybe missing something, and personally couldn't find sounds I liked.

If you're into house and techno, Reason might be great for you. I'm into deep ambient, breakbeat and even d&b and I don't want to climb a mountain trying to make a tool work for me when others get me where I want to go much more effectively.

barefoot
 
Pilgrum, what audio editor do you use? It can automatically cut up loops? I could see manually cutting up one or two bars, but more than that.... How do you preserve their relative time positions if you want to change tempo? I wouldn't want to do that for 2 beats, let alone a single bar.

I've never used Recycle, but it certainly sounds interesting.
 
Thats interesting. Im not into house or techno either. Im more into the portisheady ambient, moody trip hop thing as well as d&b. I thought the drum sounds right out of the box were one of the strongest things about the program while the synth and bass sounds needed alot more work.
 
Ap,

I use Cool Edit Pro. I use it in conjunction with soft synths which I export files from. Once I have a basic beat I work around that in CEP, aligning tracks to the beats. The beat becomes the structure around which everything revolves. CEP has a beat sensor and I do alot of aligning manually. Actually the tempo and pitch adjuster are just about the only things that make recycle worth getting. I havent really had a need for that.
 
Just some points on Reason (from a user)...

The only "sounds" that come from Reason are the Synths. Everything else - the DR Rex player, the Sampler and Drum machione - are sample-based. Obviously, the samples that come in the Reason box will not be to everyone's liking, but it's easy enough to acquire some that are D&B, ambient, trip-hop, whatever you're into.

Reason and Rebirth are definately for the TR808 crowd. The interface is horrible IMO because you have to program it like the orginal machines.
Click to expand...
I agree with this when you're talking about Rebirth - it's a pain in the ass to program, plus the synth sounds are getting quite dated a bit now ("it all a bit 90s" :) ). However, I don't think this can be applied to Reason. Reason has a very easy-to-use MIDI editor that can be used to program all the machines. Plus, if you like, you can program the Drum Machine like an actual Drum Machine.
 
If you are into midi, Reason is the shit....If you aren't into midi, I dunno maybe Sonar?
 
Pilgrum, but have you ever compared the two methods, Recycle vs CEP, when trying to manipulate a recording of a live drummer? This seems to be the intended application of Recycle. Sounds like you're talking about aligning audio tracks to midi beats, or at least rhythm tracks produced in a midi or loop based sampler environment- a suble but very big difference.
 
Youre right ap. When I want to change tempo or change the feel or emphasis of a beat I generally go go back to midi to regenrate the beat. OR...I go back and play it live and record myself. Im a drummer and my skills (especialy sticking patterns) improved significantly by working on live playing of technical breakbeats and d&b. Recycle is cool for tempo and pitch changing. Its a good basic program for the basic loop adjusting that is typical in electronica but it doesnt offer much more than simple loop editing and Im fairly certain there are programs out there that do pitch and tempo change (CEP actually does it but not very well) and alot more for not much more money.
 
SeanF said:
The only "sounds" that come from Reason are the Synths. Everything else - the DR Rex player, the Sampler and Drum machione - are sample-based. Obviously, the samples that come in the Reason box will not be to everyone's liking, but it's easy enough to acquire some that are D&B, ambient, trip-hop, whatever you're into.
Click to expand...
I guess this is the point in my case. I work primarily with samples and find the Reason interface impossible. I guess I should have clarified, because I meant "sound" in the general sense - the actual sounds, the groove, the feel, everything. And maybe I'm getting the apps confused because it's been a while since I used them, but like you said, wherever the internal sounds are coming from they sound very dated and chessy IMHO.

When I started using Acid everything seemed so clear and intuitive right from the start. I never had to struggle with laying down just a basic groove. I even have a library of 808 samples. I find it very easy to work with them in Acid.

barefoot
 
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