The Combinator v2 Thread

[aeox]

It's very exciting to think I may be able to make my own frankensynths with panels and controls for everything laid out the way I want

[Catblack]

I've made a few lengthy posts about the issue with those 8 knobs and 8 sliders on your midi controller and the disconnect with what they control across 400ish rack extensions and devices. It's going to be much, much worse with the new combinator.

Ideally they'd add a pop up window for the remotables that would show you what device has focus (and a tab for the main scope) and what it's mapped to on your midi controller. And that window would be sort of like a spreadsheet, allowing you to see the overrides from there and change them. You can export remotemaps for vst and RE, but why not be able to change that mapping directly? Oh, we've been editing our remotemaps in text editors since version 3 and that's still ok with you, Reason Studios?

And not buried in the prefs. A popup window you can keep open on another screen.

The new combi can have all the fruity flavors they can pack into it, but it'll still taste like shit if you have to spend several minutes with each one fiddling with what your controller is mapped to.

[Yonatan]

This new combinator combined with new sampler, I would guess could bring live performance to another level.

[lowtom]

I've made a few lengthy posts about the issue with those 8 knobs and 8 sliders on your midi controller and the disconnect with what they control across 400ish rack extensions and devices. It's going to be much, much worse with the new combinator.

Ideally they'd add a pop up window for the remotables that would show you what device has focus (and a tab for the main scope) and what it's mapped to on your midi controller. And that window would be sort of like a spreadsheet, allowing you to see the overrides from there and change them. You can export remotemaps for vst and RE, but why not be able to change that mapping directly? Oh, we've been editing our remotemaps in text editors since version 3 and that's still ok with you, Reason Studios?

And not buried in the prefs. A popup window you can keep open on another screen.

The new combi can have all the fruity flavors they can pack into it, but it'll still taste like shit if you have to spend several minutes with each one fiddling with what your controller is mapped to.

That's an issue with this whole 8 knobs standard that was introduced and normalised somehow to keep everything simple.
Screens above knobs are one solution to know our mapping assignments and if there are no screens, I believe Bitwig made great solution - an overhead display in the bottom of the screen that shows exactly which parameter is controlled by assigned knobs. RS should implement something similar in Reason for 8 knob controllers.
One thing that Reason offers is ability to use more than 8 knobs. With Remote I can map my 32 or even 128 knob controller for each device, but to know what I'm controlling, I need information on the screen, memorise everything or use tape, labels and printed overlays which sucks.
I would also love if Reason Remote was capable of using OSC messages directly.

[electrofux]

Yeah man, the remote side of things in an environment where one device shows differerent controls on a patch by patch basis will be a challenge. I doubt they even think about a solution. They will probably present us with a fixed number of remote items per combinator independent of what controls are in a patch eg 16 controls with values 0-127 and 16 Buttons. And we map them in the remotemap to our controller. This will lead to us not knowing what controll on the midi controller will do what given the fact that they seem to be distributable over the front of the device in different layouts. Thats the thing, if you can add a fader here and a knob there, then what seems to represent a touchscreen in the middle or touchslider there, then the remote mapping will be total chaos. If they adehere to some form of controller friendly layouts, like only adding rows of 8 controls of a kind below each other, then it would be alot easier to figure out whats doing what.

[loopeydoug]

I don't really care about Combi layout versus my given hardware. I just want a Combinator patch that doesn't require me to re-map controls every time I pull it in to a new project. Once I map it I wanna be done looking at the rack. With dependable, hands-on interfacing I'll quickly internalize what controls what. And until I get them fully memorized, I have no qualms about making my own patch sheets for reference.

[electrofux]

We dont know that much but it seems that every combi patch can have a differerent layout. I am fine memorizing a Synth but memorizing a patch is a tad harder.

But even if they mess this up i am super stoked on the new possibilities.

[loopeydoug]

But even if they mess this up i am super stoked on the new possibilities.

Ditto. Merely having more controls and more slots in the programmer is a HUGE step up.

[scotward57]

I've made a few lengthy posts about the issue with those 8 knobs and 8 sliders on your midi controller and the disconnect with what they control across 400ish rack extensions and devices. It's going to be much, much worse with the new combinator.

Ideally they'd add a pop up window for the remotables that would show you what device has focus (and a tab for the main scope) and what it's mapped to on your midi controller. And that window would be sort of like a spreadsheet, allowing you to see the overrides from there and change them. You can export remotemaps for vst and RE, but why not be able to change that mapping directly? Oh, we've been editing our remotemaps in text editors since version 3 and that's still ok with you, Reason Studios?

And not buried in the prefs. A popup window you can keep open on another screen.

The new combi can have all the fruity flavors they can pack into it, but it'll still taste like shit if you have to spend several minutes with each one fiddling with what your controller is mapped to.

I'm sure Reason Studios will have this all figured out and it will be perfect. Much worrying over nothing IMO.

[ksailer]

Make the new Combinator send custom knob labels to my Mackie C4 display and I'll be happy.

[East Island]

Make the new Combinator send custom knob labels to my Mackie C4 display and I'll be happy.

Wow, that's a cool idea.

[dioxide]

I'd like to see them go one stop further and split Kong into a Combinator-2 with 16 nested drum devices plus insert effects. The same goes for Redrum and Umpfs. It would make reordering the drums a lot easier and if Kong's drums and effects were their own Rack units you'd be able to automate / Remote control all the parameters.

[enossified]

Just having more knobs would be a huge plus for me. Years of Live's 8 (now 16!!!) macro knobs and Logic's 12 knobs in Smart Controls makes the 4 knobs in the Combinator look pretty stingy.

[Catblack]

Make the new Combinator send custom knob labels to my Mackie C4 display and I'll be happy.

Wow, that's a cool idea.

I do not believe that there's a Remotable for combinator labels, so this is impossible. It'd probably be easy for Reason Studios to add them though, nudge nudge. In Remote you can get the names of controls on a RE (if they've been assigned Remotables) which is how Novation's Automap codec does it. I can't recall if any others do it, because it's been many years since I've even looked at a codec.

[MrFigg]

Hope they make the Run button automatable.

[Heigen5]

Hope they make the Run button automatable.

And also key-triggered.

[buddard]

Hope they make the Run button automatable.

The current behaviour of the Run button is not due to some techincal limitation, it's by design.

Imagine that you have a bunch of automation lanes in a Reason song.
When the transport is standing still and you move the playhead to a random position in the song, watch the automated knobs: They will move to reflect the values at the current playback position.

OK, now imagine that you've automated the Run button.
The Reason transport is standing still, because you're editing a clip or whatever.
Now you drag the playhead and release it at a position in the timeline where Run has been automated to ON.
What happens? Well, the Run button will be activated, and the devices in the Combi will start playing... Which is probably what no user would ever want.

This is why Redrum etc, in addition the Run button have a separate automatable button to enable/disable the Pattern section.
The corresponding mechanism on Players is the On/Off button, or having a button that explicitly selects Pattern -1, which is the "null pattern", i e the "pattern" that is selected when you are in between clips in the pattern lane.

(This is even stated explicitly in the RE SDK documentation: https://developer.reasonstudios.com/doc ... cepts#_run, where RE developers are strongly discouraged from making Run automatable. I suspect that it might even fail the acceptance tests at Reason Studios)

So rather than making the Run button in the combinator automatable, what we would like to have is a companion button called "Auto Run", "Enable Pattern Devices", or something like that, which decides whether Run should follow the main transport or not.

[MrFigg]

Hope they make the Run button automatable.

The current behaviour of the Run button is not due to some techincal limitation, it's by design.

Imagine that you have a bunch of automation lanes in a Reason song.
When the transport is standing still and you move the playhead to a random position in the song, watch the automated knobs: They will move to reflect the values at the current playback position.

OK, now imagine that you've automated the Run button.
The Reason transport is standing still, because you're editing a clip or whatever.
Now you drag the playhead and release it at a position in the timeline where Run has been automated to ON.
What happens? Well, the Run button will be activated, and the devices in the Combi will start playing... Which is probably what no user would ever want.

This is why Redrum etc, in addition the Run button have a separate automatable button to enable/disable the Pattern section.
The corresponding mechanism on Players is the On/Off button, or having a button that explicitly selects Pattern -1, which is the "null pattern", i e the "pattern" that is selected when you are in between clips in the pattern lane.

(This is even stated explicitly in the RE SDK documentation: https://developer.reasonstudios.com/doc ... cepts#_run, where RE developers are strongly discouraged from making Run automatable. I suspect that it might even fail the acceptance tests at Reason Studios)

So rather than making the Run button in the combinator automatable, what we would like to have is a companion button called "Auto Run", "Enable Pattern Devices", or something like that, which decides whether Run should follow the main transport or not.

Thanks for the explanation. I think I got told before it was by design. But yes. Totally. An Autorun button :):). Here’s hoping.

[deeplink]

This is a bit of a pipe dream,

But I always thought any new combinator device should be able to house Mix/Audio Channels within it - this then creates the opportunity to template large mixes, or at least provide a quick an easy way to have devices such as Kong/Umpf pre-routed to separate mix channels.

[Carpainter]

This is a bit of a pipe dream,

But I always thought any new combinator device should be able to house Mix/Audio Channels within it - this then creates the opportunity to template large mixes, or at least provide a quick an easy way to have devices such as Kong/Umpf pre-routed to separate mix channels.

I don't mind inserting mixers, but it would be nice if the Combinator did it automatically, if only to save some work.

What I'd like more than anything is the ability to create an endless amount of knobs so I can map every parameter of multiple instruments to a Combinator knob. This would make huge synth stacks that are theoretically possible with the current Combinator much easier to deal with.

[thefixr]

This new combinator combined with new sampler, I would guess could bring live performance to another level.

This is my hope. No less than a few weeks ago I was seriously considering switching to Ableton due to a few killer features about Ableton's drum and instrument racks. Ableton seems built for someone like me - someone that sets up continuous, realtime pad playing (finger drumming) sets that can last from 10-20 minutes to 1 hour or more.

Some of the features in Ableton that are attractive:

- Drum racks are made for pad playing.
- Drum racks have the ability to easily setup effects chains for every drum/pad.
- Instrument racks can be setup to call up separate drum racks for the ability to continuously play one drum rack after the other.
- Editing and management of samples directly in Simpler appears to be a lot easier than with any of the options you can use in Reason. That said I do a lot of my sample editing in the sequencer.

The thing is - I can achieve everything I mention above in Reason - it just takes a lot longer and gets super complex to manage, especially the effects chaining and some of the trickery I have to do to play across multiple devices/combinators.

Some of the drawbacks to switching to Ableton:

- Ableton will never be as stable as Reason.
- Reason's interface is a pleasure for me to work in.
- I'm very familiar with how Reason works and know exactly how to get what I need done, done. [/list]

Stability is very important to me. I have used a lot of software over the last 20+ years, in and out of music, and Reason is by far the most impressively stable piece of software I have ever used. The fact that I can use it for realtime, continuously played sets without worry is a godsend.

I love working in the Reason Rack and find the overall user interface inspiring to work in. Finally I know how to get everything I need to get done in Reason and consider myself to be a fairly advanced Reason user. I see this as an investment that I would lose if I switched to Ableton. Now that Reason can be used as a plugin in Ableton, some of my transition concerns are abated a bit, but this does not eliminate the issue of stability and there would still be a non-trivial transition cost (in time and reduced productivity).

The new Combinator + the potential of a new Sampler/Sample Player has brought new life into my consideration of sticking exclusively with Reason. It has me going from seeing Reason as something that I would have to move away from, from a set creation and management standpoint, to something that I can continue to use for my needs into the foreseeable future. That said, I will have to see what comes of the new features.

Unlike some other I see here - I am fairly reasonable about what my expectations should be from Reason. When I started using it I wasn't even capable of finger drumming, no less playing a live continuous set. I know that Reason isn't designed for live usage - although they've definitely made it capable of using it in a live setting. I don't expect that my needs would be the focus of RS and for this I am grateful that they are offering updates in the Combinator and Sampler. If these devices end up being as good as they could possibly be - I can see this breathing a lot of new live in the Refills market and certainly for people using Reason in a live setting.

Finally, shameless plug for my YouTube channel to see what I do with Reason:
https://youtube.com/iamthefixr

[thefixr]

I'd like to see them go one stop further and split Kong into a Combinator-2 with 16 nested drum devices plus insert effects. The same goes for Redrum and Umpfs. It would make reordering the drums a lot easier and if Kong's drums and effects were their own Rack units you'd be able to automate / Remote control all the parameters.

This is a very cool idea.