How would you rate the R12 upgrade? (Upgraders and R+ subscribers only)

[TritoneAddiction]

First of all, only those of you who have upgraded to R12 or are R+ subscribers may vote in this poll. You have to actually have tried R12 out for yourself.
Also for this particular poll, we're sticking to the version that was released on september 1, the initial R12 version. So improvements or speculations of what may come later doesn't count for this one, not even future promises made by Reason Studios themselves count. It's about the initial release. Just so we're talking about the same product. If you're a R+ subscriber, try to exclude the soundpacks bit from this when casting your vote.

Feel free to add a comment if you want for more nuance.

[Arrant]

I think a 4 or so is probably fair given the features, but since I had to go back to 11 it can only be a 1 on your scale.
Sorry RS, the software is simply not tested properly.

[BCsab]

I like the new devices, but for me it seems there a lot of elements missing the HiRes update. (transport bar, sequencer) So it is a little bit unfinished and i hope it will be corrected in an upcoming patch.

[TritoneAddiction]

I think a 4 or so is probably fair given the features, but since I had to go back to 11 it can only be a 1 on your scale.
Sorry RS, the software is simply not tested properly.

Yeah it may seem unfair in a way. I get that. But I think it's good to see in what state they've actually decided to sell their product. Imagine someones completely new to Reason. They hear about it and decide to buy it. This is the product they'll get. They won't have all the experiences and associations with Reason that we've gathered over the years. So I think it's fair in a way. This is what Reason is TODAY.
I used that example for the lowest rating, because I couldn't think of a worse outcome.
If you pay 129 bucks for an upgrade and the experience feels more like a downgrade, then maybe that's something for RS to consider for future upgrades?

[zoidkirb]

Maybe I shouldn't be in this poll as I upgraded from 10 but I'm very very happy with the combined 11/12 upgrades.

FWIW I think If you take the RRP out of the equation 12 is much stronger than 11.

[zabukowski]

I like the new devices, but for me it seems there a lot of elements missing the HiRes update. (transport bar, sequencer) So it is a little bit unfinished and i hope it will be corrected in an upcoming patch.

"Now that Reason 12 is properly released you might wonder what's next? We'll have more to say about that in the near future but for starters we'll simply keep working. The Combinator's been designed to be expanded with more features over time and there are still parts of Reason that need hi-res assets, so that's where we'll start. It's very helpful to hear your feedback on Reason 12 here, so give it a spin and let us know what you think!"

https://www.reasonstudios.com/blog/comb ... -reason-12

[Heater]

I feel like the high Rez stuff should have been there as a normal mid 11 update. That leaves Mimic and the new Combinator. I'm not a huge sampling guy so that leaves the Combinator which is fantastic but I'm not sure it's worth the upgrade price.

Hmmm. Going to have to think about this.

[Popey]

I gave it a 5 personally and I am looking at it as someone who uses rrp. Mimic is quite good but does not bring much as I already have live simpler and sampler. Not being able to load live samples into it seems like an oversight. Combinator has awesome potential and seems similar to the live racks so now it gives a lot more flexibility for combi in rrp to combine into live racks.

I do however think as it stands it is quite rushed and I think being a reasontalk forum user my score is likely higher than someone who just looked at rs marketing/manuals when making a decision to buy. If I did not read things here before getting 12 to try I probably would have thought the browser was broken when it took minutes to open a folder, hd graphics on some areas I would think are laughable, I would still be trying to right click to assign combi controls in rrp, trying to put a combinator within a combinator and waiting for certain rack extensions to go hi res.

Reason needed to explain the above a bit better to potential customers and ensure documentation was correct before rushing this out. I guess lots of potential for the future here but as we are scoring it based on how it is now in my own opinion the score of 5 is fair.

EDIT: Bumped my vote up from 5 to 6 after using mimic a bit more.

[Neo]

A shame there are still some annoying bugs on release, but hey its software right.
The Good v12.2d36 definitely feels quicker, and Mimic of-course.
The Bad Browser folders do not stay folded/collapsed.
and The Ugly Application Zoom taskbar is pixelated outside 100% (yep.. I know you know lol)
- and on occasion reason.exe stays open in background on exit.

Look forward to future updates.

[gullum]

HI res gives it a 4 for me combinator still have not made one of the new once, mimic not bothered to try yet. But I already saved a few of my songs in 12 so I have to upgrade or I can use them anymore. it's a 4 but point updates might make it a 5 or 6

[PhillipOrdonez]

I have given it an 8.

It list one point for the hd thing not being fully implemented to the whole program, and another point for not including any small quality of life improvements too the sequencer. I do appreciate labels from combinator included on the sequencer, and the easy mapping to Combi controls, but don't appreciate not tempo matching audio from the browser preview, for example.

I remain hopeful that now the big chunk of the graphics thing being out of the way, RS can focus again on workflow. And the seemingly few features this version brought made enough of an impact on my workflow that I deemed it very much worth upgrading, coming from 11.

Popey, what are those live samples you speak of? Just curious... In what format are they?

[Billy+]

Im surprised by the performance of the hi res on an old laptop I setup for testing considering the comments made by others with higher spec machines, however I think that it has more to do with actual dpi and resolution setting.

I'm going to try it on a larger higher dpi screen over the next few days to see what happens.

I think the upgrade is a little underwhelming even though RS have been able to get out what was announced it's just not a feature set that encourages me to buy a license I'm just glad that I managed to get a cheap subscription to tryout as at least I can stay on 11 with a nice collection of 200 sound packs for my trouble.

I was really hoping that we would have some extra features in the release like normal but I guess time must have got the better of them unfortunately so I'm definitely going to hold off buying the perpetual license until I see something worth £129.

[Popey]

I have given it an 8.

It list one point for the hd thing not being fully implemented to the whole program, and another point for not including any small quality of life improvements too the sequencer. I do appreciate labels from combinator included on the sequencer, and the easy mapping to Combi controls, but don't appreciate not tempo matching audio from the browser preview, for example.

I remain hopeful that now the big chunk of the graphics thing being out of the way, RS can focus again on workflow. And the seemingly few features this version brought made enough of an impact on my workflow that I deemed it very much worth upgrading, coming from 11.

Popey, what are those live samples you speak of? Just curious... In what format are they?

Hi Phillip,

When I say live samples I mean the content in ableton live samples folder. They are aif files and I was surprised to find that when I dragged them into mimic in rrp they all came up as unsupported. They feature live a lot in their adverts so just expected they may have tried this with mimic during testing and made them work in rrp. It's not a deal breaker in fact none of the things I mentioned above are but they are all little things that add up to how I personally feel about the value to me in it's current state.

[VIVIsect]

The high res stuff reminds me of how a video game company will release a game knowing it's unfinished for the sake of meeting a deadline. It's not a good look.

I like Mimic and I know that I'm going to be getting a lot of use out of it. The new Combinator is great, as well. The browser improvement is whatever. Seems like a token thing they tossed in for standalone users.

I would rate the upgrade somewhere in the middle.

[slic]

It is more of a 'catch up' upgrade (as a DAW without scaling/zooming in 2021 is just unacceptable) than a feature/improvement upgrade. I think a lot of companies would have made HD and Combinor2 a free 11.5 upgrade (and maybe sold Mimic) but it is what it is and no one has to upgrade...if they keep adding to 12 the value will increase and more people will probably jump on board.

[Carpainter]

I rate it highly based on the potential of Combinator 2. Are they going to keep it as-is or are they going to compete with Bitwig and introduce a fully modular core within Reason? It doesn't have to be on the level of Max or Reaktor, but the Rack was made for something like that.

[Billy+]

I rate it highly based on the potential of Combinator 2. Are they going to keep it as-is or are they going to compete with Bitwig and introduce a fully modular core within Reason? It doesn't have to be on the level of Max or Reaktor, but the Rack was made for something like that.

Reasons core was always modular, long before bitwig was a twinkle in its developers eye...

[QVprod]

As is I’d rate a 6. It’s a good upgrade, but the unfinished graphics outside of the rack drag it down. Being able to see the rack in a readable size is fantastic though!

As a sound designer the new combinator will get lots of use. And mimic is a good time saver over using the sequencer and NNXT for certain sample tasks.

[CaptainBlack]

The sequencer has had no attention at all for two upgrades now. Meanwhile all the other DAWs disappear into the distance. Think it’s time to jump back to Cubase. They practically told us to use another DAW with the Reason Rack Plug-in.

[joeyluck]

The sequencer has had no attention at all for two upgrades now. Meanwhile all the other DAWs disappear into the distance. Think it’s time to jump back to Cubase. They practically told us to use another DAW with the Reason Rack Plug-in.

R11 was one of the bigger updates to the sequencer I have seen since R9 which gave us pitch edit.
- crossfades
- automation curves
- absolute snap
- improved/individual track zoom
- multi-note pencil tool
- key visualization
- mute midi notes
- shortcut for shifting an octave
- shift+double-click to select notes and all following notes in clip

It's not a gigantic list, but comparatively to what we have seen in the past, it is one of the bigger updates to the sequencer I have seen. And to say the sequencer got no attention is false.

I honestly feel like after they do that and then people claim they did nothing to the sequencer, it could be for THAT very reason if they were to decide to take a break on the sequencer, because they could never add enough to satisfy people. And making claims that they did nothing to the sequencer is so false and the spreading of misinformation helps nobody.

[PhillipOrdonez]

The sequencer has had no attention at all for two upgrades now. Meanwhile all the other DAWs disappear into the distance. Think it’s time to jump back to Cubase. They practically told us to use another DAW with the Reason Rack Plug-in.

Yoi find it funny you say that it has been 2 version since they did anything to the sequencer... Ummm, Reason 11 was all about the sequencer...?

[Gardinski]

Unfortunately I can't vote in the poll, because I 'cheated' by having a sneaky peek at the results, and the voting option is no longer there. Boo hiss. (My own fault, though.)

I'd rate it around 7.5. I would probably make it a solid 8, if a couple of issues were addressed in a forthcoming update.

(1) I love Mimic, but the inability to switch between active slots is frustrating (either automated in the sequencer or 'on the fly' for live performance). This facility would make Mimic a killer synth. I'm already in love with it, and have spent most of the last fortnight playing around with it to the exclusion of almost every other instrument - but this would increase its usefulness significantly.

(2) In Mimic again: The ability to adjust rhythmic patches to a specified tempo. (This is less important to me than the slot-switching thing, but it would be great.)

Combinator 2 is potentially one of the most exciting developments we've seen, and could herald a new era of user-led development and community interaction.

I love where Reason is going at the moment (despite the doom & gloom merchants who have been hellbent on predicting its demise throughout the past decade).

I'm having more fun and more frequent 'Eureka' moments with Reason over the past few months than perhaps at any other time. Partly this is because I've had much more time to experiment with it during Lockdown, and have improved my general understanding of the software (including some pretty fundamental things that simply hadn't clicked with me until recently).

The sampling aspect is one I'd never delved into prior to Mimic, and I'm finding immense delight in the possibilities it offers. (Coming from a guitar background, I'd always dismissed sampling as ''craptastic fakery for non-musicians''. The reheated baked beans of music... Seeing it employed in such a playable way has really opened my eyes.)

[huggermugger]

It's not an upgrade, it's a beta.

[PropitiousME]

Voted; submission = 2.

Competitor updates put this release to shame in terms of both quantity and quality of changes to final product. Half baked, low effort = max margin. That's what I see going on here. Sound packs are just a residual vehicle for RS to milk more profits from users with the least amount of overhead necessary. Again, low effort > maximize margins. Their devoted user base is doing the bulk of the leg work once the underlying infrastructure is in place and running on auto-pilot... meh.

Frankly, I think I just get more sour the more I reflect on well thought community feedback. Reason 11 was released September 25th, 2019 folks. Combinator 2 is the meat of this update, period. Mimic is cool, but redundant given the multitude of samplers already available. The rest of the updates should have been provided FREE of charge to their loyal user base. It's ridiculous HD and browser changes were used to attempt to flesh this release out as something even marginally passable for the time they had to develop and test. As stated in my other posts, I'll keep an eye on Reason+ progress and guidance through EOY to see how they invest new capital. Going to let my trial expire and move back to 11 Suite as RRP.

This will be a key pivot point for RS, undoubtedly. What they do from here will define just how sharply there is a decline or increase in future users. State of economy doesn't bode well for SaaS in the near future.

[syzygianrrf9999]

Had to roll back to 11, so I guess this is a 1 for me.

This is the first time in troubleshooting a Reason update that I've been told to check GPU settings, of all things. I'm not playing vidya, I'm making music. Can we not...? Was Reason not pretty-looking enough before?