How many racks do you work in?

[Aquila]

I usually do 2 or 3 racks when I eventually realise that trying to drag a cable down a single mile-long rack is a bad idea.

[Rising Night Wave]

damn. i apologize. i did not read the title correctly. i thought REs not racks.
damn!

always 1. only one rack place. right to default one on left.

ay yay. again i apologize.

i corrected my vote.

[Chi-Individual]

I may have to revisit my rack. I can see the method to the madness in having more racks.

[Jagwah]

I'll vote for 4+ but I don't agree with that being 'all over the place'.

This ^^

I remember when we first had the freedom to work sideways in the rack it was such a great improvement. From there I used to have a new rack for everything but I have since been taught by a friend how to keep it tidy, I even fold up lots of rack devices now.

Rack 1 - Kick drum
Rack 2 - All other drums
Rack 3 - Bassline and sub bass
Rack 4 - All instruments (can become 2 or 3 racks)
Rack 5 - Vocals
Rack 6 - Sound effects and other sounds
Rack 7 - Permanently on the right of my racks is a Neptune set to the key I am working in for reference.

Good thread idea!

[arnigretar]

I mostly just work in 2 racks. The workflow of more just doesn't do it for me
In the rear I want to be able to see everything at once

[deigm]

... because I find horizontal scrolling in the rack a pain.

In my setup, every instrument group that has its own specific rack, also goes into a bus-channel on the mixer. That bus-channel is also sitting at the top of the rack it belongs to, so I can jump to every specific rack directly from the bus-channel on the mixer. I do very little horizontal scrolling

Besides this, bussing instrument groups makes final mixing that much easier

Oh hey that's clever! I'm definitely trying this. Thank you!

I'm usually working too fast/impulsively to be that forward thinking about where everything goes. But it sounds like a habit worth developing.

[deigm]

Rack 7 - Permanently on the right of my racks is a Neptune set to the key I am working in for reference.

Do my mind expanding on this? What are you referencing with the neptune?

Just curious..

[JiggeryPokery]

With a multi-monitor setup I really like having three rack columns, to reduce scrolling.

But sadly age withers us and in the past two years my eyes have gotten progressively harder to see well at computer-screen distance (myopia + age causes issues, and it comes on pretty fast, and no solution I've used really works great: for now I've settled on clip-on 1.5x readers on my corrective lenses now for PC use. Sexy AF!).

It's thankful R12 switched to scaling when it did or it would have been if not unusuable, then at least very difficult for me to us now (and to be fair, there are other, bigger programs that still don't have hi-res that are a real FPITFA to work with).

140% is where I've been defaulting the rack scale, and so I'm now limited to just the two columns, which is fine, but that does annoyingly leaves some wasted black space screen real estate on the right (oh wait, I just realised of course I could expand the navigator to fill that gap... I suppose with three racks I rarely needed the navbar so I always forget it's there as I used to minimise it ).

Thing is, horizontal screen navigation in anything is always a terrible experience, so I think in few most would want to more columns than they can see, as vertical scrolling to get to more devices is almost always easier. It's still handy to move stuff out of the way you don't want to see or need to access, though: I've used it in videos a few times to "hide" extra devices offscreen (especially to the left of the Hardware Interface section )

[Arrant]

I use 7, one for master and sends plus one for every major sound category.
Hardly all over the place, it's called being organized yo.

However, dragging devices horizontally is a real pain

[Chi-Individual]

I update the last option as many of these post have shown me that 4+ racks is far from all over the place (it was a joke that obviously didn’t land well ) and really do serve an organizational purpose. I have been introduced to new ways to look at my rack. May do some trial and error to see if 2 still fit my workflow.

[thedjjudah]

I wouldn't exactly call myself old-school, but I typically only use 1 rack.

[Billy+]

I update the last option as many of these post have shown me that 4+ racks is far from all over the place (it was a joke that obviously didn’t land well ) and really do serve an organizational purpose. I have been introduced to new ways to look at my rack. May do some trial and error to see if 2 still fit my workflow.

Glad to see us organised minoritiys has convinced you that multiple racks are available and should be used for multiple reasons.

I've always dropped a new device on to a new rack then organised after the fact - I just wished that the grupping option was a bit more intelligent and maybe an option for labels for each rack plus the option of creating a device either inside a rack or a new rack "similar to new bus......"

But hey what do I know I still think that the new combinator should allow mixer channels inside rather than the stupid summing mixer

Umm yeah just think about that redrum with each output connected to its own channel with individual insert effects all included inside a CMBv2 patch with custom mapping and programming.....

[robussc]

Like others I have a separate rack for each layer with the submix channel at the top. And I keep each layer color coded. My template sets it all up for a new track and it’s a great pleasure to work in such a consistent manner after years of just adding things to an ever lengthening rack. I have the rack window on a vertical 2nd monitor with the resolution set to perfectly fit the width of one rack. Using the “rack” button makes navigating it easy and the submix channels make locating a specific rack easy too.

[ksniod]

1 rack here, but essentially because I use Reason on a 13 inches laptop

[crimsonwarlock]

...and maybe an option for labels for each rack

I have a ReMark Rack Divider (free from Selig) at the top of each rack. Works great, it even gives you the color option so I color each rack according to the specific instrument group.

Umm yeah just think about that redrum with each output connected to its own channel with individual insert effects all included inside a CMBv2 patch with custom mapping and programming.....

That is the major thing I'm missing in the combinator, the possibility to include mixer channels to have default setups like you describe. However, that fact that you can load a combinator into a mixer channel insert might indicate that mixer channels inside a combinator might be very complicated to implement.

[RobC]

I can't really choose. Mainly because I work in multiple projects, so I focus on one sound at a time.
There is the composing/sketching project. Then all of the sound design projects. And only after that, once I rendered my sounds and loops, I take them to the arrangement/mix project. And later a master project.

But if I'd do it the common way, then every sound would get its own rack, with all the design, and engineering effects in one place.

My way, with separate projects, keeps things tidy, focused and not to mention CPU and RAM friendly. That's how I work highly efficiently, and organized.

I'll probably vote for shitloads of racks!

[plaamook]

My template has 4 blank racks with a TMA 1 folded up at the top of each so it's ready to go. I can't stand scrolling into a wall. Makes me feel cramped. I need that space to feel relaxed or something.

While I'm hard at it it gets a bit chaotic but after I tend to group different parts into columns so I can find things faster. Something like Drones/chords...percussive objects/patters...random textural shit...then one other column as a kind of scratch pad for further development.

[Jagwah]

In my setup, every instrument group that has its own specific rack, also goes into a bus-channel on the mixer. That bus-channel is also sitting at the top of the rack it belongs to, so I can jump to every specific rack directly from the bus-channel on the mixer. I do very little horizontal scrolling

Besides this, bussing instrument groups makes final mixing that much easier

Oh hey that's clever! I'm definitely trying this. Thank you!

I'm usually working too fast/impulsively to be that forward thinking about where everything goes. But it sounds like a habit worth developing.

I second that Crimsonwarlock!! Great idea!!

Rack 7 - Permanently on the right of my racks is a Neptune set to the key I am working in for reference.

Do my mind expanding on this? What are you referencing with the neptune?

Just curious..

Nothing special just the notes that are in the key I am working on - they are highlighted when Neptune is set to a key. Might not seem useful to some but I like to use it to quickly reference the fifth for instance, or just to make sure I am using the correct notes. As a bonus I can open a Reason file and see what key it is in, not that you couldn't in other ways just as easily :p

[PhillipOrdonez]

Drums
Bass
Instruments
Vocals
Fxs

That's 5.

I work with 5 "racks" in Reason when making music with it

[dioxide]

Using the Navigator and being familiar with the shortcut to show and hide it is essential for using lots of Rack columns. Cabling between them can be tedious so I'm trying to use right click on the socket more these days to connect between Racks that are several columns apart. In Photoshop you can hold Shift and it scrolls faster - it would be nice if they implemented something similar, especially since the high Res graphics can make everything much larger. The buttons on the mixer and in the sequence help a lot with navigating as well. There are also the good old fashioned arrow keys for moving sideways between Rack columns.

[Steedus]

One. I don't need to complicate things more than I have to haha.

Probably a very "wrong" thing to do, but the way I work is I use the insert section of the Mix channel device as a sort of rack within the rack to house effects and utilities attached to that instrument.

So when I'm done, I can collapse the insert section to hide it's effects etc and focus more on the instruments and see what's what, more easily.

[cymek74]

3 for me.
1. Drums and bass
2. Synths, Arps/chords/melodies, etc.
3. Guitars and vocals, sometimes one or the other, sometimes both.
I keep the bass under the drums for easy sidechain/ducking routing, it can be recorded or a synth but always goes in the same place. I do sidechain other things on occasion but there's always a more than likely chance with the bass.

[rsnsnds]

I usually work with a single rack, and if it becomes to cluttered I use some combinators

[Hazel]

I keep the very left one for effect sends only. Then it's one for drums, one for synths, and one for extra samples. Sometimes I'll have one just for breaks too, as break chopping experiments can sometimes get confusing and take up a lot of room before I'm done.

[Danilo Villanova]

Lots of good info here!

Do you guys use template projects with pre-loaded instruments to start writing or do you just drag them in as you go?