Why is Reason Lacking in so many popular DAW lists for 3rd party products

[Mistro17]

I been wondering for a long time now why when I see 3rd party products that support DAWs, Reason is rarely on the list. Get a new keyboard they list Logic, Studio One, Cubase etc. but no Reason. Join a course to learn something like Scaler 2 and see so many DAWs listed but no Reason. Many times I see a list of DAWs and look for Reason and feel a bit disappointed that it's not there (not all the time but most). It's still a very capable music making software that many of us love. It's not like Reason is a nobody on the block. So why the lack of Reason showing up with so many 3rd party products? Is it the lack of a department at Reason Studios networking with these companies? Or is it just the perception of Reason by the greater music community?

[jaeproduced]

Yeah I use Serato Sample which apparently hasn't been tested to work on reason per serato customer support but works anyway...I think it's interesting that you see FL studio listed everywhere which looks like a childs toy for mouse clip producers.

[moalla]

Reason is of it´s possibilites the avantgarde DAW and it was developed by a small team, as well they don´t make a big hussle about puplic relations s..t in the past. So if fruityloops is a toy compared and abletons or it´s latest "offtopic release" bitwig is a dedicated and well pulic announced electronic music clip launcher tool... than reason is the specialist companion, often used by popular artist, who aren´t interessted to talk about their producings technics and secrets. For example Stephan Bodzin using it with a personalized controller beside a Moog Sub 37 at videos at popular mountain station raveshows, it´s not the big thing to copy the sound of him with Reasonstudio synths. synapse legend, did he talk about, or is Reason related to him somewhere NO.

I think reason is a secret weapon for a lot of musicians, that´s one cicumstance why nobody speaks about it, because Reason is to nice, to speak about and to massive to hype it, otherwise it could become a truly competitor for bigger brands and their more classical appearing stuff or weak software instruments

but do you wana know the truth, I don´t know it :masksmiley:

[Billy+]

the answer is very simple and expected :-

simply put the lack of midi routing since the introduction of vst within the standalone daw of reason 9.5 has reinforced the lack of trust in the ability of the developers to fully allow non rack extension developers full access in the daw.

worst thing is I have been using reason since R1 and simply cant see any viable excuse not to have implemented vst midi support years ago.

but its cool I'm using Live suite 11 now with RRPv11 and looking forward to the next Live 11.3 update that will give me access to yet another FREE synth "drift" that RS would probably charge me another £99 for, even though the DAW is busted broke and not worth the upgrade price.

oh yes 2 years on and I still haven't spend a penny in the reason shop

well done reason crew, looking forward to your next stable / complete major release
maybe just maybe I might just start trusting your development process again

but in the meantime I'm happy moving on and recommending others just simply avoid R12 R12+ and reason in general
(20+ years of cash money down the drain.)

[DaveyG]

Reason has always been a bit of a niche product. Many people consider it a collection of instruments and effects rather than a DAW and that view is now strongly reinforced by the plugin, which doesn't have the sequencer or mixer.

And, yeah, the lack of VST MIDI support means that on some compatibility lists it appears on the very short list of incompatible products.

[MuttReason]

I think the old Props lost a lot of commercial momentum when they refused to add VST support to Reason back in the day (can’t remember which version) and all other DAWs with VST support kind of swept past them.

Props (and now RS) have tried to make up ground since. Unfortunately, in music software as in many other products and services, there is a big ‘network effect’; people choose to buy the thing they see their friends and contacts (and influences/influencers) using. The network effect works on the upside (adoption grows as word spreads) and it also works on the downside (adoption declines as more and more people go elsewhere and tell others why they’ve done so).

There are a lot of people I know (and artists I read about) who *used* to use Reason years ago and remember it fondly but have since moved on. Key thing for RS now is to get them back. Personally I think they’ve got a good shot at doing so (I love R12 now and think it’s the best version of Reason I’ve ever used since v1). But it’s not certain they’ll get there, this is an insanely competitive market and one major stumble can be disastrous in the long run.

[Heater]

I don’t know. Reason DAW is fast and capable. Should be higher up on peoples list.

[challism]

It's always bothered me to see Reason missing from these lists, too. I get that it isn't the top DAW or even in the top 5 for most users, but I've seen DAWs that have got to be lower on the list than Reason being mentioned.

the DAW is busted broke and not worth the upgrade price.

How is the DAW "busted broke"? Granted, R12 has been a disaster, but it's working great now (and has been working great for at least a year now). Luckily, I've never had any issues with R12 since its release, although I know many users have. Issues that most affected users had with R12 have long been fixed.

You mention the new synth that will be included in the next version of Live. Then you say RS would have charged you for it. How do you explain Mimic, then? It was a new instrument included in R12. We also got the amazing Combi2. Both of these devices are worth the upgrade cost. They also gave us VST3 support and more. And I don't think they are done with 12 yet.

When was the last time you actually tried R12? Just curious on what authority you make the claim that it is busted broke.

I think the old Props lost a lot of commercial momentum when they refused to add VST support to Reason back in the day (can’t remember which version) and all other DAWs with VST support kind of swept past them.

Good point, and I agree. That was a big mistake. I think commercial REs were introduced in Reason 7 (along with the "when hell freezes over" mentality about VST support; again, a big mistake).

[Neo]

Agreed..
- Yeah I agree with MuttReason, last CEO said VST would never come to Props.
- Piracy may be have been a factor? Ableton was more accessible?
- Perhaps the app*le-sk inspired RE store put some people off?
As tempted as i still am to try DAWs like Bitwig im still here..

Kudos and thanks to all those YouTubers who share RS content. (Past and Present) .. as I can see many have moved on to other DAWs.

What a surprise.. RS way down the list.
https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-bes ... pc-and-mac

[mimidancer]

I been wondering for a long time now why when I see 3rd party products that support DAWs, Reason is rarely on the list. Get a new keyboard they list Logic, Studio One, Cubase etc. but no Reason. Join a course to learn something like Scaler 2 and see so many DAWs listed but no Reason. Many times I see a list of DAWs and look for Reason and feel a bit disappointed that it's not there (not all the time but most). It's still a very capable music making software that many of us love. It's not like Reason is a nobody on the block. So why the lack of Reason showing up with so many 3rd party products? Is it the lack of a department at Reason Studios networking with these companies? Or is it just the perception of Reason by the greater music community?

There was a time when reason was on those lists. They worked closely with Steinberg from their inception. I think the holding out on vst in an effort to control quality and keep their customers buying stuff in the shop backfired. Couple that with the way the push and machine became so popular they lost market share to the thing that keeps us buying stuff, GAS. When the new toys did not play well with Reason people left. The Truth is DAWs are DAWs. One can make their music in any never of them and get great results. I have 4, but I mostly use reason. It has character. Live it boring and flat. It sounds fine but is uninspiring. Logic is awesome, but I am trying to quit the Apple cult. My latest computer is a PC. Mostly because I was afraid of the new processor and not being able to use my stuff. Protool sucks, but if someone sends you stems they are likely in a Protools session. I got bitwig but I have not used it. Cam from venus theory said it was good for batch-processing samples (but mostly cause GAS) when you make sample libraries. That is something I want to do. Someday I will find out. Sorry for rambling on. As for the not networking, I am pretty sure that the software companies have to write something for hardware to make it compatible. Reason Studios does not seem to care about doing that. That is why we manually install everything we add to reason. Don;t get me wrong I think the reason guys, at least the ones I see in videos are great. But their culture seems to be detached from the other vendors that serve their market. Evidenced by the reluctance to incorporate vsts and having to manually install every piece of hardware I currently have hooked up to reason. When I reflect on this my intuition. tells me they see other vendors as competition. Hopefully, they will learn to see them as a necessary evil in the cycle of GAS and better integrate with them in the future. That being said, it is just my opinion and not worth much.

[Heater]

I think because of the missing essential features that are since many years standard in all other DAWs.

Yeah. Thinking about it. I think that's right. Reason still hasn't got track freeze for instance. Something I've been banging on about for years.

[Billy+]

When was the last time you actually tried R12? Just curious on what authority you make the claim that it is busted broke.

strange situation really as I have stopped using Reason completely since buying Live 11 - only so I can fully get to grips with Live's functionality,

however my brother who's a long term Live / Logic user who I tried to convert to Reason for years decided that he would upgrade an old R2 or R3 that had laid abandoned for years because he got an offer to upgrade for £60 and thought since I was using Live we could use RRP until I told him that I hadn't upgraded which surprised him as I always upgraded since R1 without fail.

I advised him to upgrade to R11 so we could RRP in Live projects but his offer was for R12 and he jumped on it assuming that at some point I would upgrade and that would give him time to catchup - but he found it difficult to use as the new HD forced him to wait for devices to be rendered, I explained that it was a one off for each device at each zoom level (so just pick one and stick with it) which left him a little disappointed.

Then he started having to force quit quite a lot, I assured him it was just the rendering, that got better with subsequent updates but still annoyed him then his M1 Mac would just not play nice with RRP so I run through the usual make sue your using the emu until the native build is released, then that got delayed (disappointing) so he just removed it completely stating that after doing a fresh install all Reason did was crash.

so now where at a point that a native build is getting ready for release I'm hoping things will be better for him especially as I think it was around the performance update that he just pulled the plug and I couldn't convince him to reinstall it.

but that fact is that by the time we got to R10 there was a long list of bugs that had been ignored, although I'm happy to see that some of these long term bugs have finally been addressed in R12,

I still hold out hope that the developers will stick to their word that R12 is going to be the best Reason it can be

but I personally wont be buying an upgrade until I see it first.

[madmacman]

I still hold out hope that the developers will stick to their word that R12 is going to be the best Reason it can be

but I personally wont be buying an upgrade until I see it first.

Well, I can’t say anything bad about R12. I say this although I left Reason back in 2019 because of - you guessed it - the sequencer and switched to Presonus Studio One.

But after a while I upgraded to R12 because of the simpler approach with hybrid (hardware modular) setups. I consider R12 as quite stable. And even if I no longer use it as DAW, I‘m quite happy to have it in my toolbox.

[Last Alternative]

Reason is “other” on the list.

[kitekrazy]

Reason has always been a bit of a niche product. Many people consider it a collection of instruments and effects rather than a DAW and that view is now strongly reinforced by the plugin, which doesn't have the sequencer or mixer.

And, yeah, the lack of VST MIDI support means that on some compatibility lists it appears on the very short list of incompatible products.

Some people just don't understand that. How many of them are actually niche? I don't think Live has multi monitor support. Isn't Pro Tools niche?

As more products come out I think existing ones lose popularity. If you go back to the late 90's so much stuff no longer exists or just a shell of existence. It's loyal users that keep them afloat. Cakewalk was always in front of the pack with 64 bit and Pro Tools was one of the last 32 bit only.

These type of questions could be asked of anything like why isn't the Les Paul or Strat popular among metal players.

It could be worse. Imagine sitting in the ivory tower of Waves and made a decision to screw over a whole planet of users and try to win them back,

When there are posts on why X isn't more popular some people have insecurity issue about their choice of DAW. We also see some religious about it as they ridicule another DAW.

Interesting when Cakewalk went under there was no rejoicing by developers thinking "another one bites the dust". Some had fear that they could be next.

[mimidancer]

Looks like the Live marketing team is out in force today.

[DaveyG]

Reason has always been a bit of a niche product. Many people consider it a collection of instruments and effects rather than a DAW and that view is now strongly reinforced by the plugin, which doesn't have the sequencer or mixer.

And, yeah, the lack of VST MIDI support means that on some compatibility lists it appears on the very short list of incompatible products.

Some people just don't understand that. How many of them are actually niche? I don't think Live has multi monitor support. Isn't Pro Tools niche?

As more products come out I think existing ones lose popularity. If you go back to the late 90's so much stuff no longer exists or just a shell of existence. It's loyal users that keep them afloat. Cakewalk was always in front of the pack with 64 bit and Pro Tools was one of the last 32 bit only.

These type of questions could be asked of anything like why isn't the Les Paul or Strat popular among metal players.

It could be worse. Imagine sitting in the ivory tower of Waves and made a decision to screw over a whole planet of users and try to win them back,

When there are posts on why X isn't more popular some people have insecurity issue about their choice of DAW. We also see some religious about it as they ridicule another DAW.

Interesting when Cakewalk went under there was no rejoicing by developers thinking "another one bites the dust". Some had fear that they could be next.

I just think most people don't think of Reason as a full-blown DAW, which shouldn't be surprising given where it came from. I think people tend to put it in the same box as MPC software or Maschine software rather than with "normal" DAWs. In interviews and articles you certainly don't see many people recommending it. You do see a bunch of people who used to use it "back in the day" or who use it a bit but do most of their stuff in something else (often Ableton).

I dunno if you ever watch the BBC quiz show "Pointless" but I suspect Reason would be a pointless answer to "we gave 100 people 100 seconds to name as many DAWs as they could". It just isn't on the radar of most people. It's the Central African Republic of the DAW world. (Sorry, another Pointless reference there... )

[bxbrkrz]

https://reasonstudios.com/

What DAW do you see on their main landing page? And not just once. I got their clear message. Reason is a fantastic plugin...
I have to say that ultra flat minimalistic and monochromic look... I used to hate it. Not anymore.

Also big thanks to livethemes.co

[mimidancer]

https://reasonstudios.com/

What DAW do you see on their main landing page? And not just once. I got their clear message. Reason is a fantastic plugin...
I have to say that ultra flat minimalistic and monochromic look... I used to hate it. Not anymore.

Also big thanks to livethemes.co

That is so sad.

[bxbrkrz]

https://reasonstudios.com/

What DAW do you see on their main landing page? And not just once. I got their clear message. Reason is a fantastic plugin...
I have to say that ultra flat minimalistic and monochromic look... I used to hate it. Not anymore.

Also big thanks to livethemes.co

That is so sad.

It used to be Pro tools + Reason rewired as the secret weapon way back when. RS went back to their roots, but with a better solution... for their [non Reason as DAW] users

[jam-s]

I really just don't know. Why they do not put effort in some basic & essential DAW features, put love in "good old" Reason DAW? Its such a beautiful all in one solution. It is really not that much that is missing, but the stuff that is missing..... ohhhhh, it's missing for ages now, and that is the big marketing problem in my opinion.

My educated guess is that they're still in a complete refactoring of the code base (GUI stack, task scheduler, audio rendering, authorisation, etc.) and thus adding new features is something which can only be done when the underlying code has already been refactored.Given the rather low number of Reason core developers this very big task can easily take agesyears. I really hope that R12 will be the version where they can complete the refactoring of the code base and that we can then expect a loaded R13 release with many of the often requested features added to it.

[crimsonwarlock]

Reason isn't a DAW, it is a VSE, a Virtual Studio Environment. And as a VSE it is without any real competition. I tried to use Reaper as a VSE, and used its configurability to try to get there. Customized that thing for over a decade and finally gave up. When you consider Reason to be a DAW, it has to compete with all other DAWs, but look at it as a VSE and every other DAW can only dream of competing with Reason.

For me, it is as simple as that

[RobC]

Because everyone already knows Reason. : )

[moalla]

Because everyone already knows Reason. : )

Well, because it's too good to be true
it´s time to hype our coder heroes outside RT

"I remember the days where the discussion comes up, wich daw engine has the best sound"

[MuttReason]

Reason isn't a DAW, it is a VSE, a Virtual Studio Environment. And as a VSE it is without any real competition. I tried to use Reaper as a VSE, and used its configurability to try to get there. Customized that thing for over a decade and finally gave up. When you consider Reason to be a DAW, it has to compete with all other DAWs, but look at it as a VSE and every other DAW can only dream of competing with Reason.

For me, it is as simple as that

This. Spot on. When RRP was first announced I was sceptical I’d use it TBH because I was so used to the Reason DAW going back years, and by that point I was well into using Live + Push with a ton of great plugins that I couldn’t see being displaced by RRP.

Fast forward to now… and, for me, RRP is a game changer. It is incredibly powerful inside Live with Push, to the point that my standard Live template is now RRP only… as in I use no Live stock instruments or other third party plugin instruments at all, just RRP only, and the only Live effect I use is Drum Buss. Everything else is RRP.

I’ve recently also begun trying out Luna (from UAD, which I think Selig also uses), again with RRP as my only plugin instrument source. I’ve also got Logic (although not a big fan) and again having RRP as the only plugin I use other than some stock stuff. Same deal whenever I’ve checked out other DAWs (eg Reaper)… the constant is always RRP. All my Refills, patches, favourites etc all in one place whatever DAW I use.

Yes that would also be the case with Kontakt or any other plugin of course, but nothing else (for me) compares to the versatility of what I can do with RRP. It is a ludicrously powerful and flexible beast if you think of it as a virtual studio plugin.

I do also still use the Reason DAW as well BTW, it’s my standard setup when I’m travelling with laptop only. The DAW is pretty capable in lots of ways (some of which beat out Live eg pitch edit) but it has a bunch of weird omissions that the community have asked Props/RS to sort out for years… but no joy (yet…).