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Let me start by stating the obvious: the MIDI spec is woefully out of
date. It was out of date almost immediately after it appeared, but no
one - especially the music hardware industry - would admit to it.
Instead the industry ensured that MIDI would become so entrenched,
nothing could shake it from its moorings.
The fundamental problem with the MIDI spec, quite apart from its slow
transmission rate, is that it was only really designed to let one synth
control another synth. In this application, there's not a whole lot
that the two synths need to know about one another other than a few
basic condition sets in order for the interface to do its thing properly.
Personal computers were on their upward track when MIDI hit the
marketplace, so needless to say it did not take long for music tech
people to realize the kind of possibilities that would be opened up by
outfitting a PC with a MIDI interface. By the late 1980s, MIDI musicians
were hooking up whole roomfuls of gear to their PCs running
first generation MIDI sequencer programs, patch file libraries, and
sample file editors. As long as a piece of gear sported the ubiquitous
5-pin DIN connectors on the back, it could be assimilated. As the Borg
say: Resistance is Futile!
Well, sort of. Unfortunately, each device tends to have its own idea of
which parts of the MIDI spec are worthy of inclusion in its design.
There is very little consistency between devices as to the effect a
specific MIDI controller or SysEx message will have on the device - that
is, if it has any effect at all - beyond the basics (volume, sustain
pedal, pitch bend and modulation wheels). This has resulted in the
phenomenon known as "MIDI Hell" where, in the middle of a session, all
creative activity grinds to a halt in order to troubleshoot some
niggling problem that is keeping a device from doing what a computer
wants it to do, or is making it do the right thing in the wrong way, or
any number of alternate head scratching scenarios. One either has to
keep the manuals handy and be willing to change gears from the creative
to the technical at a moment's notice, or (more commonly) junk the gear
altogether, find a bunch of guys and go start a real band.
It's doubtful that the MIDI spec will ever change, or that a new MIDI
spec will make it to the marketplace that adequately addresses these
shortcomings. That's the bad news. The good news is that recent
developments in other areas of technology may ultimately render the
problem moot. The CPU of a modern day desktop PC is capable of running
rings around the processors embedded in that aforementioned roomful of
music gear, and the quality and fidelity of consumer level PC audio
hardware continues to improve dramatically. As a result, clever software
developers now have it in their power to bypass the limitations of the
MIDI spec altogether through software emulation of hardware functions.
Reason to the Rescue
A while back, Propellerhead Software introduced ReBirth - a remarkably
faithful software emulation of some vintage (and much sought after)
Roland gear: two TB303 bass synths, a TR808 drum machine and a TR909
drum machine. These emulations are feature complete - they look, sound
and function almost exactly like their hardware counterparts and are
mounted in a handsome simulated wood grain rack (in a window of the
computer screen, that is). You program bass notes and percussion
patterns into each unit just as you would the real thing, and then -
here's the kicker - you can play all the units in sync. Look ma, no
wires! You can then record every mouse operation (pattern changes and
knob/fader/switch moves) as the units are running, to build a complete
song. But wait, there's more! Devices can be routed through additional
built-in effects (digital delay, distortion, filter) for added timbral
and dynamic control of the sound. Throw in the ability to load in your
own percussion sample libraries in place of the 'factory sounds' and
design your own custom skins for the units, and you have a powerful and
versatile means of building phat rhythm tracks that really kick.
Propellerhead has made quite a splash with this product, and it has
fostered a devoted following among TB/TR fans who can't find (or afford)
the real thing. Not content to rest on their laurels, however, the
Propellerheads have been hard at work over the last year or so on the
highly anticipated follow-up to ReBirth, called Reason.
Reason is, quite simply, a complete software emulation of an electronic
music project studio. They advertise it as a studio on a CDROM, and
after spending time with the product I've concluded that the
Propellerheads have a flair for understatement. These people have really
outdone themselves, and they have certainly upped the ante with regard to
future music software and hardware development efforts of this kind.
Most programs sporting the features and power of Reason tend to be of
the "you've got to be a rocket scientist to use it" variety. Not so with
Reason: for the user interface design, the Propellerheads have really
got it right: it looks and works just like a real rack of gear, down to
the rack mount screws holding the devices in place. Drop a device into
the rack and it is automatically wired to an open channel of the mixer.
Click here to see a screenshot of a mighty Reason rack. In reality, a rack this big wouldn't fit on a screen, but it gives you some idea of the variety of modules available.
Although every device in Reason's rack is based on original
Propellerhead designs, there is enough of the familiar in them to ensure
a quick learning curve for anyone having experience with music hardware
in the real world. The four main sound generating devices are:
Subtractor analog synth, NN19 sample player, ReDrum drum machine and the
Dr. Rex Loop Player (more on that later). All of them sound great and
sport numerous controls and modulation routings for customizing sounds.
Sample player and drum machine programs can utilize any WAVs you've
created that reside on your PC. Any program you create in any device can
be saved to your hard drive, so you can create your own library of
custom sounds and patches - as many as your hard drive can accommodate.
There's a deceptively simple but powerful step sequencer device called
the Matrix (no relation to the movie), into which you can easily program
groups of repeating single voice note triggers. The device only outputs
control voltages and gates, but they can be routed to nearly any other
device in the rack for generating anything from ostinato note patterns
to effects device controls. Multiple Matrix step sequencers can be
utilized to create mesmerizing contrapuntal patterns quickly and easily.
The effects processors (there are eight of them) are all half space rack
modules with clearly labeled and intuitive user controls. The 14-channel
mixer is comparable to those found in your typical music project studio
- treble and bass EQ, four effects send/returns, mute & solo buttons and
panning knobs. Each channel of the mixer can accept either a mono or
stereo signal.
Another nice touch is the way each device and mixer input is labeled:
they've supplied a blank piece of tape stuck to the edge of each device
and each mixer channel. Double-click it, and a text field pops up over
the tape. Type something in the field and press enter - the text you
typed now appears as a handwritten bit of text on the tape, both on the
device and along the edge of the mixer channel to which the device is
routed. This really simplifies the process of keeping track of how your
devices are wired. Devices can be dragged and dropped to new positions
in the rack without disturbing the way they are wired together.
But the real eye-opener is when you flip the rack around to reveal a
staggering array of patch points and the patch cords connecting devices
to one another. I dare you to try supressing your amazement as the
patch cords jiggle a bit and then settle when you press the tab key to
swing the rack around. Each device has a variety of patch points for
creating custom wiring configurations. Running patch cords between
devices is as easy as click-and-drag. You can install as many Reason
devices into your virtual rack, in any combination and wired to your
specifications, as your PC can handle.
If this were all there was to the Reason software, it would be impressive
enough - but there's more, much more.
Consider the fact that Reason includes a built-in, fully integrated and
extremely intuitive graphical MIDI sequencer. The sequencer is capable
of recording and editing not only MIDI note triggers but any real time
knob/fader/switch changes you make as your song plays, and these changes
can be recorded in real time as your sequence plays. Automated mixdowns
and real time timbre changes are a snap to capture and edit with
Reason's sequencer.
Every control on every Reason device can be mapped to any MIDI
controller number. This is great for those of you with multi-fader
assignable MIDI controller devices, for real time twiddling up the wazoo.
This is also great if your MIDI keyboard only has a few controller knobs
whose assignments can't be changed - you can still use those few knobs
to fiddle with any knob/fader/switch on any Reason device in real time.
The sequencer and rack devices are seamlessly integrated; create and
play drum machine patterns or step sequences independent of the main
sequencer, and they'll all play in time with your sequence when you hit
the Play button of the sequencer transport. For further editing and
refinement, you can then transfer your drum machine and step sequencer
patterns to MIDI sequencer tracks. Any MIDI track can be easily mapped
to any Reason device through dropdown lists. Fully integrated automation
is the hallmark of Reason.
Then consider that your entire rack configuration and MIDI tracks can be
saved as a single song file on your PC. Build a rack, work on a song,
save it to your hard drive and turn off your PC. Come back the next day,
fire up your PC, launch Reason and reload the song file - your entire
rack and sequencer tracks come up exactly the way you left them, ready
for you to pick up exactly where you left off.
As with your garden variety word processor, you can open up multiple
song files in Reason's main window and swap MIDI track data and custom
configured rack devices between files with just a few mouse clicks.
Factor in the icing on the cake - MIDI track import/export (handy if
you've got old MIDI sequencer work you want to revive, or if you want to
use your MIDI tracks in another sequencer program), and audio file
export of all or portions of your song file - and you're talking the
kind of audio production power and flexibility you could only dream of,
costing no less than a king's ransom.
Sure, you're saying, this is all impressive - but how does this thing
actually sound? Well, I've saved the best for last: the audio quality
out of Reason is second to none. Because the signal path stays entirely
in the digital domain until it's sent to your sound card and comes out
of your PC speakers, there is absolutely no tape hiss, no ground loop
hums, no dicey patch connections, no noise floor to cover up. The sound
is drop dead gorgeous and white glove clean. The clarity of the audio
and the precision of the MIDI timing in the WAVs you create from your
Reason song files will simply blow you away.
For those of you who might be wondering how or whether Reason can be
used in conjunction with multitrack digital audio hardware and software,
the answer is yes. Through a special Reason device called ReWire, all
the equipment in Reason's virtual rack can be placed under complete
control of another audio production system (such as Cubase, Digital
Performer, and other high end MIDI/audio PC software). Reason also
transmits and can sync to MIDI clock for synchronizing with external
MIDI sequencers, and (if you're willing to forego Reason's own internal
sequencer control) Reason devices can be driven from any external MIDI
source.
All this functionality can be found in Reason version 1.0 - and it works
with near flawless perfection. How many '1.0' software packages can you
say that about?
In case you were curious, the Reason 1.0 installation CD comes with both
the Mac and PC versions of the program. This means you don't have to buy
a version that's specific to your platform, so if you happen to use both
a Mac and a Windows PC in your studio, you can install Reason on both
machines. (Sorry, there's no Linux version available, nor is one
planned.)
'What about sound libraries?' I hear you asking. Well, apart from any
sounds and patches you create for yourself, Reason comes with a special
CD containing the 'Reason Factory Sound Bank' - a full library of analog
synth patches, sample player sounds and patches, drum machine sounds and
patches, and Dr. Rex loops. Without doing a single bit of synth or
sampler programming, you can create great sounding music right from the
get go. And if you're an inveterate knob twiddler like I am, you'll have
a field day customizing and mutating this source material to fashion
your own unique sonic palettes and landscapes. Moreover, as with
ReBirth, additional collections of Reason patches, samples and loops
will be posted to the Propellerhead web site as they become available,
as free downloads. (Note: by themselves, Reason sound libraries are
useless - they can only be heard and used in the Reason software
environment.)
This summarizes most of Reason's features. You would do well to check
out the extensive information about Reason you can find on
Propellerhead's web site (http://www.propellerheads.se). What I'd like
to focus on for the rest of this review are my real world experiences
with the program. Despite the above product rave, there are limitations
and problems that should be mentioned so as to at least maintain an
appearance of impartiality.
System Requirements
The main consideration with regard to using Reason on your PC is: if
you're really looking to push your virtual rack configurations to the
hilt, you will need a PC with some real muscle. The more time you spend
with this program, the easier it will be to drop device after device
into your rack. As you push your system ever harder, there will likely
come a point at which you find that your CPU cannot pump audio to your
sound card as fast as Reason needs to generate it. When this happens,
noticeable pops and clicks begin to occur, and the phenomenon
only gets worse when you drop more devices in the rack, or add more MIDI
track data to your song.
Reason provides a latency setting in the Preferences dialog box (similar
to they way they do in ReBirth) that gives your system some breathing
room with regard to its internal timing. While this helps ameliorate the
pop & click problem, it can also introduce a noticeable delay when
triggering sounds directly from your keyboard or MIDI controller. A
latency setting of 15ms or more will throw you off when you're playing
keyboard parts into Reason. A good drummer playing drum machine sounds
via something like a DrumKAT or other MIDI percussion trigger device
will complain vehemently if latency exceeds 8ms.
For my first full blown Reason composition (an MP3 of which can be
downloaded from http://www.doctechnical.com/xsb/xsb-010801.htm), my rack
is made up of eight analog synths (three of which generate no sound at
all - I use the LFOs of each unit to modulate the panning and pitch of
specific drum machine sounds), four sample players, a Dr. Rex loop
player, two drum machines, two chained 14-channel mixers and fourteen
separate effects devices. My PC is a 100%mHz Pentium III machine with
256MB of memory, a 100mHz system board, a SoundBlaster Live Platinum, an
NVidia GeForce 2 graphics card, and a 7200rpm 27GB hard drive. If I cue
the Reason sequencer to the busiest part of the song where I'm
generating a lot of audio from a lot of MIDI tracks, I get a fair amount
of popping and clicking in the audio output during song playback. I can
minimize the problem by sizing the window so it only displays about two
rack spaces of gear, and scroll the devices off the screen so it shows
only an empty rack space - this helps to largely eliminate Reason's need
to animate the device controls and peak dB meters, which in turn reduces
CPU drain. Also, when I'm in the mixdown phase of a song, increasing the
latency to a high number (40ms or more) doesn't much affect the timing
of things like fader and knob moves as they're being recorded - "close
enough for government work."
The audio hardware drivers you use can affect any latency problems you
experience when using Reason. ASIO drivers tend to perform the best on
both the Mac and Windows platforms. If your audio hardware supports the
use of ASIO drivers, this is definitely the way to go. Otherwise, your
only other choices as of this writing are: Apple Sound Manager for Mac,
and either DirectX (preferred) or MME (avoid if you can) for Windows.
There are additional steps you can take to reduce latency. When
recording MIDI performances, mute the tracks you don't need to hear as
you are recording new tracks. (Alternatively: you could open up a second
song/rack window, populate it with only the devices you need to record
your performance, play to the built-in metronome and then copy your
performance to a new track in your main song window.) Also, if you can
live with a video resolution of 16-bit ('high') color instead of 24-bit
('true') color, this will help reduce the some of the CPU drain caused
by Reason's screen animation of meter levels and real time device
control changes as a song is played.
You should also know that the latency problem only affects audio being
played back in real time. When you export your finished song to a WAV,
the WAV is not played back in real time as it's being generated - it is
simply written directly to your hard drive. When you play back your
finished WAV, the audio will be pristine and completely devoid of any
unwanted audio artifacts.
The bottom line, however, is this: if you're planning on pushing Reason
to its limits, you need the fastest PC you can set yourself up with. As
an experiment, I brought my song file and sounds over to the apartment
of a fellow Reason owner, who is running a 733mHz Athlon on a 133mHz
system board and a SB Live sound card. We found that the same section of
the song that creates problems on my system played flawlessly on his
system, using DirectX 8 drivers, at a latency setting of 3ms. For my
next system upgrade, I'm going with a 900mHz Athlon and the same system
board my friend is using - I suspect that on a system like that, I won't
be running into latency problems until I fill my rack with twice the
number of devices as I used in my test song.
Another little anomaly I've run into concerns the Reason online help
file. This is a standard Windows help file, and covers most everything
you need to know about using the program. What seems to happen to me is
that after running Reason for a while and working on songs, I'll try to
bring up the help file only to get a dialog box telling me an Unknown
Error has occurred - Reason cannot open the help file. If I save my
song, close and restart Reason, and reload my song, I can then open the
help file with no problem. For me this is a very minor annoyance, takes
me just a few brief seconds and 10 mouse clicks to get around. Moreover,
the Windows-based help file also resides on the system as an Acrobat PDF
- I could use that in lieu of closing and restarting Reason. (To be
honest, I don't know if the Mac version of the program has this same
problem).
Although the Propellerheads have done an exemplary job in designing
Reason's tone generating modules, MIDI musicians used to working with
the real world counterparts to these devices will likely find themselves
compiling a wish list of features they'd like to see added to future
versions of the software. The synth is missing a 'hard sync' button and
could use a few more modulation sources. The sample player (not a
sampler - you're expected to use your favorite WAV editor for creating raw
digital audio material for use in Reason's sample player) uses one set
of VCF/VCA settings for all the voices of a given unit, so if you tend
to use your sampler to play short loops and other odd bits where each
voice requires custom enveloping, you'll need to drop a bunch of sample
players into Reason's rack to do this. While the ReDrum drum machine has
some really cool retro features, it only supports ten samples at a time
and not all slots share the same feature set - so count on loading
multiple ReDrum units in your rack as well. On none of the devices do we
find a way to modulate the LFO from another source, which would be a
really useful feature.
From a strictly empirical standpoint, I find the Chorus/Flanger and the
Compressor to be the weakest of the effects devices. The Chorus/Flanger
doesn't really do what I consider to be Flanging (I can't get the kind
of harsh bite I used to love getting from my old MXR Flanger stomp box),
though the Chorus effect is nice. The Compressor controls are limited
and applying the effect to a mix do not sound musical to my ears -
consider using it on individual components, but apply overall
compression to your mixdowns using either a decent outboard compressor
or your digital compression algorithm of choice.
The other effects are really quite cool. The Reverb is capable of
generating an astonishingly wide range of room ambiences with just a few
controls. The Phasor has a lot of bite to it and sounds really good
(though watch out, if you overuse it all your mixes will wind up
sounding the same). The digital delay features the ability to set it to
a millisecond value or to a number that is a multiple of the current
song tempo - extremely handy for when you want the delay repetitions to
occur in time with your song. Two seconds might not sound impressive as
the maximum delay time - until you consider that you can patch them in
series to get longer delays (Frippertronics, anyone? I've tried it, and
it works! I had to insert a 2-band parametric EQ at the end of the three
chained delay units and cut the highs a little, so that the higher
frequencies would diminish with each echo repetition - just like it did
with the dual reel-to-reel tape delay Fripp used to use. Unlike the old
tape delay, however, with Reason you can go back and edit your MIDI
notes to taste.)
In all honesty, the problems and reservations I've outlined above are
the only ones have encountered in Reason, and they do nothing to dampen
my enthusiasm for the product or have any reservations in recommending
it for use in creating professional quality electronic music work.
Dr. Rex Loop Player
One of the problems encountered when creating percussion loops is
timing: getting a loop recorded at one tempo to play properly in another
tempo. Simply speeding up or slowing down the loop playback time
radically alters the sound of the loop, and using time compression
software often introduces unwanted audio artifacts into the sound. The
Propellerheads' approach to the problem is their ReCycle program, which
lets you divvy up a loop into a bunch of small time slice samples, and
adjust the rate at which each slice is played. Using this approach, the
loop timing can be altered without affecting the audio quality in any
way. While ReCycle lets you save the separate slices and their timings
in a file format native to the software, ReCycle is mainly engineered to
create and export complete audio loops that you then transfer directly
into your sampler - a tedious process, and it forces you to commit your
loop to a given tempo ahead of time.
The Dr. Rex Loop Player bypasses this limitation - it can read native
ReCycle files and play them directly within Reason. No matter what the
original tempo of a given ReCycle loop happens to be, Dr. Rex
automatically played the loop at the master tempo to which Reason's
sequencer is set. Tweak the master tempo, and the loop changes with it.
Aspects of a loop's slices - pitch, panning, volume level - can all be
individually adjusted in Dr. Rex, and there are some useful and
interesting modulation controls for mutating a loop's sound to the point
where it's almost unrecognizable (very cool).
The current version of ReCycle is not optimized for use with Reason's
Dr. Rex loop player - but they have a forthcoming upgrade in the works
(ReCycle version 2) that many Reason users are likely to find that it
will be a necessary add-on in order to get the most out of the Dr. Rex.
loop player.
Conclusion
Overall, I have to say this is the most amazing piece of music
software I've ever seen. The power, flexibility and sonic quality of the
audio it generates is miles beyond anything else on the market. The fact
that rack configurations are part of your saved song files opens up the
possibility of long distance song collaborations with others;
as long as you and your writing partner maintain your songs, custom
samples and custom device programs in identically named folders on both
systems, the song file your partner plays will sound
exactly the same as it does on your system.
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm seriously thinking of selling off
a large chunk of my MIDI gear - I don't know how much I really need most
of it now that the functionality within Reason duplicates so much of the
things that my hardware can do, and with an ease of use factor that's
awfully hard to beat. If this is Reason 1.0, I can just imagine what new
features they'll add to version 2.0 ... 'The Age Of Reason' is indeed
upon us!
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