VSTs, Reason..

[Piranha]

Hello
A friend of mine gave me his copy of Reason and I have played with it quite a bit.
I have composed a lot of music with the integrated sounds and instruments.

I found that Reason doesn't have very much of good acoustic classical instrument sounds, which is what I will need for recording movie music for college.
MOTU Symphonic Instruments is looking quite interesting. But this won't work with Reason, right ? I'd need a new DAW/Sequencer program, am I correct ? I'm guessing that my answer is in this sentence from the site:

The MOTU Symphonic Instrument is compatible with all major plug-in formats for Macintosh OS X and Windows (VST, Audio Units, DXi, MAS and RTAS).

But I dont understand what it says very much ! Any help on which sort of program (I am guessing it will be expensive...:( ) it would work with would be very appreciated.

THANKS !

[Ghostlord101]

I don't know about what will work with Reason, but it is worth bearing in mind that Reason is MIDI and sample playback only, not audio. And you can't add your own samples as instruments, only play them back.

That being said, the demo of Reason 4 I have looks pretty damn good, built in VST, downloadable sound patches (called ReFills, some are free, some aren't, but there MUST be a few orchestral ones) lots of effects processors, mixers and a thing designed to make the MIDI playback less 'mechanical'. Brilliant if your doing electronica/dance based work.

At least SOME of that should have been useful :tongue:

~Ghost

[Syrinx]

Reason is a closed environment DAW unlike Logic, Cubase, Sonar...etc. Reason can not be used to host any VSTs. The only expansions (and some of them have quite good acoustic instrument e.g. Reason Pianos) Reason would allow are the Refills that you can buy separately and load them from Reason.

To be able to use any other VSTs you need a host, and based on your needs there are free ones (Energy XT, XT2, Usine) with very few restrictions, cheap ones (e.g. Reaper), or the full fledged $300-1000 ones (e.g. Logic, Sonar, Ableton Live...etc). So do your homework and try the demos before you buy anything.

Best.

[-=AnatomiC=-]

Yeah, Reaper pnws... there is nothing unprofessional about it, except the price (you can even sync it to a video signal, for audio editing for a video - Time code, everything is there - it's very cool for me, because I'm studying for an audio editor)...
I mean, in preference menu it has 10 time more pages than Ableton, for example. When I checked Ableton preference menu, I was like: "is that it???" :eek:

Also, audio editing (just cutting items, making fade-in/outs, adjusting volume) is
so much easier than in anything else I've used.
Okay, it doesn't have high quality on board FX or VSTis, but what it does, it does perfectly, especially for that price. And you could always use your external FX vsts.

Forget Reason :wink:

[Piranha]

Thanks for the responses

Before I try anything, I'd like to learn a bit about the process of "hosting VSTs". How is it made possible, since they are two different programs (The Host (example, Reaper) and the VST (Motu symphonic instruments)) ?

[Syrinx]

I am no expert in programming but here is what I know. VSTs are not applications, they are dll files, that is, libraries to be used or called by an application (the VST host).

Many VSTs come also as standalone applications, but if you use the standalone version I don't think you can use anything else (a host or any other audio application) because the standalone app will take hold of the ASIO sound driver and prevent other audio apps from using it.

One great thing about Reaper, for those who use Linux (I am a Linux nut :biggrin:), Reaper works like a charm with Wine and the wineasio driver. Not all Windows VSTs will work under Linux this way but many will do. Reaper and all the included VST instruments and fx work flawlessly.

[Grey Loki]

Syrinx, have you tried Ardour? It's pretty much Pro Tools for Linux - very clever stuff.

[TheMayhem]

Syrinx, have you tried Ardour? It's pretty much Pro Tools for Linux - very clever stuff.


i've been meaning to try that, i'm just having a hard time getting the drivers going.

[Syrinx]

i've been meaning to try that, i'm just having a hard time getting the drivers going.


I recently installed Ubuntu Studio 32bit on my laptop and it's really nice, and very easy to install as well. I'd like to see if I could use the wineasio-Reaper setup there as well.