I am not too experienced myself in all this, but I can answer one question for you. If you are on a PC, you can cross off Logic. It is Mac only and you would be getting an older version (5.5 i believe) whereas it is up to 7 on the Mac side. You might want to think about a better soundcard, I believe the Soundblasters are not the best for this sort of thing because of high latency.

sorry mate but if you think your music will suddenly become more lively because you use logic you are in for one hell of a shock when you realise your $1000 hasnt gone as far as you'd hoped. if anything you will open up logic and think immediately 'WHAT THE HOLY FUCK? how do i put a kick drum down? where do i import a VST synth? what do i do?'. once you get the ropes in logic, you'll find that ES2 is indeed a good synth but either way you spin it, ES2 wont make your tunes good and its easily possible to program it badly or EQ the results badly so that it wont sit well in a track you've made. ive heard shit tracks in logic. heard some amazing ones too. but ive heard amazing songs in reason only. amazing songs in floops. amazing songs made on those freeware amiga trackers from 10 years ago.

you have reason and you are comfortable in reason. you cant really ask anything more than that in a host. well, you could ask for features but i shit you not, theres not much you cant do in reason that you can do in logic. and even if you cant do it straight off, theres an alternative way to do it. sidechaining is one, but you can manually duck compression, velocity and frequency of a note since everything in reason is automatable. same in fruity. it just takes a little longer.

as for spending money, i wouldnt get a soundcard unless

1) you dont plan on using external hardware any time soon. and even if you did, you'd probably need to rewire reason to another sequencer to use it since reason is a closed platform host (someone correct me if im wrong, but i couldnt use my virus in reason adapted)

2) you already get a pretty good latency of around 10 ms or less. in which case you wont need a soundcard if point 1 applies.

good soundcards/interfaces give you fully compatible, stable ASIO drivers for low latency monitoring. and also connectivity to devices like hardware synths, external mixers, external samplers etc. via MIDI, S/PDIF and analogue ins as well as allow you to output sound to many different sources simultaneously (they give you loads of outputs so you can for example and amongst other things, monitor in surround sound). more expensive soundcards have optical ins/outs (AES/EBU) and sometimes on board preamps so you dont have to buy them separately when you wanna record from a mic or guitar etc.

if you use reason, best bet is to soup up your PC to the nth degree with a monster CPU and a good gig of fast RAM, so your ASIO drivers and in many cases your entire PC wont fuck up so much when you are pushing high cpu loads.

what is more worth your time is to spend more time with the synths and refills you've got. learn to program each one and layer your synths to get the desired timbres. using EQ and compression to minimise the amount of crossover frequencies you have in your track. learing to EQ tracks and add instruments efficiently so that you get the most headroom you can, then normalise it at the end to get a huge, loud track at the end of it.

or start aquiring the gear you need to get an access virus hooked up to your machine because its nice. the filter on it is very smooth. in terms of programming is much more complex than the softsynths (vanguard, albino and impOSCar) ive been using for a year. its harder to program a great sound out of it. but its worth it when you do. and cuz its 16 parts multi timbral, im beginning to make all my tracks on the virus so that ive got 100% cpu to throw around on effects.

Last edited by Derivative on Dec-11-2004 at 23:03

As for MIDI controllers, I looked around, considered M-Audio (Ozone, Oxygen, Radium), Novation (ReMOTE 25), Korg (microKONTROL), and Evolution (4-series), and I finally decided on the Evolution 449c because its got normal sized keys, plenty of knobs and sliders, some buttons, and 4 octaves (49 keys).

Hopefully I'll be getting it for Christmas, otherwise I'll be buying it soon after.

___________________
-tom

if you have a decent soundcard you dont need an m-audio ozone because thats just an oxygen8 with a midi interface. oxygen8 feels like a toy.

evolution 449C feels much more like a keyboard and is probably the best value out of the 3. the novation one looks cool but its too expensive for what it is on paper i reckon. wouldnt mind trying one out to see what it feels like.

someone i knew from 3rd year last year had an alesis QS6 but just used it in a digital piano capacity. that would have made a brilliant midi keyboard. didnt have that many rotaries and sliders but the keys felt amazing. weighted, aftertouch etc. nicest keyboard ive ever played on.

I definitely wanted a lot of knobs to tweak Reason and VST instruments. The M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 would be awesome too, but $500 for a MIDI keyboard is a bit much for me right now...

___________________
-tom

Honestly, I was expecting a major improvement when switching programs like you said isn't true but that doesn't mean I'm just saying I'll be '1337' if i start using another program. I'm saying I'll dedicate myself to using something so long as there are more options open than in reason. I don't even know how a plug-in connects to a program (i.e. in logic, FL, or cubase), but I do know that 2 synths in reason definitely isn't enough and that using external hardware is supposed to be a bitch with reason (am i wrong on that one? =\) I also think the sequencer in reason is pretty weak and sometimes a hassle.

the sequencer in reason is fine. it makes more sense than most too. the internal synths in reason are very capable but hardly flattering instruments. you really have to know what you are doing and you have to work with them for a long time to get the nuances of the instruments and get something really good out of them. its a shame i couldnt try out maelstrom on reason adapted because that looked better than subtractor and some peeps here have programmed some decent supersaw sounds out of multiple maelstroms.

hardware is a bitch to get working on any sequencer, not just rewired through reason. my virus still has problems in floops. multi mode on the virus is retarded and clumsy. it doesnt play in sync when the cpu load is high (above 50%, above 80% my ASIO drivers get fucked up and it sometimes crashes). layering patches on the virus and with other hardware synths (im refering to the nord lead 2x here) is more work than it needs to be but i guess thats because i got used to the convenience of VST instruments. programming the virus is also hardwork. its not a simple case of buy one, substitute it for your old synths and everything will sound better. theres your record contract. you gotta start from the ground up again and start working through tutorials and basic patch building. its mind bogglingly complex because it has so many variables whose action is dependant on other variable. for example, the virus has 2 filters. the action of the second filter depends on the cutoff point of the first filter, whose action is dependant on the filter envelope and the whole thing can be modulated, in whole or in part by the LFO. keeping track of what you are doing is a pain in the arse. if you twiddle and dont think about what you are twiddling you will fuck that patch into a bassy sludgy mess 9 times out of 10. when you get it right though its the sweetest thing ever . speaking of which, you can gain access to these and VSTis if you rewire through a sequencer that supports VSTis. logic, cubase and fl studio and sonar all do this. currently i make all my music on vanguard and the virus. before i had the virus, i made all my music on vanguard, albino and impOSCar and freebie single shot drums available on the web. you dont need 20+ instruments. in fact i think having too many instruments is detrimental to your development as a producer because you will be less inclined to sit down and work with one of them for a sustained period of time. working with instruments like zeta+ and the virus is really like learning how to play guitar or violin. you have to feel it out for yourself and figure out a way of working with it that works best for you. if you have more instruments than you know what to do with then thats a lifetime of learning new instruments. of course, very few people would spend a lifetime learning all of them and instead just download and use presets. which isnt what production is all about. its also a very bad sign if you are building your track to fit around a preset as opposed to creating the sound to fit into your track. if you got the cash, i would recommend maybe starting down the upgrade path to get a hardware synth and basically use that for all your instrumentation with internal reason synths as fillers. be prepared to invest alot of time, money and energy if you plan on doing this. you will need, amongst other things

1) a host that you can rewire to.

2) a soundcard that has 100% ASIO compatibility and also MIDI in/out and as many analogue ins and outs as you can afford. if you plan on doing some live recording an onboard preamp would be useful(if not you can always buy one separately at a later date). a digital in/out would be useful if you plan on recording audio from external consumer electronics devices, such as DJ mixers (for recording DJ sets and so forth).

3) cables. these mount up and it helps to buy decent quality cables otherwise you will have to buy them again and again when they eventually fuck up. you will need at least 4 1/4" TRS jack to jack cables and at least 1 midi cable. preferably 2 if you plan on using a midi keyboard or midi controller.

4) the synth itself. take your pick. virus, nord lead, jp8000, q, supernova II, you'll hear alot about some of these in these forums or just search for them. all of them are legendary in modern dance music circles.

5) if you dont already have one, a midi keyboard/controller. its not necessary though. i use my computer keyboard to play the piano parts and since i do practically everything on the virus its not so much of a problem. on vanguard i just graph the automations.

that'll all add up to a tidy little sum but if you stick with it, it can be immensley rewarding. just remember, there is no holy grail of music production. there is no magic bit of hardware or software that will suddenly make the 'wrong' things in your track 'right.'