Tag Archives: Red Rock Sound Spectrum Analyzer

Reason: Why RE’s And VST’s Waste Your Time

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Something not a lot of people realize is that most additional instruments and effects you can add to Reason via rack extensions (RE’s) and now VST’s (bleh) not only aren’t needed, nearly all of them are features found in Reason masquerading as new concepts.

Don’t be fooled by fancy audio demos

The hard, unspoken truth about music production is that there isn’t many instruments and effects devices that are doing anything new. How many effects are doing anything actually new? That’s the thing; people aren’t inventing new effect categories… after 40 years of audio design, the music community isn’t going to be coming out with new concepts anytime soon. You’ve got categories like distortion, delay, reverb, repeaters, chorus, unison, phasers, pitch shifting, gaters, amps, filters, EQs… and of which all of these are already built into Reason (with the exception of a repeating device, but that’s why combinator patches exist I guess).

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Don’t Use EQ Spectrum Analyzers, Use Your Ears

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There’s an issue that people who’ve started making music the past 10 years or so think an audio spectrum / waveform = what you hear. The sad fact is that it doesn’t.

One thing I’ve found that seemed to be a key to “professional” audio mixing / mastering people is that they had some kind of experience with real, studio mixers. They didn’t have access to spectrum windows, they mastered by tweaking dynamics knobs and using their ears. They didn’t have techy BS of calling out kHz or Hz numbers like “4,200”, “31.5” or other crap relating to decibel ranges like people using computer software so frequently do. This is because…

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Reason: How To Wire Reference Audio To Bypass Mastering

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The issue; you want to bring existing audio (reference audio, such as an existing song) into Reason for comparison. The Flower Audio’s Loudness Meter device (shown in the photos) can be used for referencing, but it’s used to switch from the audio in your setup versus your reference audio; you can’t compare the two side-by-side.

Screen Shot 2015-10-07 at 6.43.32 PM

The issue with trying to do normal referencing is that the sound source will appear under your mastering suite, getting extra mastering effects placed on top. Simply turning the fader levels of your reference channel down doesn’t do the trick as you’ll get lower levels that are still being colored (altered) by your mastering suite setup. Some people may be trying to craft a certain sound, like I do, by referencing existing music and comparing it to your sound (such as choosing a certain kick drum by comparing it to reference material).

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