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The Props look to do it again! (Extract cash from my wallet.)

Every morning at 9:00 a.m. EST (US) Propellerhead is announcing one new feature from their upcoming versions of REASON and RECORD. Yesterday they announced “Dr. Octo Rex” (and it looks quite cool). Video is below.

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Release date is “end of summer 2010.” Upgrade pricing is TBD as far as I can tell.

They are accepting applications for beta testers…..

Enjoy.

I’m participating in the RECORD Betas and wanted to post a few thoughts. Note that the NDA prevents me from discussing any details or juicy stuff, but head over to Propellerheads‘ beta sign up site and get a copy for yourself.

My initial impressions were not what I would call “over the top” with enthusiasm. I actually found the interface a bit confusing at first: The screen is JAM PACKED with stuff (nothing you can’t figure out from the screenshots and micro-tutorials on the Prop’s site). On a 13″ macbook screen (my main machine was in the shop the first time I fired RECORD up), it is just too much (although the function key based focus switches help.) Anyway, I am talking about my first impressions here and my first impression was that there is a disconnect between what I was looking at on the screen (a LOT of stuff) and the product’s marketing (“stripped down recording simplicity”).

My next mental hurdle was due to my being familiar with REASON. (Note I said ‘familiar’ and not ‘expert’.) There are enough similarities in the interfaces and many methods of doing things that – as a prior user of REASON – I tend to forget that I’m not IN REASON. So when something is different, I tend to really stumble on it.

For example, the mixer in RECORD is really great and extremely capable. But to take advantage of it fully (IMHO), I have to structure my REASON racks differently.

This thing is great.

In REASON 4, I tend to use multiple Combinators as sub-mixers for various instruments (or sometimes whole sections) in a song. You don’t have to do that so much here because the mixer has a very robust per channel insert scheme and plenty of sends. So much so in fact that I think each channel can give you a lot of the functionality that a combinator formerly would have. (Again, this can be divined from the microtutorials and released info so I think I’m safe NDA wise.) Sure, I can simply use Combinators as before and plug these Combinators into a channel in the mixer and be done with it, but that is probably not the best way to go for a number of reasons I can think of (efficiency, ease of automation and editing being three).

The Props have posted a 2 minute video on the RECORD interface and making a track.

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