Q: When is a DAW not a DAW?
A: When it’s ajar…. fnaar fnaar.
But seriously folks, the guys at Propellerhead Music have just announced a new product called “Record“, anyone that has worked with or around their flagship product Reason, will know that a complaint from many users, and non-users alike is the inability to input audio or record to the tool as you can with just about any other DAW, however Reason have always claimed that they’re not a DAW. So now “Record” appears and promises to be a recording tool for musicians… from their website….
Welcome to Record, Propellerhead Software’s brand new recording software. Record gives you unlimited audio tracks, world class effects and mixing gear, and a whole new take on music recording. With an intuitive, straightforward interface and a hands-on approach to capturing performances, Record was designed for musicians – not audio engineers. This is recording done right.
So many people out there are now saying OK, so that makes Reason a DAW when combined with Record, right? As with all the Props products, they seem to have made a great job of it and thought things through well, but for me, I’m not sure that it’s so compelling, firstly for existing Reason users it costs around $100 to upgrade, I’m already a good way along the path of learning how to be an audio engineer (not pro by any means, but not a novice either) so they won’t save me that hassle. The mastering and mixing tools they provide seem really good (wait, I thought it was for musicians not engineers??), but are they likely to be worlds ahead of the tools provided by Logic or Cubase, probably not, and what about when you want to upgrade them?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the product, I’ve not used it and have only read the marketing so far, I’m just saying I’m not 100% convinced that many of the existing users will spring for the extra cash. As someone else pointed out, if this was a Reason upgrade to version 5 and not an entirely separate product, they might consider it (with the tight integration some might argue it is an upgrade) but time will tell. I’ll be agnostic for the moment, but with Cubase 5 just out, not to mention that it’ll now be going head to head with the likes of “Live”, etc. and Apple slated to upgrade Logic at WWDC in a few weeks, I think Props are in for stiff competition. Time will tell.