Sujet Concurent a reason

Citation : GUI is not as slick as Reason but it is nice. Also, now that I see it on my screen, there really isn't much in common with Reason. So, even though it seems to be a Reason clone by the web images it is very obvious side by side that it is only a copycat.

Sound quality is OK. However, I haven't heard much yet.

Extreme CPU hog! Easily 5 times that of reason with minimal devices.

Latency is very bad! Even pressing the Play button! Mixer bar graphs jump a good half second before any sound is produced. Likewise with MIDI in.

VST device is not recognizing any of my VST synths!

I will jump into the help file and continue later...

Citation : VST seems to be a hot topic so I'll go there first.

I didn't figure out how to get Dreamer to utilize my existing VST folder so I ended up copying a couple VSTi to the Dreamer VST folder. Each VST you load will require it's own Dreamer rack device. This device automatically assigns a knob on its panel to each control on the VST. Unfortunately the knobs stop enumerating at 99, many VSTs have a lot more than 99 controls. If the VST you load has 110 controls the panel will have 11 knobs numbered "99". The panel holds twelve knobs so there are several pages of knobs to scroll through for all controls. Alternately, you can click on the EDITOR button and the GUI for that VST will open. It would seem that the only control you have over the VST is from MIDI in.

What else is in the rack:

MIXER: an eleven channel mixer much like remix.

Standard FX: Digital Delay Line, Flanger, Reverb, and Distortion

COMPUTER RHYTHM: Comparable to ReDrum, but it is slightly feature short. It's only advantage is easy MIDI assignment on each "channel".

MUSASHI: Somewhat like Subtractor. (stereo out, 3 osc, 1 env, 2 flt) Other than the extra osc and stereo out it is feature short. Includes a step sequencer.

AKEMI: Somewhat like NN-19. (1 env, 1 flt) A bit more info in the display but otherwise feature short again.


The sounds:

Quite comparable to Reason form all devices. The refill utilization is for samples and not much else.


Overall:

There is no main sequencer, mutliple audio out, or MIDI bus as in Reason. If there is a "cable view" of some sort I didn't manage to enable it.


Conclusion:

It has a long way to go to be real competition for Reason, with or with out VST support. I'll say it again, Extreme CPU hog and latency is very bad! Sitting idle the CPU meter hit 50% and control commands for midi notes or play/stop are delayed by at least half a second on my PC. And, yes, I can run Reason very well loaded and/or several heavy VSTi with Sonar on my PC without any issues.


A bit more than my 2 cents worth,

Rob

Citation : to my assessment of Dreamer. It seemed to be a bit too buggy so I re-installed it. For reasons unknown to mankind the main sequencer now appears when requested.

Rob

Citation : I thought I would chime in with Rob here. I took it for a test drive, and I e-mailed the support e-mail address to see if I could make this thing work for me. The tech support guy is also the programmer, so at least you are talking to the guy who understands the source code.
Here are my observations:

(1) No ReWire support in the current version. No ReWire support is on the drawing board either.

(2) VST host is buggy.

(3) The programmer, like many of us, has a day job that funds his musical aspirations, so version 2 is not on the radar screen.

(4) The mushashi synth module has a nice sound to it.

(5) I never could get the sequencer module to work.

(6) The documentation needs vast improvement.

(7) The connections between devices do not have visible "cables", so you have to look at the device to tell what it is connected to.

(8) Tech support has a very good response time. Usually, within a couple of hours, Ilian responded to my e-mails. I e-mailed him several times.

The long and the short of it is there are many good ideas and several strong starts in this software, but before it can be an effective product, the ideas need to be practically applied to a system that is compatible with existing standards (ReWire support, ASIO, etc), and the strong starts need to evolve into strong finishes. I intend to keep my eye on this package and see how it develops.

Ric