i was wondering if anybody out there has any experience so far with either Absynth or Reaktor from Native Instruments. what exactly is the difference between the two programs? is one just more comprehensive than the other? and how do these programs compare to Reason? are they all basically the same (i.e. a soft synth program)?

I had the exact same question until I got my Reason. Once I had Reason, I didn't really think about Absynth or Reaktor until just now. I don't know what different it would make to have Absynth and Reaktor on top of Reason. Probably not much... As for the question of whether one is better than another, I think it's a fairly contextual issue. For me, I had OS X, I had Ableton Live (which acts as ReWire host) and I needed bang for buck and somehow ended up with Reason.

Maybe I am a bit of a simpleton but when researching Reaktor I discovered that many of my favorite musicians were using it, which was enough of a selling point for me....although for reasons too inane to mention, I bought Reason first.

A musician friend led me to believe that Reaktor was more conducive to an experimental or 'innovative' approach to sound, while Reason is well satisfying my 'minimal techno' tendencies.

And if I may inquire in classic Newbian form -- Can Reaktor and Reason coexist with one another? You know, er, uh, composing a bit in Reaktor and then incorporating it into my Reason composition?

You could describe the differences between reaktor (which I have to admit I haven't used) and reason in terms of analog synth components: reaktor is like having a roomful of Moog components (oscillators, filters, envelope generators, effects, controllers, etc.) that you can patch together into literally any configuration you want. Reason is more like the Prophet and later synths: it's based on a standard configuration of oscillator, filter, ADSR envelope, LFO, etc. All the parameters can be changed, but the basic configuration can't be altered. If you want to run the LFO into some parameter that isn't selectable from the front panel, with reason you're SOL. With reaktor, you just connect point a to point b -- true modular synthesis. That means the learning curve is steeper for reaktor... it's easy to get started with reason (which is why we hear so many reason tracks that sound so similar... there's less incentive to dig deeper and make it sound individual).

Of course, for modular synthesis (and especially algorithmic composition), nothing beats SuperCollider! But that's only if you like code that's more obtuse than C -- I love it!

James

another selling point for reaktor in my opinion: you can run your own modular synths/fx as vst or vsti whereas with Reason you need to rely on re-wire.

So....Reaktor allows you to custom build a synth in any number of ways? Multiple synths? With multiple patch options? I'm extremely intersted in the seemingly endless list of possibilities, although I do not believe I understand the general concept fully. I love digging for sounds as well as creating my own and am intrigued by what I believe the software offers....can anyone please help further shape my perception on Reaktor?

THANX!
tHa tEkNo sUpA hErOeS

I would use reason out of everyone of them. I have all 3 and reason I use the most. I make all of my synth tracks in it and put them into protools via aiff files and cut and paste it's great. Same with Absynth it rules.