Reason 5.0.1, Record 1.5.1 - A Great Day for EWI+Reason!

A long standing bug affecting Breath Control in Thor has been fixed!

The Bug

An alert reader informed me of a strange 'ripping' or 'staticy' sound he was hearing in some Thor patches. Intrigued, I was able to isolate the problem and replicate it. Interestingly enough, he was right! When you map Breath to, really anything, in Thor there was a strange 'stepping' sound. Now, this was only noticeble if the filter cutoff was low and the gain was cranked pretty high, but it was there nonetheless. Not only that, it carried over to Breath routed to the CV outs in Thor (so anything controlled with the output CV sounded stepped as well). Also, when the same breath control data was remapped to mod wheel it went away, and the transitions were smooth. As far as I could tell, this bug goes all the way back to Reason 4.

The Fix

Well, it took some convincing, but the Props have fixed this in 5.0.1! The audio quality of Breath control in Thor is now greatly improved! From the release notes: "Automation of aftertouch, expression and breath are now smoothed in Thor."

Here are some before and after examples of what this sounded like.

You can hear the stepping in this sample from Reason 5.0.0, it almost sounds like a geiger counter in the background:

bcbug-before.mp3
File Size:	524 kb
File Type:	mp3

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This one is perfectly smooth (Reason 5.0.1), the way it should be:

bcbug-after.mp3
File Size:	524 kb
File Type:	mp3

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Here is the patch I used to test this, so you can try it out on your own system if you haven't yet downloaded the update.  You'll have to turn up the volume, and it works best when you use low breath values. Translation - blow very softly into your wind controller of choice.

breath_test.thor
File Size:	0 kb
File Type:	thor

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This is reason #76 why I love this software. The Props actually listen to their customers and fix problems as they arise.

My recommendation: If you care about your sound (and who doesn't?) upgrade to Reason 5.0.1 and/or Record 1.5.1. Not only do you get this fix, but you get all the other various fixes that go along with this maintenance release. 

Thanks, Props, for making Reason work even better with wind controllers!