As you may know i'm a hardware kind of guy. But i recently puchased a sound card and it came with a copy of reason express. I installed it on my mac and i must say it look's lovely. Anyway the version i have is very limited bet i wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

Before i go any futher i would like to say reason is crap. First i loaded my drum samples in and noticed how puny the red drum makes them sound. After this i moved on to "subtractor" and wow it sounded as good as chistopher lambert on a bad line.

I recently saw the advert in sos for reason 3.0 saying that it had made hardware redundant.

As i own a more or less real version of the reason rack i think it only fair i make some comparsion's.


First the subtractor compared to my evolver. Well apart from my evolver having ton's option's for sound creation, and fusing two technolgy's seemlessly together, it's the sound. Tweak all you like propeller heads but you'll still only sound like a casio car boot sale job at best. If you compare "subtraktor" to a juno 60 ( the bismark of synth's) it's vaporised.

As far as the other crud go's the reverb sound's like the inside of a zx spectrum cassete deck. also the sample player's "looper's" are in line with mario paint music maker.

The only surprise was that the eq on the "mixer" when boosted sounded only frustatingly cr*p as opssed to insultingly s*ht.

Not to mention it's crashed 2 time's out of the 5 or six ive opened it and i only used it for about an hour alltogether.

It's not even cheap £300 for 2 cd's when you can buy akai s3200xl's for £250 now.

I'd say to anyone at the moment. If your intrested in making electronic music of any kind, get £1000 together (the price of a p.c and reason) and go and buy some second hand stuff. It sound's better, you wont have 5 million people using the exact same sound tool's as you, and you'll find it much more musical and inspiring. Also your right side of your brain wont kick in and tell you to update your operating system to 12.201xxx before you want to make tune's.



http://www.infowars.com/

***You are ignoring this user***

For your edification.

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Tesco Value Tonmeister

I got reason & live bundled with a new interface. Live works fine & is worthwhile but reason doesn't do anything much & is really just an advert for the full programme; not impressed.
Ignore language bigots, anyone can speak or write in any way they want, whenever they want. People have to get used to the fact that not everyone in the world is popping out of the same slot and often these bigots only speak one language anyway.
G

Quote hughb:

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For your edification.

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Nice one!

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Cubase, guitars.

Well, clearly me and a load of other Reason devotees will come along and refute your pile of steaming turd masquerading as a post, but I really can't be bothered to be that long winded.

Suffice to say that if you have any modern electronic music in your collection, you've probably grooved to the Subtractor et all before you even knew what it was.

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Stuff what I done

Quote Lime ZX9:

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Quote hughb:

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For your edification.

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Nice one!

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Nice indeed. When and why did British schools stop teaching English? It was considered to be quite an important subject when I was at school.

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"Qui habet aures audiendi audiat"

Quote thorbing purple helm lord:

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As you may know i'm a hardware kind of guy. But i recently puchased a sound card and it came with a copy of reason express. I installed it on my mac and i must say it look's lovely. Anyway the version i have is very limited bet i wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

Before i go any futher i would like to say reason is crap. First i loaded my drum samples in and noticed how puny the red drum makes them sound. After this i moved on to "subtractor" and wow it sounded as good as chistopher lambert on a bad line.

I recently saw the advert in sos for reason 3.0 saying that it had made hardware redundant.

As i own a more or less real version of the reason rack i think it only fair i make some comparsion's.


First the subtractor compared to my evolver. Well apart from my evolver having ton's option's for sound creation, and fusing two technolgy's seemlessly together, it's the sound. Tweak all you like propeller heads but you'll still only sound like a casio car boot sale job at best. If you compare "subtraktor" to a juno 60 ( the bismark of synth's) it's vaporised.

As far as the other crud go's the reverb sound's like the inside of a zx spectrum cassete deck. also the sample player's "looper's" are in line with mario paint music maker.

The only surprise was that the eq on the "mixer" when boosted sounded only frustatingly cr*p as opssed to insultingly s*ht.

Not to mention it's crashed 2 time's out of the 5 or six ive opened it and i only used it for about an hour alltogether.

It's not even cheap £300 for 2 cd's when you can buy akai s3200xl's for £250 now.

I'd say to anyone at the moment. If your intrested in making electronic music of any kind, get £1000 together (the price of a p.c and reason) and go and buy some second hand stuff. It sound's better, you wont have 5 million people using the exact same sound tool's as you, and you'll find it much more musical and inspiring. Also your right side of your brain wont kick in and tell you to update your operating system to 12.201xxx before you want to make tune's.



http://www.infowars.com/

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You really think that the sound is so bad that you could identify it immediately against a vintage synth? Then take this test to see if you really can.....there is a subtractor patch in there somewhere along with other software synths.

http://www.znarfelectronix.de/frames/hoertest.html

I don't like Reason.

I find it too fiddly to use and it does something I don't like with the sound. It can't receive or output MIDI note data either which limits its integration with anything else.

A lot of people seem to find the subtractor synth useful though.

Quote hughb:

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For your edification.

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LOL!

Quote Sle:

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Well, clearly me and a load of other Reason devotees will come along and refute your pile of steaming turd masquerading as a post, but I really can't be bothered to be that long winded.

Suffice to say that if you have any modern electronic music in your collection, you've probably grooved to the Subtractor et all before you even knew what it was.

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Actually i loathe modern music. And anyway what you call modern music is just a weak interpretation of something thats be going since the 80's. Only then it was cool to like it because no one else did. Now all the boring office worker people are into it. Even essex sharon's and tracy's "bang in to their drum and bass"

Also i think house/teshno ect, ect are just faceless capitalisim. A lot of people like stuff with no identity.

Also reason is rubbish. name one piece of music that has any lasting apeal, that has shown an individuality or uniquiness that has been created using the program reason.

Dance music and relity television. One and the same.

Reason can be so good. Yeah, it has limits. But its just so useable.
Opening it 5 or 6 times doesn't do it justice. Use it as a sketch pad on your laptop. Can lay down beats and synth parts with ease.
Or use it rewired through logic. The sound quality is much better when rewired. Can eat up a lot of resources though.
Nothing to stop you bouncing out parts and closing rewire down when you are done.

Also, this just sounds like "grumpy old man" syndrome.

YAWN! Seems to be the biggest sterotype of them all these days.

.... and could eveyone stop saying "loose" when they mean "lose" please.

What I really hate is when people (read, Americans) say "I could care less" when the correct phrase is "I COULDN'T care less". The idea being that you care so little for something that it would be impossible to care any less about it. If you "could" care less for something then obviously it means you do care about it and you could then....you get the idea...

Well what's your soundcard like? Any software is partly dependent on the quality of the soundcard you're using.

Jim.

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Original artwork and unique devices inspired by vintage technology http://www.thisisobsolete.com

There are many versions of English in the world today & thier speakers vastly outnumber the population of the home counties.
The only incorrect thing is not making the effort to understand other people & making narrow minded judgements. Wake up & loosen up little Britain. It's a beautiful language, flexible, open structured & constantly variable. Respect it, noone ever managed to keep it in a box.
G

Quote Reds:

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.... and could eveyone stop saying "loose" when they mean "lose" please.

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..and things like "your" when you mean "you're." Thanks.

I used Reason 2 for a while and found the sound to be crap too, but as a creativity tool its very hard to beat.

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Overview Productions

Propellerhead have just posted an updated version so your abominations can sound even more abominable. Reason 3.04

Personally I think it's a great compositional tool especially for laptop users.

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Web Site | Twitter | iTunes

Quote giles:

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There are many versions of English in the world today & thier speakers vastly outnumber the population of the home counties.
The only incorrect thing is not making the effort to understand other people & making narrow minded judgements. Wake up & loosen up little Britain. It's a beautiful language, flexible, open structured & constantly variable. Respect it, noone ever managed to keep it in a box.
G

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Yes, English is a very beautiful language. All the more reason not to mangle it and f*ck it up through ignorance.

Quote giles:

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Ignore language bigots, anyone can speak or write in any way they want, whenever they want. People have to get used to the fact that not everyone in the world is popping out of the same slot and often these bigots only speak one language anyway.
G

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[ ****** ] off, [ ****** ] lazy [ ****** ]. Being a thick [ ****** ] is nothing to proud of.

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Signature (up to 200 characters). You may use UBBCode in your signature

bit off topic but for some unknown REASON (well I suppose that makes it on topic!) I am ignoring tombola! Never set up an ignore in my life, so it must be a glitch. How do I un-ignore him/her/it?

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Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

That old Reason wasnt good enough for me. I got it only to use the Reason Drum kits that I liked more then Battery and I hate Spectrtronics shameless policies.
I had something like you do but then upgraded to regular one bacause thanks to some tips from forum like that I was able to "by pass" the "Reason sound" ( that to me is the sound of IT student who thinks having music software makes him a musician). The trick is to bypass the mixer and wire directly to your proper software, not using Redrum just NNXT. I used it 90 % for the drums, a bit for other mainly sampler duties. There is no real sequencer in Reason- worth the name, which does not bother me, I dont want one, it is just great virtual rack for me.
It all changed however with Reason 3 I do not bother to wire directly. I used it alot, though no Redrum. It will never sound like Moog, Virus, Clavia or whatever hardware, no software will ( though hearing difference between Legacy and hardware WS might be not too easy) ever. So for prominent, lead voices hardware is better anyway, anytime. But Reason 3 can be professional tool, does the job for me.

Reason is like Marmite. You either love it or you hate it.

On usability:

I have been using Reason for a few years now as my prime song writing tool, because I consider myself a musician and song writer first, and a technician / sound engineer second. I use a mix of real instruments, and samples from sample CD’s, for example piano, string, horn, synth samples.

Typically, I construct a tune by recording a couple of variations of a guitar loop, into Acid 5 along to a click track. Each loop is then set up and running in Dr Rex loop player, and then I jam and evolve other parts of the tune against and around the original loop. I also tend to play around with the overall track structure quite a lot by moving blocks of completed loops around in the sequencer.

The closest examples to my “sound” would be something like Faithless, No Roots, Portishead, Dummy, Leftfield Leftism, and Massive Attack, Various. Reason can be used for writing any kind of music, I would call what I do, “live dance music”, dance music that can be fairly easily played live.

The aspect of Reason that blows all other so-called “professional” music software packages right out of the water, is in it’s providing of an environment in which is simple, and conducive to being creative. It is a primarily a musician’s piece of software, not a technicians piece of software (as far as I use it anyway, I know there is also a lot of “tweakability”). In terms of tune sketching, it is unbeatable.

I had a look at a friend’s copy of Cubase, and after a few hours of poking around to no end, decided I would probably have to embark on a HND in the package, just to get it to make a sound. There is simply no way in million years I would have been able to sit down at Cubase and complete the tunes I have completed with ease and a significant amount of enjoyment along the way, in Reason. Full stop. In that way, I believe it’s potential value is significantly underestimated by a lot of people.

On sound quality:

Having used Reason for a few years now, I would concede that the sound quality directly out of the package is lacking in some areas. Drums can tend to lack some punch, the overall sound can be tinny and lack a bit of bass. The mixer doesn’t really do proper stereo, or proper eq.

However, all the issues can be worked around. The stereo issue can be solved by mixer L & R channels to two separate channels each in the mixer, panned hard left and right. Use a dedicated eq on each channel, rather than the eq pots on the mixer.

The overall sound quality when rewired (I use Acid 5) is as good as if the same sounds were played back directly in the same package (eg. directly in Acid 5) or some other package such as Cubase.

I don’t even rewire each instrument to a separate channel in Acid 5. Just the main mixer out. I use some sensibly applied eq & pre-comp where needed within Reason, and some eq and Vintage Winter Warmer comp in Acid 5.

Having teased the best sound quality I can out of what I have got (rather than going out and spending another £1000 on hardware) I am pretty happy with the finished result, and that whilst the sound may never quite touch the quality of the “big boys”, it is 95 % of the way there, and getting closer every day !

On Reason as a learning tool and for “creative production”:

I feel I have learnt more about what works and what doesn’t, and in what order you should chain various effects and processing units for the best results, from Reason, than I could have learnt on any course. Combined with some self-learning from the internet, for example: charts suggesting best eq, comp and so on for various instruments, I now feel confident I could stick together a decent hardware rack for a small live band. Again this is something that would never have happened with another bit of software.

Production, as we all probably know, is often now an integral part of the creative process, if you want to achieve you own unique “sound”. At the very least, with the setup I have described, the tunes created would provide demos that would amply communicate to a finishing sound engineer, exactly how you want the production to colour your tunes.

So in conclusion, I love both Reason, and Marmite.

And that’s my final say on the matter.



I’ll leave all the arguing to the rest of you !



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http://profile.myspace.com/abitfunkdub/

Quote IvanSC:

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bit off topic but for some unknown REASON (well I suppose that makes it on topic!) I am ignoring tombola! Never set up an ignore in my life, so it must be a glitch. How do I un-ignore him/her/it?

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I have the same problem, cant see tombola???

You silly girls,

You are not ignoring Tombola.
Tombola has wittily pasted that into his post

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With a boom-a-lacka, zoom-a-lacka, wee.

Quote chriscarter:

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Propellerhead have just posted an updated version so your abominations can sound even more abominable. Reason 3.04

Personally I think it's a great compositional tool especially for laptop users.

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Chris, and there is another long term SOS contributer who I was speaking to two years ago who used Reason for most of their work (TV and Film composition). At the end of the day it is a tool and a very good tool as you say. For those who do not think that software can sound *like* vintage gear then they obviously did not listen to Gordon Reids A/B comparisons of the minimoog and the software version. I love vintage stuff but for tactility and ownership reasons (and hating computers and only using them for email and web) not because you cannot get *close* with software.

TPHL, great if you like hardware but lighten up a little.

I use it as a valuable teaching tool along with cubase.

i agree with the original poster - i aint keen on the sound it produces but...

What the heck - its a fun program to use.

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Facilities manager - Access to Music Studio, Hull /
Question of Time Studio, York / Label Manager, R3toX Records / Question of Time / Needlecraft

Nah, but li[Glottal stop} is da saand, innit. Da saand's all wrong.

What in God's name are you on about people? It's an *oscillator* creating the sound, much like any other in software. It's what you do with the sound afterwards. Reason is dependent on your imagination.

Say you think the sound you created isn't "Fat" enough. If you've got hardware, you're pretty stuffed unless you have infinite funds. With Reason, you copy the synth and trigger it along with the other and away you go. Look at it as a rack with infinite equipment. It's all just oscillators. It's what you do AFTER the signal is created that makes the difference. Ask Liam Howlett.

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Stuff what I done

I have to say all this ranting about the way people spell online is a touch negative and using negativity to educate someone is not going to motivate them is it?

Reason is ok but to claim it comes anywhere near hardware in terms of quality is a joke. Having said that a friend of mine wrote this track http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?songs=377513&T=7223 in Reason alone which i think is ok.

I think the English need to represent the insult to the freedom their ancestors fought and died for once which is currently being piddled on by Islam in Britain.
Allowing these people to walk around as they do masked up protesting equality on their terms says the British English are weak as a Nation to me.
So how about ranting about something important folks.

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Where is the brotherhood between the white man?

Edited by MR FRIGHT (26/08/05 02:48 PM)

Quote MR FRIGHT:

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I think the English need to represent the insult to the freedom their ancestors fought and died for once which is currently being piddled on by Islam in Britain.

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Blimey.. I think a fair few of those Gurkha fellas were Muslims. They appear to have done much of the dirty work in the fight for our freedom 60 years ago and after. I was looking through footage for an old relative at the Imperial War museum earlier and I couldn't see for Indian nationals, except on the staged "Tours" by the generals, after all the bits of German "Ost" soldiers and Gurkhas were picked up.

Clearly there should be balance and our own clutch of apologists could well screw things up by alienating our own population in favour of minorities, but all moot.

Ok, I'll tell a joke "When used to its intended potential Reason sounds as good as, if not potentially better than most hardware (Definitely DSP harware, which is *The SAME* essentially). There will be no variation as the circuits heat up, but other than that - what?"

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Stuff what I done

OK, let's stick to the topic shall we, and not let this thread descend into a race relations war please?

This is a multi-cultural global meeting place and I for one value input from all members, regardless of race or creed or religion, provided it remains on-topic and civil discussion. There's enough hatred being spouted elsewhere; we sure as heck don;t need to generate more of it here, do we.

Musicians are usually a tolerant bunch (well, only until somebody samples your tune and gets a bigger hit with it than you )

Thorbing Purple, what monitor speakers were you using when you listened to Reason and made your once-and-for-all judgement about it's sonic quality? And what soundcard were you playing through?

Ian G

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SOS Gear Videos now screening on www.SoundOnSound.tv
SOS Podcasts

I'm neutral, as I've never tried Reason, yet.

However...

Quote Sle:

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Say you think the sound you created isn't "Fat" enough. If you've got hardware, you're pretty stuffed unless you have infinite funds. With Reason, you copy the synth and trigger it along with the other and away you go. Look at it as a rack with infinite equipment. It's all just oscillators. It's what you do AFTER the signal is created that makes the difference. Ask Liam Howlett.

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You're not seriously comparing Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned to Prodigy's earlier offerings? Both entities are in a different league altogether. AONO sounded an absolute mess, imho.

I think that may have been down to the 'Vulture, though. Wayyyy too much distortion.

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http://Infekted.org ~ Access Virus news & community

Quote Forum Admin:

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OK, let's stick to the topic shall we, and not let this thread descend into a race relations war please?

This is a multi-cultural global meeting place and I for one value input from all members, regardless of race or creed or religion, provided it remains on-topic and civil discussion. There's enough hatred being spouted elsewhere; we sure as heck don;t need to generate more of it here, do we.

Musicians are usually a tolerant bunch (well, only until somebody samples your tune and gets a bigger hit with it than you )

Thorbing Purple, what monitor speakers were you using when you listened to Reason and made your once-and-for-all judgement about it's sonic quality? And what soundcard were you playing through?

Ian G

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Sprit absolute 2's, samson servo 60, m-audio firewire 4/10

snigger

With the best will in the world Helm that setup isn't really one you could , hand on heart, say gives you a true picture of anything.

Ie ,Anything with a tendency towards a strident upper mid will sound exactly so and then some in spades through your setup. On other speakers that might well not be so nearly as apparent.

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nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog

Sle come on mate how many Indians are representing Islam LOL.
Im talkings about others who have no respect for the English culture and have no roots here whatsoever but who's complaining about that or correcting that.
Tell me how on earth can a fourth generation British born Islamic walking down the street masked up ranting on about equality represent the freedom that we all enjoy?
They are spitting in the face of freedom.
My point is if so many of you guys are hung up on how the was English language is presented then how do you explain whats going on around you.
As for Reason matey it ok but its not producing sounds as good as my hardware synths no matter how well its tweaked and nothing anyone says is going to convince me otherwise.
Its a great idea's tool but thats about it for me.
Bye.

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Where is the brotherhood between the white man?

Quote Stevedog:

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With the best will in the world Helm that setup isn't really one you could , hand on heart, say gives you a true picture of anything.

Ie ,Anything with a tendency towards a strident upper mid will sound exactly so and then some in spades through your setup. On other speakers that might well not be so nearly as apparent.

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Well i also used a samll pair of my creative speaker's and some headphones.

And also i've been using my speakers for about 4 years now (before that ms 10's) and i know a good sound on them.

But the big thing i noticed first was that the differnce is not so small. I had logic running with some of my own riff's then a/b them to reason.

I could tell on a pair of £10 headphones it was all wrong, the bass was all flabby and the mid was all plasticy and the less said about the harsh gravely high end the better. So to use bigger better speaker's would only be excessive, but i did anyway. (sorry this is about subtractor) I stick by my original statement it sound's crap. It's sound's like the plug in's in logic or cubase. I really think that the only decent attempt at virtual gear is the ms20 cell. But even thats thin sterile and rubbish. Real keyboard's have loads of nut's and bolt's giving off loads of distortio's thats why they sound bonus game.

Quote MR FRIGHT:

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Sle come on mate...

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{Points politely in the direction of the "Community/Open Mic" forum}

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Stuff what I done

Quote thorbing purple helm lord:

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Real keyboard's have loads of nut's and bolt's giving off loads of distortio's thats why they sound bonus game.

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And here we have the crux.. Sigh.

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Stuff what I done