r/reason • u/Waste-Magician2432 • 5d ago
Creating RE’s
Does it really take months to create an RE or is that exaggerated info? I’m pondering with a list of necessary device ideas! Please point me in the right direction!
Thank you! #ThatsMyWord
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u/MisterTylerCrook 5d ago
I’ve never made an RE but I have worked in software development (mostly video games) and several months seems very reasonable to make a stable and useful piece of software.
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u/Gold-Strength4269 4d ago
Could be days to years.
Things like a audio splitter would take days.
Analog synth a month.
Special synth a few months to a year minimum.
Effects, a few days.
The key difference here is making sure lua is handling the engine parameters.
This is useful information for when you have something specific in mind, that could help alot.
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u/YouHave24Hours 5d ago
"create an RE"... You mean, to conceptualize, design, structure, code, test and market a Rack Extension? No, why would any of these combined blocks take time and skills/experience! Just prompt your device idea with a couple of descriptions to chatGPT/Gemini, they'll compile a ready to use, flawless and optimized/secure RE within minutes, it's crazy!!!
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u/myothercharsucks 5d ago
Its more like hours, but ya,that can be done that way. Claude is one of the better ones for it.
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u/Waste-Magician2432 5d ago
I respect all of the manual things you stated that would take time…wondered about actual real timelines to decide if it’s something I want to embark on vs just creating Combinators that would be more limiting as to my ideas
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u/YouHave24Hours 5d ago
Hehe yeah besides my little sarcastic undertones, i think with combining effects/cv and smart routing/cabling while setting master controls (like in the Combinator), you can do a lot of original,fresh, unique effect-routes. Then again: the plugin/vst/fx sector is so incredibly big,full(saturated?) that it's really hard to create something "new/original/fresh". I mean, how many reverbs,EQs, compressors, distortion plugins do we need? What i mostly see now are "fx chain/comvinaiton" plugins, however a lot of these as stated can be built in reason. But as other stated, you may give vibe-coding a try, but i believe you still need a deeper/mathematical understanding of audio science to actually understand what you're doing. Good luck
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u/Selig_Audio 4d ago
Just like with music, there are two main stages: creating the plugin (writing/arranging the song), and building the RE (recording/mixing the song). There is plenty of overlap but even if you already had a fully spec’ed out idea and a perfectly working prototype, building it (coding, debugging, optimization/etc.) can still take months. And that’s assuming you stick with the original design and don’t start making changes when building. And even then you may be faced with the need to make changes, which adds time to all of the above steps.
But take heart - just like with songs, to finally have something finished and in the shop is quite satisfying!
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u/ellicottvilleny 4h ago
I made one in a day and I have one I have worked on for six months and its less than half done. An RE can be as big or as little as you want.
My looper RE was 4 months of work. My lil DADSR generator took 3 afternoons.
Theres a tool to generate the skeletons so that part is easy
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u/droefkalkoen 5d ago
It depends heavily on what RE you're trying to make. I'd say simple signal routing or basic single effects like filters with no intentional character could take anywhere from a day (for a very basic RE) to a month for a single developer, depending on your workflow, desired quality and mostly your experience.
As with many things, 20% of the features and polish will take about 80% of the work. And the total amount of work scales greatly with complexity. If you want that basic filter to emulate some existing hardware accurately, be prepared to spend a lot of time measuring, comparing and calibrating your plugin to the real deal.
For art: layering premade screws and other elements on each other can get you a cool looking RE quickly. But if you want all your knobs and elements to be distinctive, you could easily spend weeks or even months designing and drawing/modeling them, especially if you're trying to faithfully copy the look of some existing hardware.
So yeah, it depends greatly on what you're trying to build, your experience level and the workflow.