That sounds like a slippery slope that wouldn’t take me out of the inherent issues with GAS: wasting time watching reviews and tutorials on gear you don’t need. That said, I will definitely keep doing some of that, because I’ve found some gems that I really want to keep, like the Hydrasynth. Meaning, there’s probably more out there.
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Yeah, that’s where I’m kind of netting out here. It’s a big waste of time when you spend hours each day looking at youtube. Life is too short for that.
Thanks everyone for all of your input! This thread helped me clarify one thing for myself: it’s not that I don’t want to keep hardware in my workflow, I actually love parts of it. The realization is that I don’t think I need hardware to be the brain/master of my setup: arrangement, sequencing, mixing. There’s little reason why I can’t keep using the DAW for that and just focus my hardware investment on the things that actually improve my creativity and give me enjoyment. Such as the Hydrasynth: it gives me tremendous joy to play with, and it takes me to new places and offers so much inspiration with the hands-on approach, the robust knobs, and the instant reward.
With this in mind, the most rational outcome of this may be to sell the MPC One and the MC-101, and to keep the Hydrasynth and the Minilogue XD. And then to invest in getting comfortable with a more future-proof DAW, starting with an evaluation of Reaper.
So:
- Sequencing, arranging, mixing, “mastering”: a DAW with customizable keyboard shortcuts and decent midi controller mapping (i.e. not Reason 10)
- Inspiration, song ideas, sketching, hands-on control: hardware, particularly synthesizers. And maybe a drum computer down the road… (cue Syntakt GAS again, but let’s see what the DAW can offer first).
The journey continues!
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That’s the keyword of course. It sounds like you’re not enjoying that any more and so you’ve taken the right decision to stop. No different to gambling, “When the fun stops, stop” 
Oh and if you end up with Ableton I highly recommend the Akai APC-40 MKii - great piece of hardware, I actually got on with it better than the Push 2, but using it in an entirely different way of course.
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Go to the Bandlab site and get a free copy of Cakewalk.
If I may, don’t be too hasty to sell anything. I would gradually fold Reaper in as you learn it. A new DAW is a complete unknown and changing workflows can be surprisingly stressful.
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I wish I could download your brain for a while. I just tried Reaper and it is a UX nightmare. It ticks all the UX no-no’s (like, Yes/No answers on prompts with really complex information) and I can’t even figure out how to access any instruments or presets. All I found was ReaSynth, with zero (0) presets. Did they seriously design a DAW with no presets? I then downloaded the manual and learned on page 39 (I’m not joking) that I have to go to stash.reaper.fm to download presets. Jikes! This will take some time to learn.
Was this thing developed by engineers without looking at any of the competition? The UX is cruel! 
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Indeed, I will carefully evaluate my options and not sell things in haste.
After an hour with Reaper, I feel more miserable than ever. I feel I’d need a crash course. All the youtube tutorials made this look so easy, but they skipped the most basic steps. Like, why can’t I just enter notes into a piano roll by double clicking into the Track field? I had to record something live to even get a midi clip to edit. And where are all the synth presets of the one (1) and only included synth?
This thing looks like it was completely designed for audio files, so more of a multitrack recorder/mixer kind of environment. Zero creative flow so far.
And I thought Reason 10 felt like a blank canvas. But at least with Reason you got some color and brushes to paint with. In Reaper it’s like, “didn’t bring your own colors? here’s the door!”
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As far as I understand Reaper is meant to record to.
Unlike other DAW’s with myriad of instruments like Ableton, FL-Studio or others.
Renoise is a DAW too with no synth shipped with (although you can loop single cycles and put envelopes, or lfo’s on it…), it can load vst’s from your system, but it’s more ment to work with samples.
Different tools for different people. Perhaps you do not want Reaper 
Just guessing.
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This was exactly my experience with Reaper when trying it out after being a Reason user for a long time. The juice isnt worth the squeeze as far as relearning everything. You may get more mileage out of Ableton Live.
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Might as well throw in a recommendation for Bitwig while we’re here. I absolutely love it. Near enough everything is modulatable. Try it!
Also, it has the best help section ever. You can open up the help of any device to get loads of notes about every part of it, buuut, still be able to turn/adjust things while within the help section 
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Ableton in a good laptop like a Silicone Mac is tough to beat. I love hardware, but I have been selling a lot of mine since I got this. What has stayed? The OT, my 2 synths and some drum machines.
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If I am not mistaken, you have not talked about one more option: keep the mpc one and use it in controller mode on mpc 2.0 on your computer. No more cpu problems, track limits and you can use vst and au plugins.
If you need to go portable but need to keep the computer power, ditch the mpc one for a bus powered mpc studio. With the right configuration, you can keep your laptop closed and in a (somewhat ventilated) bag while only having to touch the mpc studio.
Use autosampling to capture some presets from your gear and off you go.
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Reaper has no instruments worth mentioning. That why I said it’s good for audio, but not for DAW-as-instrument.
It is a very efficient VST host though.
It’s initially more obtuse than other DAWs, because it’s more transparent and flexible. Things aren’t conveniently pre-wired. So you can create truly intricate routing and monitoring and etc setups. This is why it’s good if you’re recording in a studio with 12 mics and two listening rooms and etc.
It also has some extraordinary shortcuts available in the extensions. For example, ‘select all tracks, analyse, and normalise each to -17 RdBfs’ . Which is absolutely killer if you’re starting a mix down of a live band, but unnecessary for most.
For most things, I use Bitwig now. It’s the opposite - best DAW-as-instrument IMHO. But different tools for different tasks y’know.
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Trying to make 2022 the year of “getting on with what I got,” so pardon the hypocrisy - that stated, as a fellow ex-Reason user (started falling out of love during Reason 10 and migrated to Bitwig last summer) Reason usually has a sale in mid-may and it may be worth one last upgrade to get the “Rack Plugin” feature and use all of your Reason instruments in the new DAW (so you can let workflow guide your decision vs. plugins . . . if that makes sense)
Good luck!
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Yep, this is why I upgraded to 12. I don’t know if I’m going to continue on with Reason, but I wanted to take all those Rack Extensions I bought with me and their implementation of the Rack VST plugin seems like it’s going to be their main focus going forward.
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Yeah, I think I’ve already dismissed Reaper, it felt like going back to a poorly designed Windows 95 environment. They should hire a UX lead if they want to increase their sales.
I did spend an hour on Ableton too and it was much more logical and pleasing to use, but it also dawned on my just how hard it is to learn a new workflow. It made me think about the many hours I’ve put into leaning Reason and MPC.
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I did touch on it, it was part of what made me question why I use MPC One if it inevitably leads to the DAW in the end anyway.
But now that I got a first taste of just how daunting a task it is to learn a new DAW, I’m actually leaning towards taking your advice and leveraging the tools I know how to use. I was reminded of the fact that MPC2 can use vst plug-ins in computer mode, which addresses one of my biggest gripes about the MPC, the underwhelming reverb. I’m going to see if I can get Valhalla to run inside MPC with the One in controller mode.
For final mixing and mastering, I think I’m better off sticking to Reason 10 than spending hundreds of hours learning another DAW. I felt yesterday that switching DAW would take away so much from the joy of making music, which is what the MPC really enables me to do after all.
That’s a great goal for life in general, I think.
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