According to the manual:

Reason can act as Host or Device. That is, Reason can transmit MIDI Clock signals and also receive them.

That's why I expected that something would happen when triggering play/stop in Vegas or in Reason.

The manual mentions the MIDI messages: Clock, Start, Stop, Continue, and Song Position Pointers:

MIDI Clock actually consists of five type of messages: The actual clock (the metronome that establishes the tempo), Start, Stop and Continue commands and Song Position Pointers. This last type of message contains information about positions, so that a program for example “knows” where in a Song to start playback from. Normally, this ensures that you can locate to any position and activate playback from there. In older devices, Song Position Pointers might not be implemented. This means that you will be able to synchronize properly only if you start both devices from the absolute beginning of the song.

It seems weird that even though Measures & Beats is available as a Time Format (incl. the use as a Ruler time format in Project Properties), Song Position Pointers are not supported.

One would expect Vegas at least react to (or output) basic MIDI messages like Start and Stop. So this issue makes me wonder if anyone has been able to successfully establish a link with other MIDI devices.

@Vincent-Mesman

I tried to sync Vegas and Cubase but results were rather poor. I used virtual midi ports. Cubase was master sending midi time clock to Vegas. When starting playback in Cubase Vegas would follow. But there was about 1 second delay before Vegas locked in to incoming midi. It didn't work at all in stop mode. When relocating cursor in Cubase Vegas would not follow until playback was started.

The other way... trying to make Cubase follow Vegas I didn't manage at all.

So I gave up. You may have more success with Reason. Cubase doesn't like to be slaved.

The only way I could think of doing it without lag would be to use a midi to keyboard command app that takes the midi signal and interprets it into a keyboard button press, then map that button to do what you wanted in VEGAS (this would come with the limitation of VEGAS having to be the window currently selected for this to work). VEGAS could use some MIDI love, hopefully that can happen in the future.

Ideally, we'd have VSTi support, and could load the Reason rack directly into VEGAS as a VST.

Nobody would seriously expect Vegas to show some MIDI/sync love in any kind of future.

It won't simply happen, as it never happened in the past.

Vegas has always been a nightmare to sync with, unreliable slave, nothing to count on.

They've never improved anything in that regards, we could have had a tiny chance getting it fixed while Vegas was still owned by Sonic Foundry, however when it became Sony's property, and now Magix, there was absolutely nothing done in that regard.

Long time Vegas user speaking here (from version 1 !!!)

Best version remains Vegas 4, Fast, reliable, rock solid, no crashes (but yet, no sync)

I constantly used it in my shows, people around me where intimidated by his speed...

Then Sony spoiled it all.

A nightmare, since then...

Magix has already opened the door to Vegas / Sequoia / Samplitude integration with the announcement of their new CPO and product strategy:

https://www.magix.com/us/press/detail/news/magix-new-strategy/

Long time Vegas user speaking here (from version 1 !!!)

"Version 1" of Vegas is a Digital Audio Workstation, not a video editor.

Video editing was introduced at Sonic Foundry in "Vegas Video 2."

Thanks, Mark, that's true, however started with Vegas 1 purely for audio purpose. Thanks for the info

I used to do this all the time with Vegas but haven’t done so since V4. I used to use virtual midi cable or Midi Yoke to get midi sync between Vegas and Acid Pro. I just had to use an external mixer to get audio from one app into the other.

The Vegas audio community pushed hard around that same time for Vegas to support Rewire since it was a better sample accurate sync method but it never happened. Apparently a lot of effort to make it work correctly with video sync timing issues. So all the audio folks moved onto Reaper and other alternatives while Sony fulfilled its video NLE dreams with its continued disregard of the music industry creators. For some reason the Reaper developers were able to achieve what Sony never could by putting Video, Audio and Midi creation tools along with all the Midi sync, Rewire and its own ReaRoute inter app sync protocol solutions into Reaper which Sony never could seem to figure out. I was really hoping when Magix took ownership of Vegas something would have been developed to sync Vegas with all their other music creation tools but here we are…