As far as final production is concerned the Mastering suite units, 4-Band Parametric EQ with low cut, compressor, limiter & stereo imager provide the possiblity of giving it the "fat" sound it was lacking before.(though it was tediously possible and fun only in a geeky kind of way) The Combinator unit allows creating new instrument/fx presets out of multiple units. There are four knobs and buttons that can be assigned the any of the controls of the units contained within. Two freely assignable slots in the Cobinator's Programmer allow one knob to be linked to three controls(eg. cutoff, resonance, output level). There's keymapping as well and more. I'll stop here before I get carried away into all the functions and other units. But I think this highlights the main bits. An option to switch the outputs of the knobs of the Combinator between linear and logarithmic would be nice. Together with the new line mixer(simple, six stereo channels) and audio/cv merger/splitters, setups only theoretically possible in a studio with a 19" hardware rack can be created - "the cpu's the limit". Also new is a growing list of directly suported controllers (including motorised faders) so it saves a lot of time not having to create custom mappings. There still is need for an external audio editor and I recommend the use of ReCycle. I wouldn't want to see audio editing functions within Reason though. Something could be incorporated though to make the inclusion of long audio files (eg. vocal tracks) easier. I would also like to see a realtime clock to make the production for specific purposes (eg videos) easier and also a spectral analyzer for the mastering. At that price (I think it's great value for money) they can't expect everyone who buys it to also be able to afford studio qulity amps, monitors and room. Some keyboard shortcuts for use within the sequencer would be nice. Most "missing" features can added by using the ReWire function to combine Reason with software such as Ableton Live, Cakewalk Sonar, Cubase, Fruity Loops... .

Price paid

$460USD

Anyone with some experience in sequencing and soft- or hardware- synths should have no problems using Reason. There are good tutorials on the Propellerhead website. The possibilty to route audio and cv can be little confusing if you don't know what the controls on the units do. Yet cool things can be created accidentally The sequencer although allowing almost all functions to be controlled requires a lot of moving the mouse about and clicking to select different tools and views. I find this can disrupt the workflow unless one has the speed and precison of an experienced CS-player. It would be nice to be able to set points and tangents for the controller curves instead of having to draw them with the mouse.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

Excellent sound quality possible. Has become much easier with the introduction of mastering units and Combinator device(see features) in 3.0. Only reason some of the out of the box sounds are thin is because there are no fx on them.

Although the last update to Reason 3.0.4 was actually a whole new installation, it was released so fast that I didn't have the time to encounter any of the bugs mentioned in 3.0 and 3.0.3. I find the soundquality to cpu load very high compared to other solutions. ie a synth within in Reason produces less cpu load than most other softsynths if they are set up to produce the same sound. If wasn't for the issues with the usability of the sequencer, I'd give Reson higher ratings for overall quality.

OVERALL OPINION

Lots!!! I haven't heard any single software soltution capable of producing such a sound at a practical cpu load. I'll give a ten out of ten whe they incorporate the features I mentioned in "Features" and "Usability".

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: mousejunkie ( 9-, 2005)