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Propellerheads Reason v3x
Few software titles can claim to have
revolutionised the computer music scene as
much as Propellerhead’s Reason has. Right
from v1.0 Reason was a solid and reliable
all-in-one package that gave users a whole
rack full of toys to play with in an
environment so intuitive that anyone could
dive in, grab some cables (of the virtual
kind) and start making music. It looked
great, sounded even better and proved that
stability, and a “hands on” method of
operation was no longer the preserve of
hardware.
In the four years since its release, Reason
has continued to develop and grow both in
terms of its user base, and also in the form
of some quite significant updates which have
given us everything from minor interface
tweaks, to new instruments and effects.
Reason 3.0 is certainly no exception.
The last two updates focused on bringing us
some neat new toys. The NN-XT (which,
despite its small fiddly display, is one of
my favourite software samplers) and Malstrom
granular/wavetable hybrid synth were
noteworthy additions, and we also were
treated to some audio/cv splitters and
mergers, aptly named Spiders, on account of
the tangle of wires which emanate from them.
You’ll be glad to hear that version 3
doesn’t disappoint on this front, although
there are no new instruments to speak of.
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One very welcome addition to Reason is that
of control surface mappings. If you own a
MIDI control surface, or a keyboard with one
built in, chances are Reason has a profile
for it. What this means is that you can
simply tell Reason what keyboard/surface you
own, and it will call up preset controller
maps for every device without you having to
do a thing. All the most common parameters
are automatically distributed across
whatever knobs and faders you happen to have
connected. This certainly takes some of the
tedium out of mapping, but of course you can
still do it yourself. |
The most major addition is the Combinator
which is doubtlessly something many Reason
users have been craving since it first came
out. The Combinator…combines - tada - an
unlimited number of instruments and effects,
and packages them all into one device which
has its own routable controller matrix. The
possible applications of the Combinator are
numerous (reducing clutter for example) but
the main intention was to provide a method
of creating rich, layered sounds and/or
complex chains of effects which would
otherwise turn your humble studio rack into
a full on sky-scraper. It even allows you to
map various instruments within a Combinator
patch to different keys and velocity levels.
So while there are no new instruments
per-se…you can now construct your own,
complete with their own FX configurations
and custom patching.
Second to the Combinator in terms of
usefulness is the new M-Class suite of
mastering units. A graphic EQ with lo/hi
shelving and two band pass filters, stereo
image enhancer with user definable crossover
for hi and low frequency splitting, advanced
compressor and a loudness maximiser have now
been added to your arsenal. Of course these
units can be used anywhere in the signal
path, which is a relief for those of us who
didn’t get on too well with the rather
primitive P-EQ2 unit, but they work best in
between the mixer and hardware interface.
And yes, Reason now auto-patches devices
inserted into this region. These new devices
really give finished songs that nice
polished feel that can usually only be
achieved by cramming your mix through
external mastering software. I even tried
running some SX mix downs through them and
the results were surprisingly good.
Continuing with the trend of handy devices
is the 6:2 line mixer. This rather bland
looking strip of knobs allows you to take up
to six audio signals and send them back out
as a stereo pair. Sounds a lot like the
Spider Merger/Splitter right? Well that’s
true to a degree, but with individual volume
and pan controls for each channel, not to
mention one send-effect slot, the 6:2 line
mixer will quickly become an invaluable tool
for sub-mixing drum kits, or instruments
within a Combinator patch. And of course
this also saves precious channels on your
main mixer, which is great if you’re part of
the lazy club and make a new sampler for
every incidental sound. Not that this
reviewer has ever done that.
So that’s the new devices out of the way,
what else is new? Well for starters, the
Soundbank library is bigger and most
definitely better. There’s a fantastic
selection of brand new sounds, most of which
will slot straight into any track, and in
the case of the more abstract instruments,
will probably give you ideas for new ones.
And many of the standard sounds have been
given a significant overhaul. The
sound/patch browser has also been given a
new look and a greater degree of
functionality. Resembling the classic
“Explore” style of navigation found in
Windows, hopping between directories is a
cinch and a vastly improved “Favourites”
system makes sure your dearest samples are
always your nearest.
The sequencer itself has also undergone some
minor changes in the way that tracks are
handled; you can now solo tracks, and also
group them.
So a great piece of software just got better
– surely nothing can be wrong! Well, no
software is perfect and along with a whole
bunch of fantastic improvements, there are a
few very minor cons. For one, Reason now
resides in a “floating” window above the
desktop, similar to many Mac applications.
This means that rather than a project being
contained within the application, the
project is the application. So if you close
a project to open another, you’ll find
yourself staring at the desktop and you’ll
need to re-launch Reason. It’s a very minor
thing, but it’s mildly annoying. You always
have to keep one song open in order to load
another. Which seems kind of clumsy and
un-necessary, but I might be the only person
who has a problem with it. Perhaps as a
knock-on effect of the new browser system,
devices no longer remember the last location
to be accessed. So if you make an
instrument, load a patch, then make another
of the same instrument and go to load a
patch from the same location, you have to
navigate back to the folder you were just
in. Again – a very minor issue, but it was
little intuitive features in the previous
version such as the memorising of patch
locations that, in cumulative terms, shaved
off a lot of time in the grand scheme of
things. Also, some of the patches are very
CPU hungry and so if you’re thinking of
instantiating Reason 3 as a slave to Cubase
or the like, you might want to wait until
you’ve frozen particularly processor
intensive tracks before you try and use them
(specifically Combinator patches). Of course
this might not be the case if you’re running
on an all singing, all dancing dual
processor machine with more RAM than most of
us have hard disk space. But not all of us
are quite so lucky. Also, the sequencer
remains somewhat fiddly. There’s still no
pre-roll option when recording, and notes
you play at the start of a part end up at
the end, or duplicated at the beginning
thereby killing the note altogether, or
worse, creating a deafening pop because it
has been mysteriously duplicated five times.
There’s still no tempo track automation, no
time signature automation. Of course, this
can all be resolved by simply syncing Reason
to a host sequencer, but considering it
manages everything else so well as a
standalone product, it seems unfortunate
that the sequencer still needs so much work.
The bottom line is, however, that you’d be
hard pushed to find another single piece of
software so feature packed, and as versatile
as Reason. For whatever its shortcomings,
and lets be honest; it has hardly any,
Reason remains king of its domain and now
with the added controller support, and
extended options for creating new and
exciting layered/split instruments, its
taken a very bold step into the live arena,
and can now be seen as a performance
instrument in its own right.
There is no doubt that Reason will continue
to improve, constantly adding new devices
and new features. What the future holds for
this software, who can say for sure? But one
thing is certain – Reason has arrived, and
is here to stay.
Review by
Chimpspanner
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