- Thor Polysonic Synthesizer: Thor is a semi modular synth with interchangeable oscillators and filters.
- RPG-8 Monophonic Arpeggiator: A powerful arpeggiator with multiple play modes, pattern function and much more.
- ReGroove Mixer: ReGroove mixing is a way to work creatively with grooves, timing and feel in real time.
- The New Reason Sequencer: With a whole new look, a ton of fresh features and a completely new way of handling sequencer data,
- With its six oscillator types, four filter types and endless modulation possibilities, this synth comes with a sound like nothing else on the planet.
- Hands-on access to 32 channels of groove parameters will make this an essential tool for any musician who is serious about their beats programming.
- The Reason sequencer still offers the streamlined workflow Reason is famous for, but with a new level of sophistication.
Product Description
Reason has reached the next level. Stronger, swifter and smoother to work with, Reason 4 will alter the way you create your music. Reason’s new devices and features will not only inspire you to produce great tracks, they will provide you with new ways of doing so. Reason comes in the shape of a classic studio rack, packed with all the gear you could possibly need: Samplers, Analog synths, Graintable synth, Vocoder, Mixer, Step time drum machine, Arpeggiator, Compre… More >>
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Music-Producer-Pro
This is very good software. Very professional. A bit confusing 4 newbies but, 1ce you get the hang of using the features & all, it’s really quite nice & easy. Has many useful & great features. 1 of the most complete & professional music creation suites available.
Rating: 5 / 5
Well, Reason 4.0 is amazing, no argument there. The new synth allows for a much greater range of sounds than what was previously available, and the effects and processing are worth the price tag by themselves. That much is true, and has been covered.
Time for the downside.
WHAT, exactly, were the designers thinking when they mutilated the controls and layout? I’d like to know if this was someone’s idea of “user friendly” or if that same someone just decided he hated the users entirely. If you started on 3.5 or earlier, here’s some warning.
1. Enter doesn’t snap the cursor to the beginning of the track. Keypad 0 does that now, which makes doing this more cumbersome.
2. When you switch to Edit Mode the displayed notes will not play until you un-shade the section they’re in. It doesn’t default to everything un-shaded and you can’t turn this feature off.
3. Right clicking on a note in Edit Mode doesn’t present the option of opening the Tool window. You have to open it via F8 or through the Edit Menu tab, and it stays open.
4. Transposing notes in the Tool Window can’t be done by typing the number of steps you want to move them. Oh no. Now you have to click the up arrow that many times, or click the number field and drag it.
5. Every instrument you create now defaults to one of the presets. There’s no “blank” option. What’s that, you say? That’s nothing to gripe about since you’re going to change everything anyway? Well, User I Don’t Know, try making a few Redrums. Now go to fill them with sounds. Yeah, it’s kinda confusing with everything already filled with something else unless you do it all at once, eh? Oh, and when you go to open another sound, have fun watching every file path default to the location of the Reason Sound Bank, making you click through the file path your stuff is located in for each one.
6. Ok, I can’t think of a 6 right now, but I’m not done with 5 either. It warrants another paragraph. See, point 5 -admittedly minor though it is relative to the other agonies I listed- also applies to the sampler. If you’re trying to just load in a Wav file or something to pitch shift it around you have to individually delete every OTHER sound already loaded in. Sure, you can save that blanked out session as its own patch, but it’s the principle of the thing.
None of these make the program prohibitively cumbersome, but they definitely break the flow when you’re In The Zone and trying to get your ideas down without thinking about the controls. They all detract from smooth navigation, and they’re all unnecessary. Version 3.5 was quite nearly perfect in that regard: almost identical to Pro Tools in the basics, to the point, and simple. Why on earth were these changed? A few changes here and there are fine, but if they’re going to pull this crap couldn’t they throw me a bone and provide the option of customizing? Or put a “classic” setting in?
If you’re new to Reason, buy this and you’ll never know. If you’re not, the increased capability will seem almost Faustian.
Rating: 3 / 5
Despite not recording audio, Reason is one of the most important computer music recording programs ever made. It offers a collection of synths, loop players, effects, a sequencer, drum machine and much more. The combinator is a powerful device that lets you combine devices into a powerful virtual instrument. For the advanced user, Thor is an amazin sound design tool.
Rating: 5 / 5
I have been wanting to try my hand at electronic music for years but never knew what I had to buy or had a spare thousand that I was willing to invest in it. Then nearly a decade from the time I discovered electronic music I met Reason 4. In one day I learned how to use the program and produce my first song. I had my friends listen to it and after the end of the song they would ask me what band it was. You can imagine their surprise when I said that I made it and that it was my first song.
Maybe you aren’t even all that serious about music production but just want to chill out and play around a little. Reason 4 will take your whim of playing around for half an hour and turn it into something more serious.
If you like electronic music, get Reason 4.
Rating: 5 / 5
Reason 3.0 was my first foray into the world of software synths. Though I’d done some MIDI sequencing with pre-Sonar versions of Cakewalk (and even further back with EZ Vision and a Mac Classic), all of my sound producing tools (guitars, bass, synths, drums) were hardware, and I used stand alone recording equipment (cassette, Minidisk, CD-recorder and later a Korg D16) to get most of my music in finished form There were no problems with latency, few problems with software conflicts or plugin standards, and the instant gratification of just turning on an instrument and playing (without a substantial wait for the OS to boot up) was particularly appealing to me.
I admit I was intrigued by the prospect of a software synthesizer that was playable from my PC. I also remember reading a fairly positive review of Reason 1.0 in Electronic Musician and being interested in the concept of software that looked and behaved just like real mixers, effects processors, and synthesizers.
But, I was enjoying my hardware synths and didn’t see a reason (no pun intended) to change…and wouldn’t for another 6 years.
Though I’d loosely followed Reason’s development through music mags and web sites since version 1.0, it wasn’t until Reason 3 came out I decided to give it a shot. One of the bigger selling points was it was easy on the CPU, and I didn’t feel like upgrading my PC at the time. Another factor was unlike Cakewalk’s Sonar, Propellerhead wasn’t releasing new versions EVERY year, with questionable improvements. Each upgrade had something substantial to offer and I was impressed with that. So, I bought it, installed it, and very quickly began to see the advantages of having an all-in-one software composing and recording solution. One click of “save” and EVERYthing about my recording session was collectively retained for easy call-up. All the synth module settings, the effects module routings and settings, the mixer settings, the midi sequences…EVERYthing wrapped in one nice little package. I had spent HOURS redoing my studio just to accommodate a new piece of equipment…redoing midi and audio cable routing, moving things around in the rack, swapping out keyboards. And with Reason, ALL of that effort could be saved and brought back with the click of a mouse button (or a control-S key combination!).
And then came Reason 4.0 where two of the more substantial changes for me came in the revamped, more powerful sequencer, and the new Thor Polysonic synthesizer. Thor let’s you build sounds using analog modeling, wave-table, frequency modulation, and even phase distortion synthesis made population by the Casio CZ synths from the 80’s. It’s a GREAT complement to the already respectable selection of Reason synths.
Reasons to buy Reason:
- If you want to learn the basics of recording equipment (mixers, effects, mastering, synths, drum machines, etc), but don’t want to spend $15 to $20k on the real, professional quality hardware to do so, this product is a very good way to learn first-hand how music/audio is processed, mixed, mastered, and recorded (of course, the way digital recording is exploding, pretty soon folks will mostly only know the virtual versions of all this equipment)
- Ideal tool for synth-based music composition
- Not so expensive when compared with just one medium quality hardware synth
- Low strain on the CPU
- VERY solid product (meaning it doesn’t crash hardly at all) because Propellerhead has taken the time to thoroughly test it BEFORE releasing it and letting the users find all the bugs
- Comes with a great set of usable patches, samples, drum loop files
- Great way to learn synth programming
- EXTENSIVE user base online to help learn the ins and outs of the software
- Propellerhead has awesome customer support
Reasons NOT to buy Reason:
- You don’t have a computer, or you have a very OLD computer
- You prefer recording real instruments that are REALLY played by people in real time
- You can’t use third party plug-ins with it
- You can’t easily record audio with it (unless you buy it with Reason’s new “Record” software)
If you’re new to recording and interested in creating your own music with synths, drum machines, and quality effects, for the price, this product is hard to beat. Even if you’re a beginner, there’s plenty you can do with just a little time invested. And that’s the magic of Reason…despite a fairly simplistic approach and an ease for producing music, it flexibly lets the user build as simple or complicated a virtual studio as his/her imagination (and his/her computer) can handle.
Rating: 5 / 5