Product Reviews

If you wanted to build your own music studio, it would cost you thousands of pounds - not to mention taking up a whole room in your house. And every time you wanted a new a new synthesiser, sampler or effects unit, you'd need to go and buy one. If that sounds like too much hassle, don't despair. Propellerhead's Reason turns a PC into a virtual music studio.

Reason's interface actually looks like a rack of equipment you'd find in a real-life music studio. But instead of having a trek to the shops each time you want a new synth, sampler or effects unit, in Reason you just select the one you want from a drop-down menu.

Reason's main control screen presents you with a virtual studio rack, on which you can place each of its modules. These include a virtual mixing desk, a range of synthesisers, and effects units for warping sound in exotic ways. Hit the tab button, and the view flips to the back of the virtual studio rack, displaying all the connectors and cables (known as 'patch cords') that you have virtually 'plugged in'. To experiment with routing synthesisers through different effects, you just unplug a cable and plug it in somewhere else.

Reason has some of the best-sounding synthesisers we've heard. Its analogue-style and granular synths sound gutsy and powerful, and the collection of samplers, which specialise in drum hits, drum loops and tuned instruments respectively, come with classy, fresh sample libraries and plenty of sound-sculpting potential. The general-purpose sampler

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and its orchestral sound bank are particular highlights, and compare well with standalone programs that cost as much as the entire Reason package.

Meanwhile, the sequencer that's used to record performances and arrange tracks offers only basic MIDI editing and no audio recording/editing facilities. As such, it's not possible to record or import live performances made with a microphone. However, Reason can run in tandem with audio sequencers, such as Cubase and Tracktion, which support ReWire, a software system that effectively turns Reason into what music producers call a 'plug-in'. This means you can record audio performances in Tracktion and have Reason linked up seamlessly in the background providing all the sounds, samples and beats.

Version 3 of Reason introduces the Combinator module, which provides a shell in which other sound-making modules can be layered and connected in pretty much any way. This means it's now possible to play two or more synth modules at once from the same MIDI keyboard, but it also gives the software designers a way to create complex multi-part synthesizer presets, complete with effects. The resulting preset library shows how flexible the Combinator is, providing a stunning array of rich, exciting sounds that surpass anything that any individual module can produce. The other key update is the MClass Mastering Suite. This comprises a range of professional effects such as EQ, compression, stereo width and limiting effects.

Reason has its limitations - its MIDI sequencer is basic, and it provides no recording facilites. But the only reason these shortcomings stand out is that the program is so very, very good in every other way. It's so inspiring and fun to use that we wish it could be the only piece of software we needed to take a project from start to finish, but that's only the case if you produce purely electronic music.

Niggles aside, Reason is incredibly good value. Setting up a 'real' studio that offers you as much as Reason would cost you thousands of pounds. It's fun, easy to use and achieves complex and precise results.