Product Reviews

Propellerhead's Reason was the first professional-quality package that could genuinely claim to be a 'studio in a box'. It combined high-quality software synthesis with innovative features, and gave rise to a product that many users of fully fledged sequencers adopted as a secondary working environment.

Reason 2 offers no great changes in basic operation. It sticks with the metaphor of a rack of hardware music equipment - a mixer, into which you patch sound-generation units and their associated effects. Press the Tab key and the rack flips, revealing rear panels with swinging cables, which you can drag and drop for complex patching of both audio and control signals.

The old favourites are all present: the NN-19 sampler, DrRex loop player, Redrum beatbox, Subtractor analog synth, Matrix pattern sequencer and rack effects. All are practically identical to their Reason 1 equivalents, although their Low Frequency Oscillators (LFOs), where present, can now be synchronised with the tempo.

These are joined by a new synthesizer module called Malstrm, which combines traditional wavetable synthesis (where samples are used as the basic waveforms for oscillators) with granular synthesis. This involves splitting waveforms into tiny millisecond grains, allowing numerous clever audio processes to stretch and mangle the resultant sound. Wavetables therefore become 'graintables', giving rise to a remarkable synthesizer with a standard - if complex - routing system that gives anything but standard results.

Weird evolving pads and scratchy textures are its forte, though it can pass as a standard analog synth as long as the graintable oscillators aren't modulated too much. But this would be a crying waste, because the routing of control signals is so unusual - I found unique sounds just tweaks away from presets.

Those who prefer more conventional sound-generation techniques may turn to the new NN-XT sampler module that complements the simpler NN-19. Reason 1 was released when software sampling was in its infancy; with HALion (see Reviews, issue 85, p183) and Kontakt (see p142), the ante has been upped considerably, hence a more powerful device is required to bring Reason back into the

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leading pack.

NN-XT is enhanced to allow crossfading between sample zones and velocity layering. When you have only a handful of samples of particular notes to spread across a keyboard, the transitions between the notes based on one sample, and those based on the next, may stand out. Crossfading between makes this transition more gradual, as they're overlapped and played together at their boundaries. Similarly, having velocity layering or switching lets you play different samples depending on how hard you hit the keys; these too can be crossfaded. The editing system is similar to most other soft samplers and is quick and easy to use.

What sets NN-XT apart from the others, however, is its ability to detect the pitch of each sample when you import a bunch at a time, and set the root note accordingly. All soft samplers are crying out for this facility, yet it's one 'bundled' inside a complete studio that wins the prize. Setting up a new instrument from a multisample set is a breeze, though on occasions the pitch detection fails with complex samples resulting in lots of motion or 'dirt'.

Both of Reason's samplers now import SoundFonts, overcoming one major criticism from users who have built up collections for use with Sound Blaster cards. The other infuriating aspect of Reason 1 was the sequencer. Its functionality was fine, but its width was limited to that of the rack. With Reason 2, you can detach the sequencer from the rack and sit it in its own window - on another monitor if you so choose. It also has a number of navigational and editing improvements, most notably a Hand tool for dragging within the editing window, and a Line tool for drawing automation data.

The sequencer is still underpowered compared with dedicated products, but remains a pleasure to use - clear, simple to learn and ideal for mixing pattern-based music with conventional linear sequencing. And, as ever, the automation system is easy to understand and work with - once you've recorded any knob tweaking on a module, it receives a green line around it and moves of its own accord on playback. The automation data can then be edited manually in the sequencer.

I suspect purchasers of Reason 1 would have cried 'foul' had the £55 upgrade price not been so reasonable, and the upgrade's free if you purchased Reason 1 after 1 March 2002. The addition of Malstrm and NN-XT is a bargain given the price of most soft synths and, now the sequencer-width limitation is gone, Reason is more capable than ever of delivering a professional track.

However, some caveats remain; the instrument sample sets, excepting the new Orkester orchestral sounds, remain insipid, and the effects units leave much to be desired. But even at full price, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks by a factor of ten to one.