Reason 6, Propellerhead

Reason is a virtual studio rack with all the tools and instruments you need to turn your ideas into music. With its generous sound bank and intuitive flow, Reason helps you along in the creative process and is the music software that never gets in your way.

Walk into any professional recording studio and you will see racks filled to the brim with different tools used in music production from reverb to compressors, vocoders, synths, distortion units, and parametric EQs. The studio's rack is the heart of its creative factory. Reason and Record are no different. That is why we have outfitted your computer with a virtual rack filled with all the same gear. They look and function exactly like their hardware cousins. Even better, they sound just as good too.

Unlike a real studio, however, if you want another synth or an extra compressor you can create one from a menu rather than taking that second job or signing up for those experimental clinical drug trials.

What's new in Reason 6?

Besides fusing together Reason and Record in the same software, It's now 64bit and comes with some new cool FX racks:

-Pulveriser Demolition

Pulveriser brings together crunchy compression, dirty distortion, a multimode filter and flexible modulation in a single sound-crunching effect. Crush, mangle, and destroy your sounds. Apply careful parallel compression to bring out the details of a sample or recording. Use the envelope follower when recording live instruments for responsive, expressive filter effects.

Squash and Dirt
First up in Pulveriser's signal chain comes the Compression and Distortion — Squash and Dirt — controls. The Squash compressor goes from zero to eleven before you've even turned it halfway up, while Dirt is suitable for everything from adding warmth to an analog kick drum, making lead guitars gently weep, or just totally beating the crap out of your sounds.

Multi-mode filter
Next comes a multi-mode filter with a selectable Low Pass, Low Pass + Notch, Band Pass, High Pass, and Comb Filter setting for further processing. A selector lets you put the filter post the distortion in the signal chain, allowing for a soft, warm sound.

Modulation
Pulveriser's Envelope Follower gives you organic playable modulation of the filter and LFO speed — while the LFO can be applied to modulate the filter, used as a stereo auto-panner, or modulate the main output level for a classic tremolo effect.

Parallel compression
Finally, the Dry/Wet control lets you dial back on the effect signal and bring back the original sound to the mix. Great for parallel compression of drums. Awesome for adding subtle grit and movement to any sound.

-The Echo

The Echo is an advanced stereo echo bringing together the brilliance of modern delays with the organic sounds of analog circuitry and old-school tape machines. The Echo is equal parts pristine stereo delay, sound sculpturing toolbox, and playable performance effect.

Delay
The Delay section contains settings for delay time, tempo sync, stereo width, and pitch. With Ping-Pong turned on the delayed signal bounces from left to right. Turning Offset up gives you a nice and wide stereo spread. Keep Pitch keeps the delay feedback in tune when modulating the delay time for bouncing ball effects.

Feedback & color
Feedback controls the number of repeats, from a single repeat to infinity, and beyond. The Offset R knob adds or subtracts feedback separately from the right channel, causing the repeats to gradually wander from one speaker to the other. Lastly, the Diffusion creates a 'smearing' effect of the repeats for a natural sounding reverb-like effect.

In the Color section limiting, overdrive, distortion, or tube distortion is introduced to the repeats. The band pass filter lets you cut frequencies from the repeats and boost them when the resonance is turned up. Use the distortion and resonant filter together for tape echo-like sounds.

Modulation
Lastly, the Modulation section features parameters for modulating the pitch and stereo image of the echos. The envelope bends the repeats, causing them to wander up or down in pitch. The Wobble emulates a tape speed wobbling effect and the LFO modulates the pitch of the left and right channels independently, introducing stereo spread at moderate settings and completely warping the signal when turned up to full.

For further tweaking of the effect, try the Duck knob. Triggered by the incoming audio signal, it causes the repeats to duck like a side chain compressor.

Breakouts, trigger & roll
Flip the rack to reveal the Breakout Jacks for inserting any number of other effect units into the feedback loop – opening up endless possibilities for creative sculpting of the echo repeats.

The Trigger and Roll modes let you play The Echo as an instrument, creating stutter and repeat effects on the fly.

-Alligator Triple Filtered Gate

Alligator is a three channel pattern-based gate effect that turns bland pads into rhythmic textures, radically twists your loops, and tweaks boring beats into blockrocking breaks. With its three parallel filters, distortion, phaser and delay, Alligator can add rhythm and accents to a flat synth sound, change the feel of a percussion loop, or be a powerful remixing tool. Add it as an insert effect on a single track to change the rhythmic feel of the sound or apply it to the whole mix for a breakdown section to completely reshape your song.

Three channels
When a signal reaches Alligator it is split into three channels, all processed separately. Each channel has its separate gate controlled by the 64 included patterns, triggered from the sequencer, the Matrix and RPG-8 Arpeggiator devices, or via a MIDI keyboard.

Filters
The three channels are then run through either a high pass, band pass or a low pass filter, shaping the sound of each of the three bands. The filters lets you split the channels into separate frequencies, or use the envelope, LFO, and resonance controls to radically alter the sounds.

FX section
Next up is the FX section where you process the channels with the built-in distortion, phaser, and delay. The separate controls for each channel lets you apply the effects to each channel individually — e.g. distort the bass harmonics, add a delay to the midrange and put phaser on the high frequencies.

Finally, there are Pan and Volume controls. Even a function as basic as stereo panning of the rhythmically gated channels can make for really interesting spatial effects.

System Requirements:

Mac OS X
Intel Mac (multiple cores highly recommended)
1 GB RAM or more
Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later
3 GB free hard disk space (program may use up to 20 GB scratch disk space)
Monitor with 1024x768 resolution or larger
A MIDI interface and a MIDI keyboard recommended
Internet connection for registration
Free USB port for Ignition Key
CoreAudio compliant audio interface or built-in audio hardware

Windows
Intel Pentium 4 / AMD Opteron or better (multiple cores highly recommended)
1GB RAM
Windows XP SP3, Vista or Windows 7 (Vista or Windows 7 required for 64-bit)
3 GB free hard disk space
Monitor with 1024x768 resolution or larger
A 16 bit Windows compatible audio card, preferably with an ASIO driver
Internet connection for registration
Free USB port for Ignition Key
A MIDI interface and a MIDI keyboard recommended