Review - Propellerhead Reason 7

Those of you who dabble in home music production will no doubt be familiar with Propellerhead’s Reason platform. An entirely self-contained digital production studio, it’s been around since December 2000, and it’s managed to gain a huge amount of support from the electronic music production world – even if it did take a little time to become accepted as a “serious” piece of kit.

The beauty of Reason has always been the fact that it comes with everything you need included. Unlike other solutions, you don’t need to run out and buy an assortment of VST instruments to expand your sonic arsenal, rather you can rely on the in-built suite of synths, drum machines, effects units, mixers and utilities. However, with Reason 7, things have changed a little.

This time around, you’re able to use Reason’s MIDI out support to control your favourite external hardware. It’s an addition the Reason community has been crying out for now for years, so it’s very welcome – and it works a charm. On top of that, you’ve now been afforded more creative control over your audio recordings than ever thanks to refinements in the software’s hit detection, quantization and REX file control, while a built in spectrum analyzer will ensure you can keep a watchful eye on how your tracks are behaving within the frequency spectrum.

As well as support for even more audio formats this time around, users can also take advantage of the ever-increasing library of Rack Extension plug-ins, should you fancy something a little bit different. These were introduced with Reason 6.5 and have proven to be a real hit – even if some claim they fly in the face of the whole “self-contained” tag Reason has built up over the years.

While there are still some sceptics out there when it comes to Reason, in our opinion it’s a tremendous piece of software that’ll do a great job for newcomers and seasoned hands alike. The vast improvements in the way the software handles audio down through the past few years, coupled with an expanded sound library make this the perfect addition to any home studio, no matter how basic or advanced.

Review - Propellerhead Reason 7 on ClickOnline.com