Review of Reason 4

[Tweak]

http://www.zzounds.com/a--3745/item--PP ... --showroom

Review of Reason 4


Reason 4.0 introduces 4 major features into its award winning virtual synth rack.
1. Thor
2. The RPG 8 arpeggiator
3. A revamped sequencer
4. A new groove engine called re-groove.
There also appears to be better support for midi controllers and control surfaces
Finally there is a new "Premium Edition" version of Reason 4.0 which adds four Propellerhead Hypersampled ReFill sound libraries:
http://www.zzounds.com/a--3745/item--PP ... --showroom

* Reason Drum Kits 2
* Reason Pianos
* Abbey Road Keyboards
* Reason Electric Bass

Read the rest

http://tweakheadz.com/reviews/review_of_reason_4.html

[Tweak]

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[seanakio]

good review tweak, I just have to point out that the flow of working with reason4 is very clean. There are some minor hiccups but overall it is a great program to work with. It lets me get my ideas out quickly and the program itself is very sturdy and doesn't take up a lot of cpu. Just thought Id add my 2 cents.

[mcatalao]

Hi Tweak!

I made a big comment the other day (one of those REALLY BIG ONES!!!) but when i was going to save the reply, it vanished...

Again, another great article! Actually, i may say one of the reasons i bought reason was because i've read your reviews on the previous versions.

Though i have some comments and areas that i digress and, are of course not critics to the quality of your article and more opinions from my experience with reason.

First of all, let me describe more deeply, the combo refills. The Studio Combo is a bundle of 4 refills created by Propellerheads.

The great value of this refills, is the way they are created. Proppelerheads use a technique they call Hyper Sampling. This Hyper sampling is a mixture of multi-sample, with multi microphone samples. So, for each sound patch, not only is created a multi sample, multi dinamic patch, as also, there are multiple versions of the instrument recorded with different microphones and techniques.
See the example of Reason pianos.

Most pianos are sampled with n-layers of samples, where each layer is assigne to a dynamic range. Though the recording is made with a specific set of microphones and that's it. The biggest value on this approach is that most sampled pianos are very natural and very BIG, because the dynamic ranges are small, and the sampling is done note to note, and the recorded note is sample from the attack to the full decay (no loops). This is a really good an natural way of sampling and creating a really natural sounding instrument but comes at 2 costs: Performance and Hard drive quota! Renoun pianos of this type, like Ivory, use up to 40 GB hdd, and a lot hordeal from the processor to deal with this.

Hypersamplig is not better or worse, its different. And has more plasticity than a full blown piano, because you can "mold" the instrument sound to your mix, altering the volume of each microphone source.
In other hand, propellerheads does not sample note to note (each sample is spanned by 2 or 3 notes). This would seem a disavantage (and strictly quality wise it is!) but just listen to the sound of it...

Meawhile, all the refills from the combo were created in that way.

This takes me to the part i digress from your article.

Though at first reason was an application more directed to the electronic musician, there were some introdutions from v2.5 that make reason a very natural sound generator, and sampler, and these refills make very good use of these introdutions.

First of all, the NN-XT. This was the most important, bringing to reason the ability to multi sample (well, nn-xt is not an actual sampler, is more like a rompler in the sence that you just manipulate already created sample files), but is a very powerfull one.

Then some time later, the Combinator, a device that allows to connect multiple sound generators inside of it, and create internal routings between them. The possibilities from this device are almost infinite.

The addition of a high quality, programmable reverb unit, and the Scream distortion unit were also great. After that, a set of mastering devices, that do a good job if used wised.

Not to mention, that all the rest of the instruments, even synths, are very usable on other type of music than strictly electronica.

Meanwhyle, record is here.

I'm betatesting, and am bound to some secrecy so, can't add much than what i said about it in the reason forum.

But i'll do a full review on it as soon as it is released, if you wish!