Propellerhead Reason 2.5 review

Reason is a music production tool that specialises in making the kind of warped, abstract sounds dance producers love.

Falling between a software synthesiser and a fully blown audio sequencer such as Cubase or Sonar, it provides a battery of powerful sound-producing modules, copious sound-mangling modules and a basic MIDI sequencer with which to compose tracks. It can't make audio recordings or stream prerecorded audio from hard disk, so you can't add a live vocal, for example. However, Reason can be plumbed into any audio editor that supports the ReWire protocol, allowing the two programs to run in tandem.

Most music production software uses a studio hardware analogy for its interface, but Reason takes it to the limit. As you load modules, a device appears in the virtual rack, complete with rack screws and handwritten labels. Hit the Tab key and the rack spins around to reveal how the devices are patched together. This gives great versatility to how the modules interact, although it can soon become an incomprehensible tangle of cables. It's also easy to run out of mixer inputs or outputs, and the only workaround is complex daisy-chaining. Other software's expandable mixers work much better in this respect.

No new synths have been added since version 2, but it's hard to imagine a sound that's not obtainable from the analogue synth, granular synth, beatbox, loop manipulator and pair of samplers provided. Each one is versatile and comes with a solid collection of contemporary, inspiring presets.

The effects section used to look a little weak, but version 2.5 changes that. The RV7000 Advanced Reverb has a level of quality that's well beyond other bundled reverbs. The Scream 4 Sound Destruction Unit is possibly the best distortion effect we've heard on a PC, while the BV512 recreates that classic of weird effects, the vocoder. It's a shame the EQ and compressor effects haven't been upgraded at the same time, though.

Everything it can do, Reason does sublimely. Its synths sound great and the flexibility they offer is truly inspiring, and the new effects are just as impressive. Even basic audio recording and editing would massively boost its usefulness for many users, but as it stands, Reason is an excellent addition to any ReWire-compatible editor, and tremendous fun.