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Propellerhead Reason 4.0 Details
Stronger, swifter, and smoother to work with, Reason 4 music production software will alter the way you create your music. It comes in the familiar shape of a classic studio rack, packed with all the gear you could possibly need: samplers, analog synths, graintable synth, vocoder, mixer, step-time drum machine, arpeggiator, compressors, EQ, and effects. A realtime multitrack sequencer provides full control over every detail, letting you create and edit your music quickly and intuitively. Reason 4.0 also has a massive sound bank full of sounds, loops, and patches for all possible styles of music. The devices and features added to Reason 4 software will not only inspire you to produce great tracks, they will provide you with new ways of doing so.

Sequencer
Dedicated to turning your ideas into great music, Reason 4′s sequencer is swifter, stronger, and more intuitive than ever with a whole new look, tons of fresh features and a completely new way of handling sequencer data. The key word here is workflow. A sequencer device or instrument now gets its own dedicated track, with separate lanes for note, performance, and automation data, opting for a better overview and less clutter. All sequencer data-notes, automation, the works-is now housed in clips, musical building blocks that can be opened, sliced, or moved. When a clip is moved to a new location, all its internal data follows right along with it, ending up exactly where you intended for safe, speedy sequencing. The Tool window is an ever-present floating window that provides lightning fast access to those detailed editing functions you use all the time; quantize, transpose, note velocity, note length, and legato.

RG-8 Arpeggiator
Reason 4 ships with RPG-8, a unit dedicated to the art of arpeggiation. Some arpeggiators are quite content with simply transforming chords into wandering, rhythmic melody lines. The RPG-8 monophonic arpeggiator isn’t. With a range of on-panel controls and mode selectors, a pattern section for muting selected notes in an arpeggio, and a large display showing values and positions, this device gives you full creative control over your arpeggios.

Although very hands-on and user friendly, the RPG-8 boasts some very advanced features under the surface that will change how you play Reason’s instruments. The Single Note Repeat function engages the arpeggiator only when two or more simultaneous notes are held down-letting you add sudden bursts of arpeggio to your melody lines. The Manual mode will arpeggiate notes strictly in the order they were input, for realtime arpeggio control. Try arpeggiating your breakbeats, orchestra samples, or ReCycled vocals for more dramatic flair.

ReGroove Mixer
If you want your tracks to flow with a less rigid, less programmed feel, a regular shuffle control just doesn’t cut it. The ReGroove mixer, Reason 4′s real-time groove management device gives you more than just a set of sequencer swing parameters, you can apply its timing magic nondestructively, giving you freedom to adjust its settings and fine-tune your groove as your music is playing.

Lock all your tracks together into one unified feel, or apply different settings to up to 32 musical elements in your song for ultimate control. Each of the groove channels features controls for groove amount, slide, and shuffle, plus more detailed settings. The Reason 4 sound bank comes with a great selection of groove patches, many of them created from analyzed recordings of real musicians, as well as classic groovy tracks.

Thor Polysonic Synthesizer
Thor has the amazing ability to sound like every synthesizer imaginable and like none you’ve ever heard before too. Where other synths use one specific form of synthesis and one single filter, the Thor polysonic synthesizer features six different oscillator types and four unique filters. This gives you an unstoppable monster of a sound generator that utilizes synthesizer technology from the last 40 years.

Six open filter and oscillator slots let you load up three different synth filters and three separate oscillators simultaneously, allowing you to dial in synth sounds that are completely original. An all-powerful modulation matrix gives you complete control over your signal flow, letting you modulate anything within Thor with anything within Thor.

At the bottom of this synth sits an analog style step sequencer with more than one twist. Being every bit as modular as the rest of Thor’s components, this step sequencer does more than just play melodies. It can be used as a modulation tool, to trigger phrases from specific keys, create intense arpeggios, and generate piercing percussion lines. With its unique selection of oscillator types and synth filters, the Thor polysonic synthesizer is a veritable synth museum. It may have one foot in history, but its sound is pure future.

Localization
When you install Reason 4, you can now choose between four different language versions: English, French, German, or Japanese. The entire application, from installer to menus and help files, will speak the chosen language.

Factory Sound Bank
Reason 4 wouldn’t be a true Reason product without its huge Factory Sound Bank. The Sound Bank holds patches for all devices in Reason to help you get going instantly including Thor patches; more Combinator patches, including arpeggio-driven patches using the RPG-8 arpeggiator; groove files for ReGroove; new ReDrum drum patches; and song starters.

Signature patches
Having the best sounding synth on earth is a lot more fun if you have a set of great patches to play with. Propellerhead invited some of the world’s leading synthesists and sound developers to add their own Thor patches to the Reason Sound Bank, including Daniel Wang, Morgan Geist, Pascal Gabriel, Plaid, Richard Barbieri, Richard Devine, Sonic Boom, Tipper, Two Lone Swordsmen, Gordon Reid, and Vengeance.

Tool Window
The new Tools Window is a floating window containing all your most frequently used tools. With it, you can create new devices by choosing from a device palette, fine tune your sequencer data from the Tools pane, or set groove parameters using the groove pane. The device palette lets you drag and drop instruments and effects directly to the rack, placing them just where you want them. The Tools pane contains all of Reason’s sequencer editing tools, allowing for quick access to everything from quantization to vector automation cleanup and legato adjustments. When you hit a channel’s Edit button in the ReGroove mixer, the selected groove’s parameters show up here for instant editing. It’s also where you can save your own groove files.

Combinator and NN-XT updates
If you’re into making your own sounds, the Combinator and NN-XT devices have both had minor revisions to make programming patches easier and more powerful.

The Combinator now has a function that transposes notes sent to a device which is very handy to create splits. Other additions include performance data filters to stop certain types of data from being sent to a device, more flexible choice of sources in the programmer, and a function to automate the receive notes option, making it possible to switch between instruments in a Combinator patch.

The NN-XT has been given features to edit multiple samples simultaneously, to chromatically auto-map samples, and a Group Mono function to let samples play polyphonically, but still be silenced by other samples in the same sample group.

Propellerhead ReCycle 2.1 is the Ultimate Tool for Sampled Grooves!

Loops, grooves and breakbeats: Powerful sonic building blocks, and great inspirational triggers. No matter what style of music you’re into, you can be sure there’s a loop out there that can spice your track up a little, or even lift it to completely new heights. But handling loops and grooves equals hard work. Hours of pitching and stretching just to get a loop to fit your song’s tempo and timing. And if you need to change the key, you’re in for even more work. In the end, your loops are controlling you, instead of vice versa. But help is on its way. From Propellerhead Software comes a suite of programs that gives you full creative control over your looped material!

What Does Recycle Do?
Propellerhead ReCycle goes way beyond simply solving groove problems and cleaning up your loop act – it’s a highly creative tool that helps you make the most of your grooves. In simple terms, ReCycle lets you do with sampled loops what you can do with beats programmed from individual drum sounds – like alter the tempo, or replace sounds and process them individually. Propellerhead ReCycle turns concrete-rigid loops into musical modeling clay, allowing you, the loopist, to do pretty much what you desire.

How Is It Done?
Start out with a regular audio file or a sample in your sampler, preferrably one of a groovy nature. Load the groove into ReCycle, and the program will “look” at the groove, analyze it, and break it up into its rhythmic components. Each part is called a “slice.” The process itself is fully automated, but once the slices are there, they are yours to move, monitor or delete, using the programs on-screen tools and controls. Other tools allow you to set the length, attack, and decay of the slices, and to change your grooves’ overall tempo or pitch, without one affecting the other! It’s not magic, but it’s probably as close as you can get.

Then What?
The next step is, of course, to bring your improved groove into one of your songs. At this point, the procedures differ depending on your equipment and preferred working method: If you like, you can use ReCycle simply as a problem solver for loops. Load a drum loop into ReCycle, set a new tempo or pitch, and save the results as a new file. Or load up any groove, and use ReCycle’s on-screen signal processors: Compressor, EQ, and Transient Designer, to give it some punch and distinction. Anything you choose to do in Propellerhead ReCycle can be applied to your loop, and saved as a new file.

To use your loop directly in Propellerhead Reason, Steinberg Cubase VST, or other programs supporting REX2 files, all you need to do is save your sliced-up loop as a REX2 file and import it onto an Audio Track in your sequencer. The imported loop will play back like the original, but you can change the tempo freely, and you will have full control over the original slices! Silence, move, or replace individual hits, change volume and panning – your loop has come to life!

If you’re using a sampler, Propellerhead ReCycle creates a soundbank containing the samples/slices, and transmits it to your sampler. ReCycle then creates a MIDI file based on the timing of the original groove. Import the MIDI file into your sequencer, and it will trigger the slices in your sampler, playing back the groove you started out with. Only this time – you make the rules. Quantize it, change the tempo, retune, or replace the sounds – Total Loop Control!
Features

Support for stereo files
You can open stereo audio files and import stereo files from a hardware sampler and then save/export them as stereo after slicing them.

Preview listening
You can now listen to the loop at new tempo and pitch settings.

Realtime effects
Effects to tweak the sound of your loops:

1. Envelope. A stretch feature was included in previsou versions too, but this time it has an attack and decay setting too.

2. Transient shaper. This is a compression utility that trigs its gain reduction on each slice. Perfect to get more snappiness from your loops.

3. EQ. All the bass you want. Or not want. ReCycle’s EQ has a Hi-cut, a lo-cut and two parametric filters.

Support for new samplers
AKAI S-5000/6000 and all SMDI capable samplers are now supported.

Move slices
You can now move the slices you have added manually.

Support for REX2
Propellerhead ReCycle 2.1 uses the REX2 format as its native save format. REX2 files can be played in programs such as Reason and Cubase. The format also has a 50% non lossy compression.
Speifications

System Requirements – Windows
An Intel Pentium computer running at 66 MHz or faster.
A 640×480, 256 color monitor or better.
A CD-ROM drive.
16 MB RAM or more.
A Windows compatible, 16-bit audio card.
Microsoft Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0 or later.

For communication with your specific sampler, you might also need:
A Windows compatible MIDI Interface and cables, and/or…
A 100% Windows compatible SCSI interface and cables.