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[geogaddi]

I don't know about you guys but I'm a straight-up Reason junkie. When 2.5 came out I was blown away by it with its Scream unit and other nifty things.......but now....*sloppy drum roll please*

Reason 3.0 !!!!!!!!!!!111


The Combinator

It's not an effect unit. It's not a synth. It sure isn't a sampler. It's... all of it. And more. The all new Combinator is a sophisticated device that allows you to build elaborate chains of Reason units - instruments, effects, pattern sequencers, you name it - and save as Combi patches. When a Combi patch is opened, all units in the created setup are instantly loaded, complete with sounds, settings and routings. With its ability to load up complex instruments routed through effect units and dynamic processors in one go, the Combinator is an extremely playable, extremely performance-friendly device, perfect for both stage and studio use.

No Limits
The Combinator can house an unlimited number of Reason devices, which can all be combined, controlled and manipulated in ways limited only by your imagination. The Combinator's programmer window makes it a breeze to build ultra-thick, layered sounds using any number of synths and samplers, or create keyboard splits for mapping out different instruments across your MIDI keyboard. You can even alternate between instruments using velocity splits - play softly to trigger an NN-XT double bass, play harder and a Subtractor synth bass will take over.

The Controls
The Combinator's skinnable front panel holds four rotary controls and four buttons that can all be assigned to any function on any device in your combinator chain. True to the Reason tradition, this machine is very tweakable: try using rotary 1 to control the cutoff frequency on eight separate samplers simultaneously, and rotary 2 for simultaneous tweaking of multiple knobs on your favorite synth. While you're at it, use the assignable buttons for changing patterns in ReDrum or Matrix, or for muting mixer channels, or for switching effects on or off.

The Combi Ins
The back of the Combinator reveals two crucial connectors: the Combi input jacks. If you're into extreme signal processing, these are for you; the combi ins allow you to use your Combinator as one humongous effect unit. Feed your sounds through endless chains of reverbs, delays, filters, modulators, distortion units... you get the idea. The Reason sound bank contains a good selection of freaky but useful effect patches to get you started.

Roll your own
The Combinator is not an instrument in itself, but make use of its extraordinary combination and routing features and you'll soon be building your own unique instruments. It's pretty safe to say that once you get familiar with the Combinator, which will take you about a minute, it will completely change the way you work in Reason.

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The MClass Mastering Suite

Reason is now officially one louder. Turn up your tracks to 11 with MClass.

Want big, tight, loud sounding tracks? Need extra stereo width, increased clarity, punchier bass? Say hello to MClass, the new mastering suite in Reason 3.0. MClass brings you four separate pro level mastering units designed to add power, presence and an overall professional feel to your Reason mixes. Load up the MClass tools as a complete mastering suite in the Combinator for finalizing whole mixes, or use the units separately. Apart from being logical and user-friendly, the MClass tools sound good. Audiophile good. These units can compete with the finest mastering tools out there, software or hardware.

The MClass Equalizer

The MClass Equalizer is a 4-band, professional level mastering EQ with low and high shelving bands, two peak filters and a low cut switch. The MClass Equalizer lets you make subtle or drastic frequency adjustments to your Reason mixes, and make them sound a touch more final: clean up that muddy bottom end, add shimmer to your cymbals, bring out the vocals. With its transparent sound and precise sound sculpting features, the MClass Equalizer is a tool you can trust.

The MClass Stereo Imager

No mastering suite is complete without a tool for controlling the stereo image. The MClass Stereo Imager splits the incoming audio into low and high frequency bands, and lets you adjust each independently. Increasing the width for the high band while making the low band slightly more mono gives you wide, open sounding mixes with a tight low end. The Stereo Imager is best suited for treating whole mixes, but feel free to use it on individual sounds and see where it takes you.

The MClass Compressor

All mixes will benefit from a touch of mastering compression and the MClass Compressor will do just the trick. Designed to add punch and definition to your Reason tracks, this single-band compressor sounds simply amazing. The MClass Compressor features a sidechain input for advanced compression tricks such as ducking or de-essing, a soft-knee mode for smooth, musical compression and CV out for dynamically controlling other Reason devices.

The MClass Maximizer

Every decibel counts! The MClass Maximizer is an advanced tool designed to maximize the volume of your Reason tracks, without crushing them or introducing other unwanted artifacts. The Maximizer features a Limiter section - with switchable look-ahead, for distortion- free brickwall limiting - and a Soft Clip section which gently rounds off the edges. Set your input gain and adjust the attack, release and clip amount settings for a loud, proud sound.

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Remote
For those of you with a more hands-on approach to making music, the revolutionary Remote technology in Reason 3.0 will be a welcome new feature. Reason now easily controls motorized faders and control surface displays. And then some. This is true hardware integration! Remote gives Reason smooth, seamless, out-of-the-box communication with external MIDI controllers and hardware control surfaces, giving you plenty of scope for real-time tweaking of Reason's functions and features - on stage or in the studio. Because Reason 3.0 comes prepared for a majority of the controllers on the market, all you have to do is hook up your hardware and fire up Reason - no tedious configuration required. Reason 3.0 comes with complete Remote mappings for each of the supported controllers. The preset Remote mappings link your controller's knobs, buttons and faders to the parameters within Reason's devices, giving you instant, tactile control over any function in any Reason unit. Support for multiple control surfaces lets you dedicate one control surface and its faders to Reason's mixer, while using your master keyboard for playing and controlling other Reason devices.

3.0 Browser
To allow you to access and organize the contents of your sound bank in the quickest, most natural way possible, Reason 3.0 features all new browser functions; you can now free-text search the entire library, preview-play sounds directly from the browser, and increase your efficiency in general. With the Reason 3.0 browser, the task of finding and loading sounds and patches becomes just as smooth and intuitive as the process of making good music in Reason.

The 3.0 browser has a whole new way of managing devices and their sounds: do a search for "bass", and all bass patches in the library will be visible, no matter what instrument they were created for. When you load the desired sound, the correct device is loaded along with it, be it a Malström synth, an NN-XT sampler or a Combinator. The Reason 3.0 browser also gives you faster navigation, support for changing patches via MIDI and support for user defined Favorites folders - organize soundsets for live gigs and studio sessions, then select or step through your patches via Remote.

3.0 Soundbank
Reason's sound palette is getting bigger, better, wider and wilder. The new sound bank in Reason 3.0 adds huge quantities of instruments, sounds and patches to Reason's already massive library. Focusing on carefully sampled musical instruments and useful Combinator setups rather than loops and beats, the new soundbank takes a more playable, more performance- friendly direction. Load up any of the multisampled guitars, bass guitars, flutes, mellotrons, strings or melodicas and play away. Or try the mass of patches developed for Reason's new Combinator: load up complete instruments running through chains of effects in one single click, or get into some heavy-duty post-processing with the Combi FX patches. And then there's the pattern based patches, the weirded out Glitch category, the chromatic percussion section, a brass section... we could go on and on here.

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Line Mixer 6:3

Line mixing, Combi mixing or regular submixing? Leave it to Line Mixer 6:2

Line Mixer 6:2 is a simple but effective 6-channel stereo line mixer. Built primarily for use in the Combinator, the Line Mixer 6:2 handles basic mixing and panning of Combi devices, but can of course be inserted anywhere in Reason: use it for submixing large drum kits, or to add extra mixer channels when Reason's main mixer is starting to fill up. Each of the six channels feature level and pan controls, mute and solo buttons plus an AUX send level control. Need more sends? Extra channels? Just create another Line Mixer.

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DEMOS

Although the saying "talking about music is like dancing about architecture" is old and worn, it still holds true. Your main question about Reason 3.0 is most probably "how does it sound?". These snippets will hopefully give you an idea about some of the things you can do in Reason 3.0.

Combinator demo sounds
The followning examples are all made with one Combinator each.

Big Fat Basss (390 kb mp3 file)


KristoN (960 kb mp3 file)


Ransom's Battle (890 kb mp3 file)


Strumming Bridges (1.1 mb mp3 file)


Trance Riff (770 kb mp3 file)


Handheld Symphony (570 kb mp3 file)


MClass demo sounds


MClass demo (1.1 mb mp3 file)
Here's an example showing the Mclass mastering suite. We simply took the track Realization by Unknown Source, one of the Reason 2.5 demo tracks and inserted the MClass mastering suite combinator between the mixer outputs and Reason's audio out. Though this example was created by Propellerhead Software's marketing department and not a skilled mastering engineer, the results are pretty obvious. The example audio snippet is a portion of the song playing while flipping the bypass switch on and off. See if you can spot where the Mclass is in effect and when it's not.

What do I have to say about this one? eh... I was expecting more. I'm not too fond about having an internal mastering unit (maybe its good but oh well). I like to use WaveLab to master simply because WaveLab was especially designed just to master by the Steinberg folks. The Combinator is cool, although, if you know who to use Reason 2.5, you know how to do what the Combinator does—manually—though it takes up some time. I guess that is what is good about the Combinator because it does all the wiring stuff automatically, thus, saving up time. Can't wait for Soundbank 3.0! What about Orkester? where is it?

 

[Zelda-Bitch]

hey kick ass! Thanks for the heads up!

 

[FightyF]

$500 US for those of us who don't own previous versions...

 

[geogaddi]

I thought many plp in GAF were into Reason and stuff

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

I thought many plp in GAF were into Reason and stuff

you are just late as fuck, that's all. I do music production as well, I use Ableton Live as well as this

 

[FightyF]

And we all know BUZZ is the best. THE BEST DAMMIT!!!

 

[God's Hand]

I've always wondered, is this created by the same Propellerheads that made "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "Bang On!"?

 

[Pudding Tame]

Yeah, I was hoping this was a follow-up to DECKSANDDRUMSANDROCKANDROLL.

 

[Teknopathetic]

I'm inclined to agree with Fight for Freedom. Buzz owns all (BuzzLE will rule). Reason's pretty nice, though.