Reason is a popular real-time sound synthesis and sampling software program developed by Swedish software developers Propellerhead Software. It emulates a rack of hardware synthesizers, samplers, signal processors, sequencers and mixers. It can be used alone, or as a sub-system with music sequencer software. It is required, along with a laptop computer, by new students at the Berklee College of Music. Reason 1.0 was released in November 2000.

The current version of Reason is 3.0, announced on the 29th November 2004, and this newest version has several added effects and instruments to the Reason studio since the first edition of the software, in addition to three new modules, as well as a number of other features to augment the 2.5 release. It began shipping on 10th March 2005. Distribution problems early in the shipping cycle enraged some over-committed fans.

The software was named as a reference to software used by the lead character in Douglas Adams' novel, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

Early in development the software was called Realizer (after the PPG Realizer).

Features of Reason 3.0

• Synthesizers
  • SubTractor Analog Synthesizer
  • Malstrom Graintable Synthesizer

• Samplers
  • NN-19 Digital Sampler
  • Dr.REX Loop Player
  • Redrum Drum Computer
  • NN-XT Advanced Sampler

• Effects
  • RV-7 Digital Reverb
  • DDL-1 Digital Delay Line
  • D-11 Foldback Distortion
  • ECF-42 Envelope Controlled Filter
  • CF-101 Chorus/Flanger
  • PH-90 Phaser
  • COMP-01 Compressor/Limiter
  • PEQ-2 Two Band Parametric EQ
  • UN-19 Unison
  • RV7000 Advanced Reverb
  • Scream 4 Distortion
  • BV-512 Vocoder
  • MClass Equalizer
  • MClass Stereo Imager
  • MClass Compressor
  • MClass Maximizer

• Mixing & Other
  • Mixer 14:2
  • Matrix Pattern Sequencer
  • ReBirth Input Machine
  • Spider Audio Merger & Splitter
  • Spider CV Merger & Splitter
  • Combinator (device chaining module)
  • Line Mixer 6:2

The items in italic are found from version 2.0 upwards. Items in bold are found in Reason 2.5 upwards, and items in bold and italic are new to Reason 3.0.

External links

• Propellerhead Software
• Berklee College of Music
• ReasonBanks
• ReasonStation