Propellerhead Reason Essentials 8 - Software

The essence of Reason at a fraction of the price

Reason Essentials packs all the tools you need to sound great in a streamlined package, with room to grow and expand.

Features include:

• Great selection of instruments and effects: drum machine, loop player, sampler, synths, reverb, delay, distortion and more.
• For guitar players, the guitar and bass amp devices from Softube bring a wide range of top quality guitar amps & cabinets.
• The intuitive audio and MIDI sequencer makes recording and arranging your music a breeze.
• When you need even more creative options, Rack Extensions plug-ins lets you add even more instruments and effects.

Product details

Instruments

Reason Essentials comes with a selection of great-sounding, easy to use instruments. The Subtractor is a polyphonic, subtractive synthesizer suitable for all types of synthetic sounds. The NN-XT is an advanced sampler for multi-sampled acoustic instruments and sample-tweaking trickery. The ID8 Instrument Device ships with a wide palette of sounds useful for building a steady foundation for your tracks, like pianos, drums, bass, strings and more. Dr. Octo Rex is an eight channel loop player that provides fast arranging and deep control of your loops, while Redrum is a simple but powerful drum machine with a built-in step sequencer.

The rack

At the heart of Reason Essentials is the virtual rack that builds itself as you create your song. Create instruments and effects and route them any way you want to. Add, delete, replace and tweak. Your rack is what you want it to be. Need more gear? No problem. Choose a synth, a drum machine, a loop player or any device from the Create menu and it will instantly appear in your rack. And because Reason Essentials is designed to go easy on your computer, you can repeat the process until you're more than happy.

The Reason Essentials rack can be stacked with an infinite number of reverbs, distortion units, delays, dynamic processors, mastering EQs - everything you need to shape and colour your sounds, limited only by your imagination. Click and drag effects straight to the rack or load any of the expertly crafted patches.

For guitar players

The guitar and bass amp devices from Softube bring a wide range of top quality guitar amps & cabinets. With bass and guitar amplifiers available for every single track in your project, you are never short of interesting tones and timbres. With virtual amps you are free to change your amplifier and cabinet settings at any point in time-even after laying down your track.

Rack Extension plug-ins

When you need even more creative options, Rack Extensions come to the rescue. The built-in Rack Extension technology lets you expand your collection of instruments and effects at any time. Created by Propellerhead and other developers, Rack Extensions are full Reason rack citizens, giving you the same fully integrated experience as when using any of the included devices.

Unlimited audio tracks

Recording music is all about seizing the moment. Capturing a perfect performance - or even nailing that idea before it goes away - requires tools that are ready when you are. Create record-ready audio tracks in an instant. Simply plug in, breathe out, and you're ready to go - Reason Essentials gives you unlimited audio tracks and instrument channels.

The sequencer

Below the rack you'll find the powerful, yet easy to use sequencer. Capture instrument performances and automation, record and overdub audio, or draw in your notes with the mouse. Any mistakes can easily be corrected, adjusted or quickly spliced together from multiple takes.

As a perfect performance may be less than perfect from scratch, Reason Essentials features a swift and easy to use comp editor. Building the ultimate vocal track is as simple as selecting the parts that work and muting the ones that don't, non-destructively creating a perfect take containing only the good parts.

Timestretch

Propellerheads acclaimed timestretch lets you play now and pick the tempo later. Change the song tempo on the fly and all your audio tracks will follow right along without any need of any pre-processing. Need to slow your song down to nail a tricky passage? No problem. Just reduce the tempo, record your performance, and bring the tempo back up. The audio quality? Amazing. The built-in audio slicing automatically finds the individual hits in your performance, for correcting the timing of your recordings to match the feel of your song. Resample your audio recording as REX files and continue working with your sounds and loops in the devices in the rack.

Mixing console

Reason Essentials' masterfully modelled mixing console gives you a built-in two-band EQ on every channel, advanced effects handling, full automation, while the renowned radio-ready master bus compressor gives you a big studio sound.

Detailed Features

Instruments

• NN-XT advanced sampler
• Dr. Octo Rex loop player
• Redrum pattern-based drum machine
• Subtractor analogue subtractive synthesizer
• ID-8 songwriter's toolbox
• Combinator, for building chains of instruments, effects, and pattern sequencers

Effects

• Softube Guitar amplifier with amp and cabinet modelling
• Softube Bass amplifier with amp and cabinet modelling
• Line 6 virtual guitar amplifier
• Line 6 virtual bass amplifier
• DDL-1 digital delay line
• DF-101 chorus/flanger
• RV7000 advanced reverb
• Scream 4 Sound Destruction Unit
• 4-band mastering EQ
• Dual band stereo imager
• Stereo compressor with sidechain input, soft-knee mode and CV out
• Maximizer with look-ahead and soft clip

Modelled mixing console with complete channel strip for every instrument and audio channel

• Gain
• 2-band EQ
• 4 Send effects slots
• Insert effect slot
• Master compressor

Other features

• Unlimited audio recording and instrument channels
• Six instruments included: NN-XT sampler, Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player, Redrum drum machine, Subtractor synth, ID-8 and Combinator
• Ten effects included: delay, reverb, virtual amps, distortion, chorus and mastering effects
• Modelled mixing console with channel strip for every instrument and audio channel
• Rack Extension technology lets users expand their collection of instruments and effects with the devices they want
• Fully featured high-precision multitrack sequencer with audio comping tools, slicing and audio quantize
• High quality realtime time stretch - adjust the tempo of your whole song, or alter the timing of a recorded performance
• Bounce audio recordings to REX loop format, for use in Reason Essentials' sampler or loop player
• Remote mapping to external MIDI controllers and hardware control surfaces
• Comes with a great factory sound bank, with patches for Reason Essentials devices, samples, and loops
• ReWire support
• Multicore support and 64-bit compatibility makes Reason Essentials fast and powerful on any computer
• Advanced exporting-export your separate mixer channels as individual audio stems, including effects and tempo track
• ReGroove Mixer real-time groove console
• Matrix pattern-based sequencer
• 14 x 2 mixer w/ EQ and effects send/return
• 6:2 channel stereo line mixer
• Spider Audio Merger & Splitter
• Spider Control Voltage Merger & Splitter

System Requirements

Mac OS X

• Fast internet connection for installation and registration required!
• Intel Mac with dual core processor
• 4 GB RAM or more
• 3 GB free hard disk space (program may use up to 20 GB scratch disk space)
• Mac OS X 10.7 or later Monitor with at least 1280x768 resolution
• CoreAudio compliant audio interface or built-in audio hardware
• MIDI interface and a MIDI keyboard recommended

Windows

• Fast internet connection for installation and registration required!
• Intel or AMD processor with dual cores
• 4 GB RAM or more
• 3 GB free hard disk space (program may use up to 20 GB scratch disk space)
• Windows 7 or later
• Monitor with at least 1280x768 resolution
• Audio Interface with ASIO driver
• MIDI interface and a MIDI keyboard recommended