Propellerheads have announced a few days ago that Reason 6, their flagship software will be hitting the stores on September 30th, 2011. That’s great!
Now, here’s what’s new in version 6, as they say “it’s a whole lot bigger, better, and ready for any idea you throw at it.”
New Mixer
The first thing I’ve noticed is the new mixer that looks like an SSL Console (Feature taken from Propellerheads Record I guess). It has a good built-in EQ, dynamics and advanced routing, and they say it will give your music that unmistakable million-dollar console sound, while the “radio ready” master bus compressor gives your mixes that extra punch. In Reason 6, every audio and instruments track automatically gets a complete channel strip, with all the controls you need for shaping your mix available at your fingertips.
New Compressor
They’ve also added a new compressor, The Pulveriser. It’s a dirty compressor with “squash” and “dirt” controls. It also has an envelope follower that you can use for live instruments, filter effects, etc. and it also supports Parallel Compression. Pulveriser’s Envelope Follower gives you organic playable modulation of the filter and LFO speed — while the LFO can be applied to modulate the filter, used as a stereo auto-panner, or modulate the main output level for a classic tremolo effect. The multi-mode filter has a selectable Low Pass, Low Pass + Notch, Band Pass, High Pass, and Comb Filter setting for further processing. A selector lets you put the filter post the distortion in the signal chain, allowing for a soft, warm sound. Audio examples are available here.
New Delay
It’s called The Echo, and is an advanced stereo echo that blends together modern delays with organic sounds of analog circuitry and old-school tape machines. The Echo is equal parts pristine stereo delay, sound sculpturing toolbox, and playable performance effect. The Delay section contains settings for delay time, tempo sync, stereo width, and pitch. With Ping-Pong turned on the delayed signal bounces from left to right. Turning Offset up gives you a nice and wide stereo spread. Keep Pitch keeps the delay feedback in tune when modulating the delay time for bouncing ball effects. The Color section offers limiting, overdrive, distortion, or tube distortion that is introduced to the repeats. The band pass filter lets you cut frequencies from the repeats and boost them when the resonance is turned up.
Lastly, the Modulation section features parameters for modulating the pitch and stereo image of the echos. The envelope bends the repeats, causing them to wander up or down in pitch. The Wobble emulates a tape speed wobbling effect and the LFO modulates the pitch of the left and right channels independently, introducing stereo spread at moderate settings and completely warping the signal when turned up to full. Audio examples are available here.
New Gate
Alligator – Triple Filtered Gate, is a three channel pattern-based gate effect that can either transform pads into rhythmic textures, twist loops, and tweak boring beats into blockrocking breaks. It has three parallel filters, distortion, phaser and delay and it can add rhythm and accents to a flat synth sound, change the feel of a percussion loop, or be a powerful remixing tool. When a signal reaches Alligator it is split into three channels, all processed separately. Each channel has its separate gate controlled by the 64 included patterns, triggered from the sequencer, the Matrix and RPG-8 Arpeggiator devices, or via a MIDI keyboard. The three channels are then run through either a high pass, band pass or a low pass filter, shaping the sound of each of the three bands. The filters lets you split the channels into separate frequencies, or use the envelope, LFO, and resonance controls to radically alter the sounds. The FX section is where you process the channels with the built-in distortion, phaser, and delay. There are separate controls for each channel that let you apply the effects to each channel individually — e.g. distort the bass harmonics, add a delay to the midrange and put phaser on the high frequencies. Audio examples are available here.
Pitch correction & Voice synthesizer
With Reason 6, they’ve also tackled with the problematic world of vocals and pitch correction. How? By creating a Pitch Correction device, that can also be used as a voice synthesizer. It’s called Neptune. As a pitch adjuster, Neptune will fine tune the pitch of an audio track to help getting vocal performances just right. Neptune will fix the flat notes with an unbelievable audio quality (they say!) . You can select a root key and a scale that you want the adjuster to use, or create a scale that fits your song. And, yes. By cranking the pitch adjustment settings to the max, you can get that effect sound too (I guess they’re talking about the famous “T-Pain” effect).
Neptune is also a natural sounding audio transposer. This is a great help if you ever needed to change the key of a song that’s already been recorded. Perhaps the most creative-sparking function in Neptune is the voice synth. You can play your MIDI keyboard and Neptune will create new harmonies from your vocal tracks in real time, or use it without the original voice to completely change the melody of the song. An introductory video is available here.
Audio Tracks
The most important feature for this update, for me at least, is the ability to record and use audio tracks. It’s been a feature that has been keeping Reason in the background all this time. It’s the piece that has been missing. Anyway, now you get unlimited hard disk trakcs, and the posibility to record audio, and that’s just great!
Other Stuff
They’ve also added some other features such as Line 6 powered guitar and bass-amps, a comp. editor, more sounds in the Factory Sound Bank, 64-bit support (Yes, that means more power to you!), better ReWire handling through individual outs on every channel, and a new self-contained File Format, that makes collaboration a breeze.There’s also the new File Export menu, which let’s you export tracks individually, the effects, or the master channel.
Pricing & Availability
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Record Reason Duo & Record for Reason Owners — free upgrade offer!
Anyone who purchases Record Reason Duo or Record for Reason Owners between July 1st, 2011–October 31st, 2011 will receive a free download upgrade when Reason version 6 is released. Free of charge.
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Reason — special upgrade offer!
Purchase Reason between July 1st, 2011–October 31st, 2011 to qualify for the Reason 6 upgrade at a discount — €99 EUR / $99 USD — through the Propellerhead web shop.
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Record — special upgrade offer!
Purchase Record between July 1st, 2011–October 31st to qualify for Reason at 50% off — €200 EUR / $220 USD — through the Propellerhead web shop.
Grace period details
All free grace period upgrades will be provided as downloads when Reason 6 has been released. Discount upgrades for purchasers of Record or Reason standalone will be ordered through the Propellerhead web shop. In order to receive the free upgrade, you may be required to verify to Propellerhead that the purchase of the software has taken place during the grace period (2011-07-01 – 2011-10-31). The proof of this should be an invoice or receipt of the purchase.
Conclusion
To end this article, I’d like to say one thing: It’s great! Reason is finally starting to come out of the darkness, and even though they have their own devoted users, I’m sure that more and more people will start using Reason after this update. It’s easy to see that the guys at Propellerheads are making tremendous efforts to keep Reason on the pace with it’s competition.
I just wish they’ll add VST support on a future update.
