Although I give Ableton Live the most love on this blog I almost always have Reason loaded and ReWired into Live. I never liked the old Propellerhead website. The forums had an annoying threaded view and the entire site was locked into a cramped narrow width. Happily, the new site fixes many issues and it looks great too.

I’m not going to give a long review of Reason here because it’s been done in detail by many other publications. Here are just a few “reasons” I like the software:

Scream – This distortion unit has a unique sound. It’s a different color than Izotope Trash or Ohm Force’s Predatohm or Ohmicide. It squawks and squelches in an awesome musical way. I’d own Reason just for the Scream device.

NN-19 – What? An old sample playback device? It reminds me of my old beloved Akai-S950. Somehow it even sounds like it. I managed to collect a NN-19 library of old school samples like Choirs or One Shots with glorious mixing board noise behind them. This device has a real 12 bit EMU filter vibe to it. You can even do some 90s style time stretching with it!

ReGroove Mixer – This thing is super! For years in electronic music the style was the locked machine grid sound. Then shuffle became the rage. The ReGroove device unleashes shuffle; it gives you unlimited shuffle “grooves”. Yes, we had Groove templates as far back has Cubase VST but nothing has slick and usable as ReGroove. It also has some of the famous MPC grooves as presets. This is the best new feature in Reason 4.0.

I could go on but since there is a demo you should just go check it out yourself. I suggest you just go an buy it: click here

So what’s your favorite part of Reason? Or do you think it’s just a toy?