FM Masterclass
Reason 13
See and hear what’s new in the latest upgrade to the legendary virtual studio DAW
Reason was one of the wave of innovative DAWs that blew in sometime around the year 2000, others being Ableton Live and Cakewalk Sonar. These DAWs were catching the winds of change as computers were becoming viable platforms for producing digital music. While Live’s innovation was Session View and its quantised clip launching, Reason offered a more analogue taste – a rack full of virtual devices, the cables to connect them as you liked, and a way to sequence it all to make music. It was one of the most innovative, powerful and fun ways to make music as the 21st century dawned.
On its path to 2024, Reason went through many changes – as did the landscape of other DAWs. Reason grew to add recording capabilities, third-party rack devices, an entire SSL desk emulation, VST plugin support and more mod cons, all while keeping the rack that started it all, along with many more ‘stock’ devices to boot.
We’ve just seen the launch of Reason 13, and with it the continuation of the DAW’s story. This upgrade will bring existing Reason users more useful ways of working and the means to get more creative behind their favourite sequencer. For those who haven’t tried Reason before and are wondering whether to get up and running, there are improvements that bring it more into line with its competitors. And for any ex users considering a trip on the nostalgia gondola, Reason has become even more worth it, and its whole rack is even available as a separate plugin. In this article, we’ll take you through the new features in Reason 13, showing them in action and providing audio examples available to download.
What’s new?
First up, Reason’s Polytone synth is a dual-layer subtractive synth that’s somewhat reminiscent of Subtractor (more on that later), but boosted for modern DAW users. Polytone is a two-layer synth, and there’s a crossfader to blend the layers, giving access to some pretty neat tricks. We’ll get into this first.
Next, the Ripley Space Delay is a full-featured delay unit with reverb processing, effects, and some real signal chain flexibility. It’s useful to have this as a bigger brother to both The Echo and RV-7 Reverb, which are both great but long in the tooth.