Were the Prop Heads listening to Head East when they created Reason? (Don’t let on if you get that reference; you’ll date yourself!) Who cares – with v3 the program is better than ever, and there are more and more add-ons appearing every day. Case in point; IK Multimedia showed off an entire series of Miroslav Orchestra ReFills for Reason at New York’s AES show earlier this month. Sonic Reality did the design work, with libraries of string enembles, solo strings, brass, woodwinds, choirs, percussion and keyboards. Each is “hypersampled,” meaning:
- Multiple velocity levels (as many as 80+ samples per note)
- Multiple microphones, each on its own Reason channel (perfect for ReWire)
- Multiple same velocity samples
- Multiple variation sampling (techniques, grips, and playing styles)
The exciting thing is the ease of getting at things like different mic positions, thanks to Reason’s Combinator, mixers, and ReWire support.