Reason is a popular real-time sound synthesis and sampling software program developed by Swedish software developers Propellerhead Software. It emulates a rack of hardware synthesizers, samplers, signal processors, sequencers and mixers. It can be used alone, or as a sub-system with music sequencer software. It is required, along with a laptop computer, by new students at the Berklee College of Music. Reason 1.0 was released in November 2000.

The current version of Reason is 3.0, announced on the 29th November 2004, and this newest version has several added effects and instruments to the Reason studio since the first edition of the software, in addition to three new modules, as well as a number of other features to augment the 2.5 release. It began shipping on 10th March 2005. Distribution problems early in the shipping cycle enraged some over-committed fans.

The software was named as a reference to software used by the lead character in Douglas Adams' novel, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

Early in development the software was called Realizer (after the PPG Realizer (http://www.vintagesynth.org/misc/ppgrealizer.shtml)).

Features of Reason 3.0

Category

• Musical software