Reason Studios announced today the availability of Reason 12, a major update to the popular virtual studio for Mac & Windows.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
“A new look, a new instrument, and a whole new way of interacting with sounds, Reason 12 is all about leveling up the creative potential at the heart of your music-making experience.
Reason’s beloved Combinator has been completely refreshed for an expandable, customizable, and more powerful sound design playground. The brand new Mimic Creative Sampler approaches sample manipulation as a musical reimagining of audio samples that can be both inventive and even fun!
Bringing together the best audio technologies from Reason Studios’ history of groundbreaking DSP and sample-slicing. All new high resolution graphics bring the Reason Rack to life, with under the hood updates to tap in to modern video card performance.”
Here’s a summary of what’s new in Reason 12
- Reason 12 focuses on improving the Rack experience. This includes making Reason high resolution. With version 12, you can zoom Reason to fit your set-up, and all 3rd party Rack Extensions will be ready for hi-res on day one.
- Reason 12 also includes a brand new sampler. It’s designed to quickly explore and play back sounds in interesting ways—be that from your collection of samples, something recorded on the fly, or even an export of the very track you’re working on.
- The Combinator in Reason 12 is overhauled to be fully customizable, more powerful, and easier than ever to work with. Create a custom interface with the controls you want laid out how you like, add images, set up expressive macro controls, change the panel size and more to make a patch your own.
- To help you navigate new content, Reason 12 also features an improved Reason browser. Search is now faster and your search results are categorized to easily find what you want.
Pricing and Availability
Reason 12 is available now for $399. Upgrade pricing is also available. See the Reason Studios site for more info.
And for the folks not eager to join the subscription plan just yet (like me), the upgrade is running $129/129€. As long as the hit to the processing isn’t too much with the improved resolution graphics, I might give it a shot.
Bought Reason 11 Intro for 99$ last year (not the version that comes free with magazines and controllers, Intro is more expensive). just wanted the few plugins it had as a vst and didn’t need the full Reason version. In the end didn’t really use it because of the unscalable, tiny and hard to use interface.I was pretty exited for the hi-res interface in the upcoming 12 version but Reason then discontinued the Intro version altogether and now I would have to fork out 299$ for an update for the full version. I would instantly upgrade to Reason 12 Intro for a reasonable price but that’s just too much, so no thanks. No more Reason products for me.
Completely agree. I used Reason exclusively when it was V1. It became an extension of me when it came to making music. I stayed with it, despite dropping it for a more focused DAW because, unless I’m mistaken upgrade prices were reasonable. Then around 9 or10 upgrades were more than I paid for it in the first place.
I tried using it a few months ago to see if it was like riding a bike. I needed training wheels. I couldn’t remember how it worked anymore. I am interested how they plan to make the SSL style mixer useable. Because it’s a disaster.
Hmm.. turns out Reason 12 does not install on Windows 7. I bought the Reason 12 upgrade a few months ago… Reason10 and Reason11 run on Windows 7, and at the time ReasonStudios said v12 would run on Windows7. I know Win7 is old, but it’s my dedicated music machine, and it’s stable, and I have some software and hardware that isn’t compatible with Windows 10. Well this stinks…
Does anyone still use this? Thought it was obsolete.like rebirth.
the last i heard about a serious usage of Reason was some article about Prodigy doing quick remixes in the studio around 2005 or something
RS make some of the very best instruments and FX you can get and you can use them in any DAW as a VST3 plugin- why wound you use it? Algorithm was my faveroute plug in of last year. There is so much more innovation coming from RS than the old dinosaurs like NI who just keep churning out sample based instruments….If your not using Reason rack with 70+ high quality instruments, FX and and (modular inspired) ‘players’ you are really missing out.
really happy with the direction run eason is moving these days. feels like some new blood is injected into it.
I would love to see them really fix the sequencer and let the new “mimic” import and export rex files. And bring back rebirth and call it reborn or something as mimic is actually trying to mimic recycle.
Hmm… turns out Reason 12 does not install on Windows 7. I bought the Reason 12 upgrade a few months ago… Reason10 and Reason11 run on Windows 7, and at the time ReasonStudios said v12 would run on Windows7. I know Win7 is old, but it’s my dedicated music machine, and it’s stable, and I have some software and hardware that isn’t compatible with Windows 10. Well this stinks…
Windows 7 was released in 2009 and Microsoft stopped supporting it in 2020. It had a good run.
It would be incredibly hard for a small software team to keep Windows 7 support at this point simply because the development tools probably don’t produce code that runs reliably on it (if at all).
Opened reason using my cintiq monitor. Just wanted to give the hi-res and zooming a go. Using a stylus in reason is pretty great. Just knobs and patching if you use it experimentally. If not, and you just record audio and midi, its hot garbage because of the arrangement window. The piano roll is just uninspiring to edit. Audio is time stretched by default so dropping in bits of audio to mess around comes with an adding button click of “disable time stretch” with every single clip you import. Adding and deleting notes in the piano roll working like windows 95. Click to add, switch tool to erase or…hotkeys. Would be great if you use the pen to drop a note, hold the hot key to erase, let go the key and it goes back to the pen. Nope. Click add note, click eraser, delete note, click back to pen to add note. I gave up. But to use it as a rack is a joke honestly. I wish that would gel with me since reason as a rack is cool in theory but it just feels like a VST with too many parameters and options. The day reason updates that sequencer, im all over it but id rather ot struggle going backwards in time to find a workflow to arrange in that DAW.
Make a cubase version.
Everybody loves Reason, but nobody uses it
I love Reason, been using it since version 1. It has its fault but i find it very fun and quick to use as a completely integrated music environment. I use it as a my main DAW. It comes with a lot of devices that are versatile and have different synthesis options. The semi modular nature of it brings a lot to me. You can make your own devices with the Combinator. You can wire effects however you want with easy audio routing.
If i was using another DAW i would still seriously consider it because it comes with a lot of synths and effects.
I’ll probably get version 12 later this year. I wish they’d have included at least another of the synths that comes with the subscription. Subscriptions are a no go for me.
loving Reason as an AU plug-in in Logic, very excited for the hi-res graphics. bravo.
Question, if i upgrade from reason 8 will reason 12 replace it or do still keep the older version?
Question, if i upgrade to reason 12 would that replace reason 8 or do i keep version 8 aswell?
You can select 12 or 8 when reason login pops up. So if the internet is slow or down, you can boot up the older version (for example)!