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Record's mixer is modelled on an SSL 9000k.

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It's fair to say that Propellerhead Software has had an enormous influence on music production as we now know it. It started with ReCycle, which transformed the art of loop sampling. Rebirth and Rebirth 2 soon followed, arguably defining the modern concept of vintage emulation in software.

Then came the real revolution: Reason. Admittedly basic at first, it had two things that made it stand out from the typical DAW/host paradigm. First, it closely recreated the visual aspects of the technology it emulated, which not only looked cool, but made it clear to the computer music novice exactly what was going on, teaching them a lot about music technology in general.

Second, it was entirely self-contained, helping to make it so efficient that it could run on even the most modest of machines.

These two basic principles have seen Reason go from strength to strength, maintaining its status as one of the most ubiquitous and popular music-making tools ever made. There is, however, one criticism that gets levelled at Reason time and again: it can't record audio. Want to add some vocals? You'll have to load them into a sampler. Want guitars? You'll have to load them into a sampler.

Audio options

This fact alone has relegated Reason to the role of compositional sketchpad for many of its devoted users. Numerous suggestions have been made on how to integrate this facility, ranging from simple audio tracks running in parallel (not very Propellerhead) to virtual ADAT machines (you'd need to be of a certain age to remember these multitrack digital recorders), but ultimately none of them were close to what Propellerhead eventually elected to do.

"Rather than bring us 'Reason 5 Audio', Propellerhead has brought us a whole new application: Record."

Rather than bring us 'Reason 5 Audio', it's brought us a whole new application: Record. Instead of just bolting linear audio recording functionality onto Reason, those crafty Swedes have taken a look at everything good and – in their opinion – bad that's happened to hard-disk recording over the last ten years or so, and created a streamlined package from the ground up. Oh, and they've made sure it integrates absolutely seamlessly with Reason.

We've been exploring the beta version for a few weeks now, and it's fair to say that we're salivating in anticipation of the September 9, 2009 release date. You'll have to hang on for our review of the finished thing to find out if it's truly a must-buy, but read on to find out what we make of it so far.

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