One of my favorite things about Reason is that you never need to worry about updating your DAW’s third party plug-ins. This is because all the virtual instruments and effects you need are built right into Reason. In other words, you can open a song from two years ago and it’s going to open perfectly, every time, without any missing plug-ins. Too cool!
However, an obvious complaint about this system was that there weren’t enough virtual instruments and effects to choose from. End users couldn’t pick up a Korg virtual synth or a McDSP compressor plug-in and add these software devices to their music production toolkit. Fortunately, this has all changed with the brilliant implementation of Rack Extensions (REs). Basically, a plug-in system for Reason, but without giving up the original idea that you should never find yourself in the frustrating position of trying to open an old song file only to find missing and out of date plug-ins where there used to be sound. Trust me, not a fun situation.
Today, in the Propellerhead REs store there’s a cornucopia of fantastic devices available for your Reason Rack. This includes synths by Korg, Rob Papen, and Synapse, and effects by McDSP, Softube, and u-he, just to mention a few. Indeed, there are so many awesome REs now it’s getting hard to choose. In this video I share with you a few of my favorites, broken into the categories of: synths, effects, and utilities. And don’t forget, if you’re a Berklee Online student you get 30% off a select number of REs until the end of this month.