This machine is best suited to the more experimental side of Reason aimed more at those who want to scrub through Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells with their Theremin, than those who want a quick fix of ‘Analogue Pad 1’.
Whether you’re a patch browser or sound designer, Europa is my No.1 addition to the Reason 10 rack.Īnother first for Reason, Grain is Propellerhead’s first foray into granular synthesis. Once created and fattened with the onboard effects and Monopoly-rivalling Unison mode, Europa produces polished, production-ready sounds: huge leads, tight basses and smooth, dynamic pads all ready for your next club banger, or to sit in the background of the classiest keyboard split. This newly-designed component, which also features in Grain, lets the user select and edit any of the envelopes, or draw their own to be used for modulation, as a filter spectrum or as an oscillator. Waveforms can come from the list of included digital and analogue-like waveforms, or may even be drawn into the envelope section. Instead, Europa offers direct transformative control over algorithmic wavetables, allowing fine tweaking over all facets of the sound: from its specific overtones through Europa’s spectral filter, to multiplying, syncing, mirroring and quantising the waveform (all modulatable!). The list of new stuff is formidable here are my Top 5.Ĭompared to Reason’s previous titan of synthesis, Thor, Europa looks deceptively simple - lacking Thor’s modularity, sheer complexity and wealth of parameters. Reason 10 is the greatest expansion of the all-in-one DAW yet, with an injection of fresh drum samples and loops, two huge new synths, three sampled instruments and two of the most essential rack extensions.