Propellerhead News

Reason 7 has been given a release date of April 30th.

Anyone who is purchasing Reason 6.5 now will be entitled to a free upgrade to 7.

Any Reason owners who are currently on 1-5 can upgrade now to 6.5 and get your free upgrade to 7.

Apparently, and alternative way to upgrade is to purhcase and register a Balance audio device. This counts as an upgrade to 6.5 and thus entitled to Reason 7 upgrade.

Alternatively, the upgrade price for all current owners of Reason is 129 Euros, or $129 USD.

You’re only just getting used to the idea of Rack Extensions, and the integration of Record 1.5 and Reason 5 to give you an awesome DAW. For you mobile users, you might be happily plugging away on Figure on your mobile Apple product.

But the Propellerheads don’t want you to be bored of all of that already. They want you to get excited about Reason 7, and excited you should be.

It’s the usual thing, some further improvements on what is already there, plus some new tools. Reason 7 looks to have improved further on certain aspects of the music making procedure. They have tweaked the audio recording to allow for some automated editing, from snipping single notes to quantizing. But, for the first time, the have introduced MIDI out. Intriguing.

They’ve also improved the mixing desk, but more importantly on this one, they have included a spectrum analyzer, something that has been asked for for some time. Well, at least I have anyway.

The new rack tool they have introduced is something called the “Audiomatic Retro Transformer”. No details on this yet, but apparently its going to make Reason more, ‘fun’. More news to come on this.

Any release date?
Not as yet, but if I know Propellerheads I would say not too long in the future. I reckon by the end of Summer.

Read more about Reason 7 here.

You may have heard that Propellerheads Figure has become “universal”, with the release of Figure 1.3 (here is more information). Looks like a nice app.

Except, I’ve never been able to use it as I’m an android user. The day Apple get money out of me is the day I fly a Pterodactyl, sporting a cape and casting magic spells from my spear of doom.

While that will never happen, I asked the Propellerheads on whether or not they are considering an Andriod release.

Here’s how the Twitter feed went:

@mathewhasker We never comment on the future but here’s what Ernst had to say about Android a while back: ow.ly/fGqOk

— Propellerhead (@PropellerheadSW) November 29, 2012

An online acquaintance / friend / collaborator DJ Abacus had also mentioned this in the past, and of all people to have responded, it was Mattias from the Props (who in my opinion has one of the best jobs in the world, computer game composer and seller / demonstrator of Reason) who had this to say on Reddit. Please note that he clearly states this is not an official statement from the Propellerheads or their developers.

So perhaps we won’t see Figure on the Android for some very good reasons that the Propellerheads have been very open and up front about. But could it hint towards an entirely different product for release on Android?

With the release of the Nexus, it may be a good opportunity. More concerning though is Windows 8 – I know that Microsoft are very eager for developers to come on board and start flying some applications through the Windows Store. They will have a very similar approach to Apple when it comes to helping developers get their products out on a development platform that makes sense. Look at what they managed with the XBox over the Playstation 3.

Unfortunately for me though, the day I spend money in the Microsoft Store will be the day I…well you get it.

So Reason lovers who are loyal to the Android system, the answer is development on the platform isn’t easy, so don’t hold your breath. But it’s a fair decision by the Propellerheads.

Would you like to see Figure on the Android? Or a similar release from the Propellerheads for the Android?