Routing audio

Preparations in Reason Essentials

When you route audio from Reason Essentials to a ReWire host application, you make use of the Reason Essentials Hardware Interface at the top of the rack. Basically, each output in the Hardware Interface is connected to a separate ReWire channel.

•	To take full advantage of the mixing features in the host application you need to connect the different Reason Essentials Mix Channel and/or Audio Track devices directly to the Hardware Interface (see “Using the Mix Channel and Audio Track devices’ Direct Outs”).

For example, if your Reason Essentials Song contains eight different instrument devices and you connect these, either directly or via their Mix Channel devices, to separate audio outputs on the Hardware Interface, they will appear on separate ReWire channels in the host application. You can then use the mixing facilities in the host application to adjust volume and pan, add effects and equalizing etc. - individually for each Reason Essentials device.

If you instead connect all your Reason Essentials devices via the Main Mixer to the stereo input pair on the Hardware Interface, all sounds will appear mixed on a single ReWire stereo channel pair. While this works perfectly fine, you won’t be able to mix and process the devices separately in the host application.

Routing in the ReWire host application

The following description is based on using Reason Essentials with Cubase as the host application. For descriptions on how to activate and route ReWire channels in other host applications, please go to www.propellerheads.se/rewirehelp.

1.	Pull down the Devices menu in Cubase and select the menu item with the name of the ReWire application (in this case Reason Essentials). All recognized ReWire compatible applications will be available on the Devices menu.

The ReWire panel appears. This consists of a number of rows, one for each available ReWire channel.

2.	Click on the green buttons in the “Active” column to activate/deactivate the desired channels.

The buttons light up to indicate activated channels. How many and what channels you need to activate depends on to which Hardware Interface inputs you have connected your Reason Essentials devices, as discussed above.

3.	If desired, double click on the labels in the right column, and type in another name.

These labels will be used in the Cubase Mixer to identify the ReWire channels.

4.	Open the Cubase Mixer.

You will find that new channels have been added - one for each activated ReWire channel. If the channels aren’t visible, you may need to scroll the Mixer window or check the Mixer View options (different channel types can be shown or hidden as desired in the Cubase Mixer).

5.	Start playback (in Reason Essentials or Cubase - it doesn’t matter as both programs will automatically be synchronized).

You will now see the level meters moving for the playing ReWire channel, and hear the sound of the Reason Essentials devices through Cubase’s Mixer. Of course, this requires that your Reason Essentials Song contains some music!

6.	Use the mixing features in Cubase to add effects, EQ, etc.