Visual racks in Reason’s Combinator

Let’s see how one DAW uses this concept in practice…

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Here we have a setup of Reason devices including the Parsec synth, a delay, a distortion and a stereo width device. Each effect is placed to process in series, as you’d usually see. So far, so normal.

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By selecting all the devices, right-clicking and hitting Combine, we call up a Combinator unit that surrounds all the devices. Now we can save this setup – and all the associated settings of its members – to be recalled later when working on other projects.

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We could also create a Combinator for just the effects chain, grouping the delay, distortion and width processor into one group, leaving the synth itself out of things. This could be useful for recalling your favourite processing chains, channel strips or anything else.

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Reason’s Combinator can act to manage all the devices within it too. We’ll get to some more in-depth rack solutions later on, but two obvious ones at the top include bypassing all the devices within a combinator and starting all patterns running for applicable devices.

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Here’s a more advanced Combinator taken from Reason’s sound library: a ‘Drawbars’ instrument from the Keys and Chords package. This combines instruments, EQs and effects into one playable package, ready-routed and dripping with character.

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The devices are all connected around the back, and there’s even a mixer handling the signals’ combination and routing to the auxiliary effect.