Reason is a popular music software program developed by Swedish software developers Propellerhead Software. It emulates a rack of hardware synthesizers, samplers, signal processors, sequencers and mixers, all of which can be freely interconnected in arbitrary manner giving the user unique creative possibilities. Reason can be used either as a complete virtual music studio, or as a collection of virtual instruments to be played live or used with other sequencing software.
Reason 1.0 was released in November 2000. The program's design mimics a studio rack into which users can insert virtual devices such as instruments, effects processors and mixers. These modules can be controlled from Reason's built-in MIDI sequencer or from other sequencing applications such as Pro Tools, Logic, fruity loops, Digital Performer, Cubase, Sonar and GarageBand via Propellerhead's ReWire protocol.