Reason: ReCycle Renaissance

Screen 1: The free release of ReCycle has updated graphics and a dark mode option.

Reason Studios have reintroduced their classic beat‑slicing software — and it’s free!

Reason Studios have given their legendary beat‑chopping tool ReCycle a fresh lick of paint and made it available for free. Thank you! While many DAWs and hardware workstations, including Reason itself, can do some of the things ReCycle does, it still has unique features and is an essential tool for sound designers and soundpack/Refill creators.

ReCycle was actually Propellerhead’s first commercial app, although it was initially marketed as a Steinberg product. The primary use case was for editing and chopping loops and sending them directly to supported hardware samplers like the Akai S1000 and Digidesign SampleCell. However Steinberg saw it as a complementary product to Cubase, clearly predicting that most sampling and loop‑based production would move into DAWs.

The Importance Of ReCycling

ReCycle is a simple stereo audio editor designed to prep samples (typically loops or phrases rather than one‑shots) for use in another sampler or DAW track. It can do basic editing jobs but its primary purpose is to break a sample into smaller slices, which can then be re‑timed or triggered individually via different MIDI notes.

Screen 2: Our loop imported into the Reason REX player device.

There are three main reasons why you might want to do this. The one which ReCycle has been used for the most is to have a rhythmic loop play in time with a project without time stretching. Any sampler or DAW that can understand ReCycle’s file export format (REX2) can load a ReCycled loop and play it back at any tempo. The file metadata timestamps each slice at a particular bar/beat position, so your sampler can trigger each slice in time, or your DAW can place them in the right positions on a track. Change the tempo of your project and all the chopped components slide further apart or closer together (see Screen 4), and the overall loop or phrase stays in time with no warping artefacts.

Screen 4: At a significantly slower tempo here in a Pro Tools audio track, you can see how the slices become spaced out.

Having the sample chopped into parts presents other creative possibilities, giving us reasons two and three for ReCycling. A REX‑aware sampler or workstation will typically extract a MIDI sequence that reconstructs the original loop. By the simple expedient of shuffling those notes around you can create new patterns and variations. You can also play and capture new musical phrases and ideas by triggering the slices manually: the foundational...