original article march 2001
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar01/articles/propellorhead.asp At this point it's worth mentioning that Reason doesn't provide a two-way street for MIDI and audio. You can't record audio with it, or route external audio to Reason effects, and you can't send MIDI data out. It's meant to be a self-contained system.
As the presence of 64 meters should suggest, the Interface provides up to 64 audio output channels, but if your soundcard is stereo, only two channels will be active. Likewise, up to 64 MIDI channels can come in, so that Reason's virtual instruments can be played by sequencers other than the program's two built-in ones.
most people never use reason in the way it was originally meant to be used.. connected VIA midi to other pre-existing systems!
as an external midi addon to other systems whether u are using logic, protools, cubase or LITERALLY ANY MIDI CAPABLE DAW you can use your existing daw on computer 1.. and then run reason on computer 2.. connect a midi cable.. configure reasons incoming midi and over 1 midi cable u can control 16 different modules using the 16 seperate midi channels on that one midi cable connection!!!!! and route each of the outputs from those modules to seperate outputs on a cheap multi output sound card such as the M-audio 410, or Gina20, or Gina24!
i mean just look at the image of what they referred to as the "reason hardware interface"
it pretty much eludes to this is how it was intended to be used...
MIDI IN DEVICE on top
AUDIO OUT Device on bottom..
MIDI signals in, audio signals out.. simple right?
*ahhhh eureeka moment*
when reason is implemented this way, as an external midi module
there is no limit to what it can integrate with.. virtually any midi capable setup.
in fact i bet it could be argued that this is how to achieve best performance from the app... sidestepping and bypassing
teh whole REWIRE bullshit (which can be and was totally problematic to say the least)
it looks like reason 1.0 supported 4 midi inputs... of 16 channels each.. so up to 64 channels of midi (over a max of 4 physical cables, if your midi interface supported this many cables if not you would be limited to 16channels x however many 'midi in' ports u do have connected to your computer, these ports can be on seperate midi devices)