#15. The Combinator in Reason

The Combinator is one of the coolest devices in Reason. It allows you to create complex instruments or effects patches, constructed from multiple rack devices. The combinator can also help you to better organize your rack.

On the top we see that the device has on / off / bypass switch like a typical effect unit. On the right of it is the patch browser, featuring two volume meters for the internal and external sound levels. It has the usual pitch and mod wheels on the left.

The combinator has four assignable knobs and the same number of buttons in the middle. On the left we see buttons for running the devices inside (those having RUN option - Redrum, Rex, Matrix enabled) and a button which automatically bypasses all effect units present in the combinator.

*Note that there is no difference between the usual Combinator device and the MClass Masterin Suite Combi one with the letter M on the right - it is just cosmetic change. You can change the backdrop of a combinator by rightclicking on it and selecting Select Backdrop...

There are two more buttons below.

Also selectable from the back:

Show Devices opens the Combinator (It is empty by default). In order to insert a device, Right Click inside the area opened and select Create - > Then insert whatever instrument / effect you want to create.

All the instruments you insert into the combinator will be played simultaneously when you input midi data into it (play it with midi keyboard, draw pattern in sequencer).

A little word about routing...

There are two sets of input and output audio pairs on the back - External Routing Area and Connect to Devices in Combi (seen only when Show Devices is active). 

You can theoretically run all the devices in a combinator without using the inputs and outputs at all - just route them to external mixer and you`ll be fine. This however, will be inefficient when it comes to saving the patch - this would mean that you`ll have to manually connect the devices each time you load a patch. It is much better to create mixer INTO the combinator and keep the connections saved in the patch. The outputs of the mixer go into the From Devices input, and then gets routed to the next destination trough the Combi Output pair. 

When the combinator patch is used as an effects unit, containing effects only, you route the instrument you want to affect with it to the Combi Input. Then you route To Devices outputs to the first effect of the effects` chain inside the combinator. The last effect in the chain is routed to From Devices input and from there it reaches the next destination trough the Combi Output.

When used as an effect processor, the combinator`s upper in and out connections can be seen as being the same as those of the effects in Reason, such as the Scream 4 for example.

Example effect - the To Devices output is connected to the first effect of the chain inside the combi. The last effect goes into From Devices input. Now you can connect an instrument trough the Combi Input and then route the processed sound to the desired destination trough Combi Output.

Let`s click Show Programmer...

This is what we get:

On the left side we see the complete list of the devices present in the combinator, ordered in the same way. The instruments have key range selector on their right side, similar to the one in the NN-XT Sampler. By default, it covers the whole range, but it can be moved and resized. This can also get done by the use of the Key Range Lo / Hi fields below. We can also select a velocity range, outside of which the sound doesn`t get played. We can transpose notes of the device, or disable it`s receiving of notes if we don`t want it to output any sound.

Below we can select which Performance Controllers we can enable.

The Modulation Routing is pretty easy to understand. 

We select the source of modulation from the left column:

The four rotaries and buttons refer to those in front of the combinator device. The Target area selects which controls of a device are going to get modulated. The Min and Max values determine the range of the effect.

We can have up to ten modulation settings on a device. 

On the back of the device we have the usual gate and note CV inputs.

We also have CV inputs for external controlling of the wheels and the rotaries in front of the device. The CV options below are the inputs for the CV controllers in the Source column of the Modulation Routing.

And... we`ve covered it all I guess...