7.1

SONG FILE HANDLING
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About Self-Contained Songs
The Song is the main file format in Reason. A Song contains the device setup and all settings and connections in the
Rack, all Main Mixer Channel settings as well as everything you have recorded in the Sequencer. However, this is not
always sufficient. If you want to open your song on another computer, or send it to another Reason user, you will also
need to include all samples and REX files used by the Reason devices in the Song. To make this easier, Reason al-
lows you to create “self-contained” songs. A self-contained song contains not only the references to the used sam-
ples and REX files, but also the files themselves. You can choose exactly what files should be included in the self-
contained song.
q An alternative to self-containing samples and/or REX files could be to bounce Mixer Channels to Audio
Tracks. This way, you could “convert” ReFill samples to audio so that your song would always sound the same,
no matter on which computer you play it back. See “Bouncing Mixer Channels” for details.
To specify what files should be included in the self-contained song, proceed as follows:
1. Select “Song Self-Contain Settings...” from the File menu.
The “Song Self-Contain Settings” dialog appears, listing all samples and REX files used in the song:
2. Tick the checkboxes to the left of the “Name” column for the files you want to contain in the song.
Note that samples and REX files from ReFills can also be self-contained (but not un-self-contained, see below).
D You can use the “Check All” button to tick all checkboxes in one go.
Similarly, the “Uncheck All” button unchecks all checkboxes.
3. When you have marked the desired sounds, click “OK” to exit the dialog.
The next time you save your Song, the specified sounds will be automatically included in the Song file.
! Note that a self-contained song file will be larger than the original song file. However, samples included in a
self-contained song are automatically compressed by approximately 50% of their original size. Since the com-
pression is lossless, this does not in any way affect the sound quality.