Specifications

SONG FILE HANDLING
102
About Self-contained
Songs
The song is the main file format in Reason. A song contains the device setup and
all settings in the rack, as well as everything you have recorded in the sequencer.
However, this is not always sufficient! Should you open your song on another
computer or send it to another Reason user, you would also have to bring all
samples and REX files used by the devices in the song. To make this easier,
Reason allows you to create “self-contained” songs.
A self-contained song contains not only the references to the used files, but also
the files themselves. You can choose exactly which files should be included in
the self-contained song, with the following exception:
! Files that are part of a ReFill cannot be included in a self-contained
song.
If your song contains samples or REX files from a ReFill, other users must have
the same ReFill to be able to play the song.
To specify which files should be included in the song, proceed as follows:
1. Pull down the File menu and select Song Self-Contain Settings...
A dialog appears, listing all samples and REX files used in the song.
2. Tick the checkbox in the Sound column for the files you want in-
cluded in the song.
D You can use the Check All button to activate all checkboxes in one
go.
Similarly, the Uncheck All button deactivates all checkboxes.
D Files that are part of a ReFill are indicated by a lock symbol instead
of a checkbox (since they cannot be included in the song file).
The rightmost column indicates to which ReFill each such file belongs.
3. When you have selected the desired sounds, click OK.
The dialog is closed. The next time you save, the specified sounds will be in-
cluded in the song file.
! Note that a self-contained song file will be considerably larger than
the original song file.
However, samples included in a self-contained song are automati-
cally compressed by approximately 50%, meaning that the self-con-
tained song will still be a lot smaller than the original song and the
sample files combined.
“Un-self-containing” a Song
If you have opened a song that is more or less self-contained (i.e. contains one
or several sounds embedded in the song file), you may want to extract these
sounds and make the song refer to them on disk as usual. This is done in the fol-
lowing way:
1. Select Song Self-Contain Settings from the File menu.
The dialog appears.
2. Locate the sounds you want to extract from the song file, and deac-
tivate their checkboxes (or click Uncheck All).
3. Click OK to close the dialog.
Now, the program will check for each “extracted” sound file whether it is
available (at its original, stored location) or not.
D If the program finds the sound file at the location stored in the
song, it is simply removed from the song file, and the original file
reference path is used.
This would be the case if you made the song self-contained yourself, and un-
self-contain it on your own computer (provided that you haven’t removed the
original sound files from disk since you made the song self-contained).
D If the program doesn’t find the sound file, a file dialog appears, al-
lowing you to select a folder and name for the sound file.
The extracted file will be saved in the specified folder, and the path in the
song will be adjusted. This would be the case if you got the self-contained
song from another user, for example.