I've been using Fruity Loops Studio 4 for making drum loops and synth lines, and find it an excellent and complete program. I also want to try Reason as i've read a lot about it. What do you guys prefer or think is best for what kind of things ?

the best of fruityloops.

I reckon FL4 is better, only because it;s interface is much, much more user friendly. And despite this, Fruity Loops is still a very powerful music generation program. At times, you may feel limited by FL4, at which time you should go and play with Reason. Reason is also very powerful, and while lacking the user friendliness of FL4, is great once you get your head around it.

Reason is actually extremely user friendly, it just looks rather intimidating at first. Then you realize that everything is really simple to sequence, and all the dials are labeled, and it isn't so hard anymore. It also comes with an extremely good FAQ and tutorial guide under the help menu.

Fruity Loops is alright, but I always prefered Reason.

I personally prefer Reason as I think it has a slightly more realistic sound, but sayin that I haven't tried FL past v3.5 so maybe things have changed, though I still prefer Reasons Rack mount style layout.


B.

It all depends what you have at your disposal. If you do not have any modules / Synths.. then I would go with reason just because of all of the things it is packaged with. If you do have some hardware synths, then I would go with fruity... also if you're sample based i would go with fruity as well