So I am very new with Reason, and have been working on a song for around a week. At first it sounded very clean, but that was at the beginning. Now I have more synths and kicks ect, and it seems whenever i put down another track, it distorts the previous ones. Like, i added a few more layers of kicks, and now my lead synth sounds distorted. I do not know what is going on!

you are probably clipping the sounds. There is a 'hidden' thing called the 0db Level. When you cross that it can change the dynamics of the song (sound output wise) drasticly. You probably also have a mastering suite in there which is currently enabled.

What I suggest is the following technique to solve the issue:

- bypass the mastering suite
- check all the output volumes of each independent channel from the mixer
- keep a close look at the "Audio Out Clipping" sign located at the left bottom corner of the rack

When that thing starts to light up like a christmas tree, you know you are crossing that 0db Level thingy. So, you might want to reduce the levels of those instruments that cause that thing to light up.

When all done... you can bring back the mastering suite back into play... and voila, it will sound in harmonic sync again

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Sorry if this sounds really dumb, but how do you bypass the mastering suite?
Also the audio out clip, is it bad when the dsp bar lights up?

Bypassing: at the top left of all combinators and effects is a switch that says bypass, on, off. Drag the switch into the bypass position.

DSP: that's just an indicator of how much of your computer's processing power that Reason is using - no need to worry about that unless you're using so much that the program is unable to play the song you're working on. Even then, it won't hurt anything, just makes it hard to work on things when you can't hear 'em.

By the way: If you aren't using a mastering suite, just look at your volume levels on the main mixer...
You want the levels all the way at the right to stay out of the red(I guess it might be orange...) for the most part. When the volume peaks out at the top of that meter is when the clip light will go on and you'll get distortion (which is not great for your speakers)

To guard against clipping while you're working on a song it's not a bad idea to
right-click the Reason Hardware Device, create an M-Class Maximizer.
On the maximizer: leave everything the way it is except turn on "4 ms look ahead." What this does: every time your volume peaks, the maximizer will cut it off so it can't go any higher.
Then when you've got your song arranged the way you want it, get rid of the maximizer, turn your master fader down on the mixer a little bit, and adjust your volume faders on the rest of the mixer channels til everything is sounding the way you want it to. At that point you can bring your master level back up to just under the point at which it starts to clip again. Only way to do that is trial and error, really.

Further reading: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct0...ntechnique.htm this is on Reason 3, but the principles and effects haven't changed

Just realized that Hydlide already said half of that sorry man

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Thanks guys, you've been really helpful!