Reason 2.5 was designed in such a way that to ge the full potential from it, it needs to be rewired or exported to a program like cubase. The reasoning behind this is that in order for all the different units to be of a high a standard as possible they had to downgrade if you like other aspects of the software....it tells you in the reason 2.5 manual that it has been designed primarily to be be rewired, reason creates sounds at a lower output than would be considered normal this is to save on the processor power thus allowing for more functionality in reason's different untis. the thinking behind it is you can then raise the output in whichever host program it's being rewired or exported to also programs like cubase will automatically generate a fuller sound...this is why you'll be experiencing the problems regarding the sound quality of your finished reason productions. If you're just starting out you'll find there is tons and tons of stuff you can do with reason, it's all about getting to know the untis and how to wire them up and which units to use with which....this will only come with practise, trial and error, but in theory the possibilities with reason are endless, it's down to how you use the program...a way to really open up reason's functions and use the program to it's full capacity is to get a midi controller keyboard, this will give you a lot more functionality and freedom over what you can do with the program.