@Randall Juhl My bad, bro. I think I used the wrong word. I'm hearing distortion even though there's no clipping. It's in the exported file as well. It's hurtful listening to it in the car, because aside from that distortion it REALLY good. Reason uses an emulation of the SSL 9000 board. I mean the sonic character of Reason with no processing makes even the actual SSL channel strips sound like that little snare drum you buy your toddler vs a complete drum set tuned by whoever that is who plays for Maroon 5.

@Tom Baldwin Bet. I think what I'm going to do is unhook everything one by one in that first synth until I find the issue from the bottom up. Whatever the problem is there, it's probably the same issue in all the distortion. And I used the wrong lingo, but you seemed to have caught it. There's no clipping but I am hearing distortion.

@Tom Baldwin You are so very right. I do remember I used to bounce my entire "mix" to a single mono summed track and then bounce that single summed track into two stereo tracks. I forgot all about that lol. I promise I've come way far from those days. So let me give a little more context. I make hip and R&B beats usinh MIDI. Most of the melodic instruments' L and R channels modulate by varying levels according to the nature of the sound I use. I don't use real instruments. My mixes have one track per sound. I see in a lot of Jake's MTM sessions, there may be like 2 or 3 guitar tracks all playing the same thing not including any solo rifts (to my understanding). My end goal is to get more efficient in how I mix. I can get a really good sounding mix, but it takes me anywhere from a month to a month and half to do it. One area I spend a lot of time in pocket EQ. When I'm mixing a beat with 39 tracks, it does take 3 or 4 days and that was once I got efficient at pocket EQ. This is my first time doing it on Reason and it's taking even longer because I have to turn the analog style knobs individually. If there were a way to space out the tracks before I get to the reverb stage, I'll have a dope sounding mix. Reason uses the SSL 9000 sound board emulation and you can instantly hear the difference when I used to export the tracks from Reason to Pro Tools. I don't see how pros could get the the type of mixes they get using Pro Tools without using using top notch external gear. But anyway, I thought panning might the way to go, but when I listen to mainstream hip hop/rap and R&B, every sound is the same in both speakers and the L and R channels are moving at different levels like the volumes of the two channels on an VU meter. It looks like panning isn't what I'm looking for. Keeping everything centered but at different widths has been doing what I want, but the pocket EQ is just time consuming, especially when most days, I'm only mixing for about 3 or 4 hours.

@Tom Baldwin Bet. I'll keep looking out a process that simplifies what I've been doing. I love that idea you with the two sets of guitars. When I get established enough to pay musicians to play their real instruments, I'll definitely be trying that out.

@Richard Hawkes Preciate the advice, but I really to learn these rack extensions. They're more closely related to hardware and one day, I asking God to give me a real studio with hardware one day and I'd like to know it pretty well already. Plus, my shot at the industry may come first through hardware and I don't want to go to someone's studio and tell them I'm good with plugins but inexperienced with hardware. I want to learn how to do all the routing and a few basic customization via routing. I probably will use a few plugins, like they don't have an MU meter rack extension in there, so I'm using my plugin.