if you are using only Reason, you can get the sounds to sound... lush or thick but its not worth your effort.  It took me years to get a good sound out of Reason that took only 2 months in Cubase.   

Because you have Ableton you should be able to get your hands on some good synths and compressors and reverb etc.   Sometimes a soft distortion can make sounds thick.  Make sure when you have a synth sound you like, keep the sustains and delay and release a bit elongated, throw some reverb on it.  Keep messing with that and you'll start to see some progress.  But you gotta just keep working at.

What difference would a trial make Mrs G wont let him spend any more money. (unlike Mrs H)

Everyone agrees that with reason and Live he has the tools to do the Job

Joel has the right idea. and I asked questions in an earlier post to understand MrG's Level of understanding.

Apple has an interesting take on pirating their software. They don't mind if you pirate it, but when you "make it big" then they want you to pay for it.


The Cubase thing is really is a bummer, but I kind of understand why they might do that.

If you want to go into the gray area, search KVR or somewhere for high quality synthesizers/plugins that have been discontinued and figure out what to do from there.

You don't have to use only what you've got now, no matter what, because there are even free and open source plugins/programs/samples/etc... (most are crap though)

I believe that you have a better chance getting the sound you're looking for with ableton instead of reason because of the VST capability.