Brain Cleaner

Iskur's guide is a joke. I can't believe so many people take it seriously. The only thing it's good for is listening to sound clips. http://braincleaner.net/?q=articles/synthesis

Underutilized, not underused. A lot of people use Reason, but I've only seen a few (like SGX) that REALLY knew how hack it and make some incredible sounds.

WHAT? Reason is NOT "loop-based", unless all you're counting is REX and the ReDrum. Where did you come up with that? Reason is the most underutilized software out there, just because it actually takes a little talent to make something sound good, as opposed to dropping in a generator and loading up a preset like 98% of kids are doing nowadays.

Since somehow I don't think that this is entirely legit, I'll be the first to point out that anything you produce with a pirated copy of Fruity Loops is property of Image-Line. When you buy the software, you also buy the licensing to own the rights to what you produce with it. Without that, you don't own the music that you make with their software. Just food for thought.

Seconding the Axiom.

Reason, easily. Especially for starters, Reason will really help you learn the basics of music production, which you can apply to any other piece of software at that point. Also, if you learn on Fruity Loops, it's harder to switch to better software later on, than it would be if you learned Reason.

If you learn on Reason, it makes you a hell of a lot more knowledgeable in general, because of how it's set up. FruityLoops is set up so a chimp could use it, not so you actually learn something about mixing. Whether that's good or bad ultimately depends on your mix, in the end. I always recommend starting on Reason, even if you don't decide to stick with it (I use Live), you'll have a really solid understanding of the fundamentals of music production, and it'll be easy to pick up any other software on the planet. FL also teaches horrendous sequencing/mixing/production habits, and actually makes it harder to switch off of it into more "standardized" software, like Logic, Pro Tools, Live, Sonar, Cubase, etc. I'm also going to say that there's not some magic number which at that point you suddenly become good at mixing, but it'll probably take you at least a year or so before your stuff becomes reasonably good, at least mix-wise. Everything you mix early on sucks, I don't care what you think of it, it's a fact of life, and everybody else's does too. As you keep working on it, you'll end up learning what works and what doesn't, and (hopefully), your mixes will be more and more solid.