Download ReCycle and sample like it’s 1994 again

It’s 1994, and WXYC, a student-run radio station in Chapel Hill, launched the world’s first internet broadcast. Later that year you could listen to it on a brand new browser called Netscape Navigator, which you could buy through the mail for $39.

Reason Studios was then called Propellerhead Software, and in 1994 they launched a product called ReCycle. The sample editor (which could run on the first Power Mac, released by Apple in March 1994) was dubbed “the perfect tool for sampled grooves” and it became (as much as any software in 1994 could be) a sensation.

ReCycle allowed users to slice, flip and otherwise manipulate sounds in software in a way that was revolutionary for the time. It caught on among aspiring producers who wanted to slice up beats and samples but couldn’t afford hardware, like the Akai MPC, to do it.

It’s a little crazy that the company that created ReCycle is still thriving in 2025, and only a little crazier that they’ve decided to reissue ReCycle.

More a callback than a look ahead, the new ReCycle is still an app that “just refuses to die. After all these years,” Reason writes, “many people swear by ReCycle as their go-to sample tool, and given the cultural time capsule that it is today we want new generations to be able to experience what the workflow was like 30 years ago.”

Reason also made ReCycle free — just create an account at reasonstudios.com and you can download it, no strings attached.

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