Performance drop with Reason 9

[jonheal]

My performance has dropped with age, but that's OK. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be in the first place.

[tobypearce]

I agree with the comments above.

Whilst it is acceptable to expect a performance cut with a new version where new features are introduced, this does not feel the case where scrolling graphics affects the audio quality so much. This feels more like a problem that needs fixing.

[DJDark2010]

Never had that performance drop. In my oppinion Reason 9 works much better than the verisons before.

[Ostermilk]

I never had a performance hit either moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10 nor moving from R8 to R9. I tested using the stress test file found on this forum, because I don't trust my imaginings too much, and found no difference.

However when Windows 10 did arrive there were a lot of things I found beneficial to shut up, such as file indexing, not allowing Metro style apps to run in the background, power management settings sleep/hibernation and all the unnecessary network activity I could possibly silence from the Privacy settings.

[Dante]

Win 8 - i7 4790 - 16gb ram - ssd. On the stress test I get 5% less play time on Reason 9 than with Reason 8. Scrolling the SSL bumps the cpu meter up by at least one bar on both R8 and R9.

[tobypearce]

Scrolling the SSL bumps the cpu meter up by at least one bar on both R8 and R9.

That's the bit that Props need to attend to.

Reason has always felt real smooth in operation - doesn't crash, no glitches. The stutters it produces when scrolling make it feel a bit less polished.

[Gulale]

Reason 9 and imported audio tracks don't go together that's my conclusion. As if like Audio is in beta. Just for fun add this song in Reason and mix it. Your Reason 9 will cry for DSP.

[SA Studio]

Scrolling the SSL bumps the cpu meter up by at least one bar on both R8 and R9.

That's the bit that Props need to attend to.

Reason has always felt real smooth in operation - doesn't crash, no glitches. The stutters it produces when scrolling make it feel a bit less polished.

Absolutely.

"Scrolling the SSL bumps the cpu meter up by at least one bar on both R8 and R9." = If that's the case, that's bad. I've used enough other DAWs since '98 to know that I always wondered the day Reason's unique graphical necessity would lean in and reduce the overall performance. If that's true, they really need to fix that fast.

It's 2017 = Reason should run BETTER AND BETTER per version, not the opposite. Other DAWs are doing that = Putting out more efficient versions than the one before.

[Oquasec]

Although reason runs fine for me on balanced mode at 25% max power at 128 samples [even with omnis loaded in minihost]
That's a good suggestion for future updates, rewriting some code every whole number.

[selig]

Never had that performance drop. In my oppinion Reason 9 works much better than the verisons before.

Same here, at least according to the stress tests I've tried. I realize not everyone is seeing this, so something is definitely "up" for those folks. I'll leave it to the DSP experts to theorize what could be causing these issues.

[Data_Shrine]

The recent os x updates have not helped for thoses on mac. I'm still on mavericks but getting worried about the lack of security updates. Its now 4 versions behind so Apple abandoned support (they support their OS for only 3 years now). I'm gonna have to update to Sierra soon and getting worried about worse perfomance and other problems. Still on R8. This is another thing but latency in my MPBr is worse than on my 2009 non-retina mbp (which was stolen..)

On topic, i agree with others who say that Reason needs code optimization. Ableton did rewrite a lot of things in v9. When its needed, its needed, idk why Props runs away... or so it seems. Maybe its just taking a long time.

[Fusion]

I have also noticed problems with high DSP usage after upgrading to Reason 9.

The same song would play fine in Reason 8 but now I either getting audio stuttering or the message saying your computer is to slow to play appears. I have since upgraded to a new macbook i7 16gb and the problem is exactly the same.

I have contacted support who suggested a few basic OS tweaks , but nothing helped so now they have just stopped responding.

It seems to me that they have changed something in the code and will not admit it.

Thanks Propellerheads!

[tobypearce]

I don't know anything about this at all, but it's interesting that some notice this effect and others don't.

Don't modern OSs use the graphics card for non-graphics related processing where they can? Perhaps it's something to do with this.

[Ostermilk]

I don't know anything about this at all, but it's interesting that some notice this effect and others don't.

Don't modern OSs use the graphics card for non-graphics related processing where they can? Perhaps it's something to do with this.

Honestly if Reason was performing as badly as some here are relating then I wouldn't even be discussing it here I'd just wipe it from my system and be using something else. (as I have done in the past with other DAW software not playing nice on my system).

It's also one of those things that perenially crops on whatever forum you go on, on Cakewalk's they will be going on about issues with Sonar, Presonus it will be that Studio One is a turkey etc. etc.

I'm not suggesting that people do not suffer real issues as infinite software and hardware combinations are inevitably going cause specific problems and they are never easy to pinpoint, and they are never as easy to solve as "Vendor you need to fix this now!" because as soon as you fix something to sort someone out you end up causing problems for someone else.

Reliability is one of the things I value about Reason, and even with it getting far more complex since R5 I've never known it to be unreliable to the point of anything being a show stopper, performance wise it's never been the most optimal performer as far as plugin loads go but I know that whatever machine I've ever put it on it has always behaved itself, one of the benefits (and drawbacks) of not optimizing the crap out of code to work on specific hardware or OS.

I've not seen a performance drop though since R7 notably improved on the performance of R6, there's been neglegible difference for me from 7 to 9 even taking into account migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 9.

If there was a notable difference I'd probably not be here.

[Oquasec]

Atom cpus would be running full programs at max asio latency.
An interface would prolly drop those down to 1024.

A regular desktop would be pushing 64-128 on 25% balanced mode.
A surface should get similar results [for those who own a surface are those getting those numbers at high performance mode?]

[SA Studio]

I have also noticed problems with high DSP usage after upgrading to Reason 9.

The same song would play fine in Reason 8 but now I either getting audio stuttering or the message saying your computer is to slow to play appears. I have since upgraded to a new macbook i7 16gb and the problem is exactly the same.

I have contacted support who suggested a few basic OS tweaks , but nothing helped so now they have just stopped responding.

It seems to me that they have changed something in the code and will not admit it.

Thanks Propellerheads!

It's a $399 product. They stopped responding to you??

[househoppin09]

What is this "25% max power/25% balanced" setting people keep referring to? Is it a Reason setting or an OS setting? I don't have any such setting in Reason on v7.

[Fusion]

I have also noticed problems with high DSP usage after upgrading to Reason 9.

The same song would play fine in Reason 8 but now I either getting audio stuttering or the message saying your computer is to slow to play appears. I have since upgraded to a new macbook i7 16gb and the problem is exactly the same.

I have contacted support who suggested a few basic OS tweaks , but nothing helped so now they have just stopped responding.

It seems to me that they have changed something in the code and will not admit it.

Thanks Propellerheads!

It's a $399 product. They stopped responding to you??

Yes have not heard anything since. I will let you know if they ever reply. I guess they have no idea what is causing this.

[Fusion]

What is this "25% max power/25% balanced" setting people keep referring to? Is it a Reason setting or an OS setting? I don't have any such setting in Reason on v7.

Not sure what you are referring to , but this the response I got from PH.

First, check the general tab in Preferences and make sure "Use Multi-core Audio Rendering" is enabled.

Check that no back-up or anti-virus program backs up or scans files in real-time as this might cause audio interruptions.

If you have two graphics cards in your computer, you can try defaulting to to the faster one by disable "Automatic Graphics Switching" in your the Mac OS "Energy Saver" control panel.

Do you have a Retina screen? Have you tried running Reason in Low Resolution mode (right-click the Reason icon in Finder and select "Run in low resolution"? This will reduce the CPU strain on the graphics, which could improve the audio playback (if it's a performance problem).

Also, try running Reason at 44100 Hz Sample rate and a Buffer size of 256-512 samples and see if it helps.

I find it funny that it is 2017 but we still do not have retina support