Odd delays in Reason 12 and 13

[VT698]

Hi all,

I am pretty sure this is a PC issue rather than a Reason issue, but I was wondering if anyone can throw any light on the following, please, as it will help me narrow down the cause.

This started happening some time ago, and it's the same with Reason 12 and 13, so it's not a new thing for me since getting Reason 13.

The following scenario is to explain what's happening - it's annoying, but not necessarily a massive problem in itself - but I suspect it's symptomatic of a PC issue and I am hoping it may help to identify what's wrong with the computer, as it would be great to resolve the matter properly. Let's say I have a couple of songs loaded in Reason (different tabs, obviously). Both songs have been played but not changed. If I select to close either song (without saving it) Reason becomes unresponsive for 20 seconds and often longer. During this time it will display a vertical double-ended arrow pointer. If I attempt to do anything at all in that time, the screen whites out for a long period of time with a blue, spinning busy pointer. Mostly it recovers but occasionally I have to exit using Task Manager and restart the program. Observing Task Manager during this whole scenario, I can see that with both songs loaded and not playing, CPU usage sits at about 13% and RAM usage at about 35%. If I close one song, CPU usage sinks slowly to about 8% and RAM usage to about 31% over a period of around 20 seconds. At around halfway through that period, Reason flags up in Task Manager as 'Not responding'. After another ten seconds or so, that notification disappears and the program becomes usable again. What might cause this long delay when simply closing a song?

I also observe some strange behaviour during loading a song. Again, I'm hoping someone might be able to say if this is normal for Reason or not, or have ideas what might cause it. When I open a song, Task Manager shows CPU and RAM usage rises, as you'd expect. However, once the song seems to have fully loaded (and would normally be ready to play), CPU usage continues to rise for 30 or 40 seconds, all the way up to about 60%, while RAM usage increases to about 38%. Then, the CPU usage starts to fall and, over quite a long period of time - certainly a lot more than thirty seconds - it gradually sinks down to around 13%, with RAM usage dropping to about 32%

Finally, there are occasions where attempting to change any of the on-screen controls - e.g. volume levels of individual tracks in the rack or mixer - while a song is playing will freeze the screen sequencer scrolling - and of course, make it impossible to alter the settings of controls. This doesn't happen every time, just sometimes.

If anyone has any ideas what part of Windows is misfiring - or if anyone can confirm or deny the behaviour described above is normal, that would be immensely helpful and greatly appreciated. I've tried all the usual Windows things - CHKDSK, sfc /scannow, DISM, etc. with no errors found.

If needed, the PC spec is: liquid-cooled Intel Core i7 4930K 3.4GHz with 32 Gb RAM, running Windows 10 Pro 22H2 running from SSD, NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics.

Many thanks in advance.

[DianeLowery]

I have the same problem with Reason! You could try checking your graphics drivers and external plugins. basket random

[mimidancer]

I 'm not super techy. But I too had some weird issues with CPU usage. ( i did not document it completely as you did)But what fixed it for me was adjusting my hyperthreads. They were defaulted to auto. But after I adjusted them to a specific number the issues subsided. Currently, I'm on a multi-core i7 and Windows 11. But experienced this issue before I upgraded to 11. was also before the current version of Reason. I hope this give you something to try. Be well and make music you love.

[VT698]

Many thanks, both. The graphics drivers are up-to-date (and I've actually upgraded the graphics card recently as well, for the benefit of some other software - but it made no difference to the issues in Reason.

I have a very large number of external plugins, some of which do use more CPU, as you might expect, but they all worked OK at one time without any problems. The hyperthreads issue is something I've experimented with a fair number of times. On my machine, the setting for six cores seems optimal, setting it higher or lower can make matters worse.

I forgot to mention that the DSP metering in Reason often reads higher than I feel it should - though, of course, that does vary with the external plugins and whether a second song is being held on another tab. LAtency settyings are also an issue - with most songs, even relatively simple ones, I can't reliably bring the sample buffer below 1024 (when it used to work fine at 128 or 256) without the risk of audio breakup.

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