Bizarre 10.1 Performance Boost

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NekujaK
Posts: 631
Joined: 09 Oct 2016
Location: USA

20 May 2018

Yesterday, I experienced something really strange, and perhaps even a little hopeful, having to do with performance in Reason 10.1.

Here's the setup:
- I have both Reason 9.5 and 10.1 installed on my Win 7 system
- For the last couple of months, I've been mixing some large projects for a couple of clients in 9.5. By "large" I mean each song has 20-36 audio tracks, with quite a few VSTs and REs in use. For most DAWs, this would not be a problem, but Reason is barely able to handle it. I need to max out the audio buffer to 4096 samples just to get uninterrupted playback and even then, Reason still continues to choke on several of the songs. It's been a challenge, to say the least.
- Earlier in the day, I bought a new plugin (HoRNeT ThirtyOne) that I wanted to try out.

That's the setup, here's what happened:

I launched Reason 10.1 to test the new plugin, and decided to load a song from one of the large 9.5 mixing projects for the test. This was the first time this particular song was ever touched by 10.1.

I slapped the new plugin on the master bus, and began testing. Most of my attention was naturally focused on the plugin's behavior, but I did notice that Reason's performance was flawless! Playback never choked, and overall response was very snappy. I thought to myself, wow, maybe 10.1 actually does have some performance improvements baked in.

I spent quite a bit of time with the new plugin, which works great, by the way... except when it doesn't. I encountered several plugin crashes and other strange behavior, which I subsequently reported to the developer, whose stuff is usually rock solid, so I'm confident an update will remedy the problems

Anyway, getting back to Reason... After the plugin crashed a couple of times, I decided to restart Reason, but before I did, I checked my audio settings to verify the conditions under which Reason was performing so miraculously well. When I opened the Preferences - Audio tab, I nearly fell out of my chair! The buffer was set to just 256 samples (a holdover from one of my previous 10.1 sessions)! There is absolutely NO WAY the loaded song ever played smoothely at anything less than 4096 samples!! I was completely blown away, and of course, starting to feel really good about about 10.1!! :D

But alas... my joy would be shortlived.

After restarting Reason and reloading the project, etc... everything went right back to the way it used to be :( Reason choked, so I set the buffer to 4096 samples, but Reason continued to choke intermittenly. This continued to happen after every subsequent Reason restart, which was certainly discouraging :(

Some thoughts about this strange occurrance:
- Perhaps when the project was first loaded into 10.1, some of the VSTs were somehow disabled. However, if this were the case, the overall sound of the mix would be altered, but the mix sounded correct to me.
- Maybe there's some kind of unknown behavior that occurs when an older project is loaded into a newer version of Reason for the very first time, and the result is some incredible performance optimization. If this is the case, then I hope the Props can harness the magic and bake it into the mainstream code.
- Maybe the new plugin I was testing imparted some momentary performance boost, but I very much doubt it.
- Maybe I was hallucinating. That may actually seem like the most plausible explanation, but I assure you, what I described above actually did happen..

I have not yet attempted to replicate any of this with a different song. So for now, the above is simply a singular anectdotal event, and nothing more. But it does makes me wonder if Reason is already capable of delivering significantly better performance, and it's just a matter of exposing those capabilities.

Things that make you go hmmmmmm.... :think:
wreaking havoc with :reason: since 2.5
:arrow: https://soundcloud.com/nekujak-donnay/sets

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Loque
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Posts: 11170
Joined: 28 Dec 2015

21 May 2018

Which OS? Which HDD?

If you are on Windows, I recommend to disable Search Indexer, disable refreshing what is not needed, try the optimization setting for background or foreground performance, disable CPU power saving, check in Reason if hyper Threading has an impact.

Those things seem to have an impact on performance. Also memory fragmentation, so it could be faster after a clean boot on first start.

If R10s performance was improved i dunno, but it should be soon to compete with other DAWs.
Reason12, Win10

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NekujaK
Posts: 631
Joined: 09 Oct 2016
Location: USA

21 May 2018

Loque wrote:
21 May 2018
If you are on Windows, I recommend to disable Search Indexer, disable refreshing what is not needed, try the optimization setting for background or foreground performance, disable CPU power saving, check in Reason if hyper Threading has an impact.
My machine is a professionally-built custom audio/video production workstation. My primary line of work is in video production, editing, and compositing, which is far more CPU-intensive than audio production, and my machine and its OS (Win 7) have been tweaked and optimized in every possible way (except overclocking) for media production.

Up until Reason 9.5, I NEVER experienced any performance issues with Reason. I rarely saw Reason's CPU meter go above 2 bars, and only on the most complex projects would it sometimes hit 3 bars. Now, when I simply load my standard Reason song template, which is empty except for 6 VSTs on the master bus, the CPU meter starts at 3 bars before I even record the first note! :o

I haven't completely given up on Reason yet, but it's very embarrassing and unprofessional when Reason chokes in front of clients, and only furthers the image that "Reason is just a toy" in their eyes.
wreaking havoc with :reason: since 2.5
:arrow: https://soundcloud.com/nekujak-donnay/sets

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Loque
Moderator
Posts: 11170
Joined: 28 Dec 2015

21 May 2018

So if your machine is that optimized and the points I mentioned are ok, then I don't have any idea except of a broken component in your system, especially if the performance is not constant.

Do you have hyper Threading enabled in Reason? It shows cpu load even if there sn't any.
Reason12, Win10

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4filegate
Posts: 922
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

21 May 2018

I observe similar things, obviously not OS-dependent. So far, I have noticed that my ears used much more send/return effects in previous projects than in 10.1.

note; adjusted the volume with the same abluesky 2.1 Mediadesk.

User avatar
NekujaK
Posts: 631
Joined: 09 Oct 2016
Location: USA

21 May 2018

Loque wrote:
21 May 2018
So if your machine is that optimized and the points I mentioned are ok, then I don't have any idea except of a broken component in your system, especially if the performance is not constant.

Do you have hyper Threading enabled in Reason? It shows cpu load even if there sn't any.
I appreciate the suggestions. I have hyperthreading is disabled in Reason, and I've been applying the other tweaks you mentioned, plus several others, for many years now. I've got every unnecessary process and visual effect disabled in Windows. My system is about as bare bones as you can get in terms of OS functionality, including no networking.

My original post was not a complaint about Reason's performance - I realize improvements are on the way. I was just reporting a strange singular incident where it seemed like performance was miraculously, inexplicably, and dramatically improved for one brief session.

Reason 9.5/10.1 actually performs quite well for me in most situations. It's just these recent large client projects that are bringing Reason to its knees. But who knows, maybe I'm actually not getting as good performance out of my system as I think. Here's a simple CPU test:

With Reason completely empty (no tracks, no effects), add an instance of Waves Abbey Road Plates to each of the FX sends (8 total).

On my system, with Abbey Road Plates on all the sends, and Reason sitting idle, the CPU meter is already at 3 bars. I'd be curious to know how that compares with other folks.
wreaking havoc with :reason: since 2.5
:arrow: https://soundcloud.com/nekujak-donnay/sets

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tt_lab
Posts: 335
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

21 May 2018

I have a very powerfull setup, and since 10.1 I am having CPU problems aswell.
I throw and try to play 5 notes in Europa in a completely emptgy session and reason spikes and audio stops working.(your machine cannot reproduce this song). I only tried with Europa and Grain(grain goes to 4 dps bars).

jimmyklane
Posts: 740
Joined: 16 Apr 2018

21 May 2018

NekujaK wrote:
21 May 2018

My machine is a professionally-built custom audio/video production workstation. My primary line of work is in video production, editing, and compositing, which is far more CPU-intensive than audio production, and my machine and its OS (Win 7) have been tweaked and optimized in every possible way (except overclocking) for media production.

Up until Reason 9.5, I NEVER experienced any performance issues with Reason. I rarely saw Reason's CPU meter go above 2 bars, and only on the most complex projects would it sometimes hit 3 bars. Now, when I simply load my standard Reason song template, which is empty except for 6 VSTs on the master bus, the CPU meter starts at 3 bars before I even record the first note! :o

I haven't completely given up on Reason yet, but it's very embarrassing and unprofessional when Reason chokes in front of clients, and only furthers the image that "Reason is just a toy" in their eyes.
Tell me about the video rendering being computationally expensive!!! Took my machine, built by me to run audio i7 water cooled at 4.4GHz, 32GB RAM, 4x 512 SSD, 2x RAID 1TB SSD, and most of Windows completely shut down except for what is required. Nothing happens that I don’t make happen, so no automated indexing or cleanup, etc. no defrag, as these are SSD and have their own hardware housekeeping.

It took 3 hours to render an MP4 with new audio from an existing 25 minutes MP4....is this because it had to decompress, decode, encode, recompress every frame? What’s the fastest source to render from? Using screen capture so only 1080p 60 frames....
Sony Vegas 12. If I need Premiere I can do that, I have photoshop and Lightroom (I’m a photographer as well as a musician).

Would love some tips, perhaps in a PM so as to not clog this thread.
DAW: Reason 12

SAMPLERS: Akai MPC 2000, E-mu SP1200, E-Mu e5000Ultra, Ensoniq EPS 16+, Akai S950, Maschine

SYNTHS: Mostly classic Polysynths and more modern Monosynths. All are mostly food for my samplers!

www.soundcloud.com/jimmyklane

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