Question regarding reports of performance issues

[tropicalpepe]

Can anyone actually tell me the specific performance issues that people are having which are causing them to jump ship?

I've been using Reason for half a year now on a PC I built just for this purpose for around $350 - i3 3.8ghz, 8gb ram, 256 SSD

I have had LITERALLY zero performance issues on this extremely modest machine. I barely ever see the DSP meter even fill up at all, like I often forget it goes beyond the first bar.

I use Valhalla VSTs and Glitch2 in literally every single one of my productions.

I use modern Reason instruments and I like to use many effects at low levels to create new effects, I record vocals and from hardware synths.

I, personally, don't know what people are doing that they need better performance so much that they would rather jump ship.

I'm actually coming over from Ableton of which I was a user for 7 years- I primarily used hardware synths and owned literally zero instrument VSTs. When I decided to go hardware, I always knew Reason was my choice because it meshes with my usual way of working with hardware. I'm just getting annoyed at everyone saying that the software sucks when in reality, I've never been more productive.

I'm sure some of you will tell me to just ignore it but in literally every forum I go to regarding music production, people say the same shit about Reason

[chimp_spanner]

Well I'll start by sharing my own experiences. I have an i7 4700MQ 12GB laptop, and a Steinberg UR44. Typically I run at 62-128 samples, as I'm a guitarist (sometimes haha) and need low latency through amp racks/plugins. Normal project will have Superior 3, half a dozen amp sims (either POD Farm 2.5, Guitar Rig 5 or Amplitube 4), Kontakt for bass, and then any combination of RE and VST synths such as DUNE 2, Serum, that kinda stuff. I'd say when a project gets going I'm in the high 80% region.

If I work purely with RE/stock, there's obviously a lot more headroom.

The confusing thing for me is, some people swear blind they can't play a chord on *a* Serum, on an i9 or a Threadripper or a brand new MBP. Which is obviously not my experience. But, I don't doubt it. I can definitely push Cubase harder in terms of VST before it starts to give. With Reason I feel like it handles it really well...until it doesn't. It kinda plateaus and then becomes super twitchy/sensitive to additional strain, graphical activity (scrolling the rack/mixer, displaying analysers or animated interfaces).

As someone who generally prefers racks to VSTs, it's not a huge issue. 9/10 I can find the equivalent sound I need in rack format. Or, if I'm running something like Kontakt just to play a repeating cinematic drum loop (like Action Strikes, Damager, Cerberus or whatever) then I just render it to audio and delete the device. Freeze would obviously be a better solution there!

But, PH are working on an update as we speak so obviously they acknowledge there are some optimisation issues also. Whether these will extend to racks or not, I don't know.

I think, VSTs being new(ish) in the context of Reason it's natural that people are gonna start directly comparing it to programs that were specifically designed for it. And so they're much more likely to run into problems. Most are genuine. A small handful I feel spend all their time stress testing instead of music making; certainly I haven't encountered anything in Reason that's stopped me from making music, or a living! But I am nonetheless excited to see what they do in the next version and a half or so. The program has gotten bigger and more complex. It's doing things I don't think it was ever intended to. Stands to reason it needs a good clean under the hood so, let's wait and see what 10.5 does.

[mcatalao]

Chimp_Spanner, at 64-128 samples i'd say it's normal for your system to crap out with so many things.

[chimp_spanner]

Chimp_Spanner, at 64-128 samples i'd say it's normal for your system to crap out with so many things.

Yeah for real. I've started experimenting with running a second interface at 32 or 64 samples, just to run an amp on its own ASIO driver, and then I can leave Reason at 512 or beyond for everything else. Not sure if that's inviting any potential problems but it seems to be working okay!

[candybag]

I'd say it's dependent on what genre i'm producing.

If i try synthwave there's typically tons of headroom since all the patches are pretty basic (plain saws', squares, triangles) and require little automation or plugin effects.

If i try dubstep or need some gurgly electro basslines things can drastically change. One combinator patch could easily be three Hyperwaves; one for the sub layer and two for stereo and low mid/hi with lots of automation, voices and detunes. Multiply that combinator patch by 10 to get all the variations needed for glitches and other basslines and i easily hit the DSP ceiling too early

[EnochLight]

I have had LITERALLY zero performance issues on this extremely modest machine. I barely ever see the DSP meter even fill up at all, like I often forget it goes beyond the first bar.

You can't equate your experience with everyone else's - you just can't. On my 6+ year old machine that runs an i7-3770K (which may or may not be faster than your recent i3 build), I can bring Reason's DSP meter to its knees with just 2-3 instances of Dmitry Sches' Thorn VST, and don't even try running Ozone 8 Advanced and Neutron 2 Advanced in realtime with a medium to large project - LOL!

We all have different writing styles and feel comfortable with small amounts of instruments/effects/RE/VST/etc, or large amounts. The fact of the matter is that compared to other DAW out there, Reason struggles since the arrival of VST (and especially with VST). It might not be all VST, but many - and it's enough to warrant an official response from Propellerhead that caused them to move towards addressing it.

[KarmaFunkarma]

The core issue is simple to explain. Compared to a number of other DAW's, Reason's performance when using VST's is very poor. If we had no other DAWs to compare it to, we would see VST performance in Reason as "it is what it is". But since we can create similar VST based projects across multiple DAWs, it's obvious that the current version of Reason is significantly underperforming (by comparison) in this area.

[mcatalao]

Yeah for real. I've started experimenting with running a second interface at 32 or 64 samples, just to run an amp on its own ASIO driver, and then I can leave Reason at 512 or beyond for everything else. Not sure if that's inviting any potential problems but it seems to be working okay!

Multiple cards on the same daw at differemt buffer size can be strange for the daw an that's why you cannot put several cards into one daw without an aggregation driver. Still, the daw will probably slow down to the slowest. I'd try to keep things simple. Stem down stuff to record your guitar at very low latency and then bring it back up while mixing!

[fotizimo]

So here is how I am looking at Reason and it's performance for me.

- For the last few years I have run Reason from v8 through 9 until now at 10.2.
- I have the exact same Surface pro 4 i7/8gb/256ssd running win10pro.
- Projects I created back in v8 had no VSTS, and I have examples that pushed things, but didn't actually hit the crackle stage. I rarely ever had to freeze lanes.
- Those same projects running in v10.2 on the same machine barely work. It sounds like I am beating my computer against a wall. I now need to freeze lanes.
- I use the same Yamaha AG-06 sound interface.
- All that has changed is the Reason version and the OS versions.
- I am willing to contest that windows 10 really gets worse with each semi-annual upgrade.
- Running v10.2, I can create a project with both REs, and VSTs that sound great one time, and the next time I open them, sound brutally awful. Open the project again and it sounds fine.
- I can only run Reason when I set the power settings to "high power". Anything else and the performance is far less consistent.

So in trying to compare Reason only to itself, on the same machine, and taking all other variables out of the equation, it really doesn't hold up well. It just isn't consistent. I have no other active DAW that I use on my PC, only Reason. But it can just be so frustrating, given the variations in performance that I see. I do not expect too much from a Surface Pro in making music, but what I do expect is consistency, and that is all I want right now. Whatever is coming from PH, I will judge it based on it's ability to bring consistency to my usage of the application.

[chimp_spanner]

Yeah for real. I've started experimenting with running a second interface at 32 or 64 samples, just to run an amp on its own ASIO driver, and then I can leave Reason at 512 or beyond for everything else. Not sure if that's inviting any potential problems but it seems to be working okay!

Multiple cards on the same daw at differemt buffer size can be strange for the daw an that's why you cannot put several cards into one daw without an aggregation driver. Still, the daw will probably slow down to the slowest. I'd try to keep things simple. Stem down stuff to record your guitar at very low latency and then bring it back up while mixing!

No issues so far! To clarify, the DAW is using interface one. The amp sim is using interface two. So there’s no sharing of the audio driver (impossible on Windows anyway). System seems to be handling it pretty well!

[antic604]

- Those same projects running in v10.2 on the same machine barely work. It sounds like I am beating my computer against a wall. I now need to freeze lanes.
- I can only run Reason when I set the power settings to "high power". Anything else and the performance is far less consistent.

I'm on exactly the same SP4 and I don't see those inconsistencies.

Actually, since 10.2 I think I see 1 bar (or maybe half of a bar) less of DSP.

However recent WIn10 f***d up ASIO4All for me, so I'm currently just using Windows drivers.

Regarding the power profile, I'd recommend a tool like Process Lasso or (free) Full Throttle Override that'll engage high-performance mode (and other tweaks) only when specified apps are running & otherwise conserve battery.

EDIT: I realise I should've mentioned v10 is my first Reason version, so you might actually be right that performance dropped off the cliff compared to earlier versions, but v10.0 -> v10.2 I do see an improvement.

[Arrant]

I downloaded Reaper just to check the performance difference between the two hosts, expecting Reaper with its reputation of being a very fast DAW to beat Reason's performance by quite a few percent.

Just first impressions so far, but I find the difference to be quite shocking. Reaper just runs VSTs so incredibly effectively and simply blows Reason away. We're not talking 5-10% better, we're talking several tens of percent better at the very least.
I'll probably gather some more data over the weekend, but Reaper has a 60-day free trial so you can all try for yourselves and see if you're as shocked as I am. Now I don't enjoy Reaper at all, but it's dawning on me how big the performance sacrifice for using Reason actually is

[adfielding]

I seem to recall there being more of a disparity between Windows users and macOS users at this point. I imagine that probably plays a role in how people are experiencing performance issues. I'm trying to be more careful with how I use VSTs at the moment, and I do experience far more pops and crackles than I used to which is a bit irritating... but for the most part my computer seems to be coping - well, when I'm not encoding & streaming video in the background!

[bitley]

I still have my sister's old 1999 G3 iMac so if anyone wants to see it I can install Reason 1.01 and play something with 9 ms of latency (literally not noticeable) straight out from the box.

Better up, see the 1977 Bell Labs demo of their computer based synth instrument

In other words latency is never an issue and if it is, your audio card is either 1. insufficient or 2. (common) incorrectly installed. If you fight a lot with this I suggest thinking about getting a Mac since OS X is designed for being used with music and media. Since 2008 or so CPU speed etc is never an issue anymore. It can only be the audio card settings, period. I used to run the worldwide Propellerhead support so you can trust my words with a capital T. Cheers!

[Magnus]

I still have my sister's old 1999 G3 iMac so if anyone wants to see it I can install Reason 1.01 and play something with 9 ms of latency (literally not noticeable) straight out from the box.

Better up, see the 1977 Bell Labs demo of their computer based synth instrument

In other words latency is never an issue and if it is, your audio card is either 1. insufficient or 2. (common) incorrectly installed. If you fight a lot with this I suggest thinking about getting a Mac since OS X is designed for being used with music and media. Since 2008 or so CPU speed etc is never an issue anymore. It can only be the audio card settings, period. I used to run the worldwide Propellerhead support so you can trust my words with a capital T. Cheers!

Agree with bitley! CoreAudio on a Mac was designed from the ground-up with audio performance in mind. On Windows there isn't anything comparable out of the box for getting low-latency audio performance; you have to install an ASIO driver! Windows is simply not as well engineered for audio as MacOS.

[Emian]

I seem to recall there being more of a disparity between Windows users and macOS users at this point. I imagine that probably plays a role in how people are experiencing performance issues. I'm trying to be more careful with how I use VSTs at the moment, and I do experience far more pops and crackles than I used to which is a bit irritating... but for the most part my computer seems to be coping - well, when I'm not encoding & streaming video in the background!

could you share your system's specs, Adam?

[adfielding]

I seem to recall there being more of a disparity between Windows users and macOS users at this point. I imagine that probably plays a role in how people are experiencing performance issues. I'm trying to be more careful with how I use VSTs at the moment, and I do experience far more pops and crackles than I used to which is a bit irritating... but for the most part my computer seems to be coping - well, when I'm not encoding & streaming video in the background!

could you share your system's specs, Adam?

Sure thing - I'm running a late 2013 21.5" iMac, using a 3.1ghz i7 with 16gb RAM and a 1tb Fusion Drive. I'm very much on the fence about where to go with my next upgrade, but I'm hoping I can get another year or two out of this yet.

[bitley]

Exactly Magnus and the iMac / Reason 1.01 combination runs with 9 ms of latency under MacOS 9 which also was great for music apps. Moving to OS X 10.4 or so on a slightly faster G4 the latency actually dropped to just 6 ms and that's using the Mac built in soundcard. So PCs really can not compete, period. In other words they need ASIO cards and even then the Mac often beats them. As for the eternal pricing misconception the MacMini is actually very cheap and serves astonishing performance so do think twice about those PC purchases when you want a music computer. I have PCs here as well and they can never compete in this field. You must not look at benchmark figures but rather hardcore audio performance. Take this for example; I made this track with my DeepMind 12 based refill back in September 2017 and I used a stock MacMini from 2010 (!!!) - check the screen on the video real close,

Look at the Reason CPU indicator and now you should get a good picture of just how good macs are with audio. Almost NO pc from 2010 can beat that. And almost no brand new PC either. You see it's NOT about the CPU speed, it's about how the OS handles interrupts and the priority of the calculations. If you look at Windows the data throughput is enormous constantly. This means those machines way too often present hacking audio, tempo bumps / errors and unmusical results. Microsoft has not done ANYTHING to improve it, I am a W10 beta guy and there is NO difference, it's still struggling too much with all of the zillions of object calls / registry entries / logs / etc inside of Windows. Mac OS X has none of that.

[PhillipOrdonez]

I can't say it works perfectly. In my case, once the vsts start piling up, Reason starts to struggle. Now, when I work with music, I seldom use any vst instruments, because i don't have many, other than a couple free ones. It's on the mixing stage that they start popping up, and it is then that the audio stops and the dreaded "computer too slow" message makes an appearance. So I handle it, I always mix in a new project anyway, but even so, I cannot make full use of my expensive plugins, therefore I cannot wait for the upgrade that brings performance improvements because I prefer working in Reason. Reaper is fine and I've used it to mix a few projects, but I like Reason more, and miss my rack extensions when I'm there!

So, it's not that bad but still needs to be addressed soon and I'm glad they are working on it andi trust they will be able to deliver. So about all that jumping ship thing: bon voyage! I will continue making music with Reason because it is fun and sparks my creativity like no other program I've worked with (I'm well versed in Ableton live 8), and don't use it because X or Y uses it.

[bitley]

You can always increase the buffer temporarily when the stuff gets dense. You only need low latency really much when creating the music, ie playing keys. You can also decrease the polyphony in all instruments & use FX via buses rather than directly hooked to instruments.

[antic604]

Look at the Reason CPU indicator and now you should get a good picture of just how good macs are with audio.

You're joking, right? It's just a bunch of NN-XTs playing audio. My Surface Pro would run this easily on a battery saving profile

[aeox]

You can always increase the buffer temporarily when the stuff gets dense. You only need low latency really much when creating the music, ie playing keys. You can also decrease the polyphony in all instruments & use FX via buses rather than directly hooked to instruments.

I actually really like the feel of playing midi piano with 100ms of latency, gives me the feeling that the keys are "weighted"

[splangie]

I am finally having performance issues. It's on an i3-6100u with 6GB of RAM running 28 instances of SAW-1 and 3 Alligators along with 19 other misc effects and utils. An i3930k runs it all with no issues showing at most 3 DSP bars through the track. The i3 is maxing out a few times and crackling during play back but no freeze ups and the export is fine.

[Arrant]

I downloaded Reaper just to check the performance difference between the two hosts, expecting Reaper with its reputation of being a very fast DAW to beat Reason's performance by quite a few percent.

Just first impressions so far, but I find the difference to be quite shocking. Reaper just runs VSTs so incredibly effectively and simply blows Reason away. We're not talking 5-10% better, we're talking several tens of percent better at the very least.
I'll probably gather some more data over the weekend, but Reaper has a 60-day free trial so you can all try for yourselves and see if you're as shocked as I am. Now I don't enjoy Reaper at all, but it's dawning on me how big the performance sacrifice for using Reason actually is

So I did some more testing.
Using the default patch in the Europa VST («FACT lead») I just put down some notes in a track and then duplicated the track until the CPU melted down. In Reason I managed 70 instances before the computer too slow message showed up.
In Reaper I got a whooping 172 (!).
That means (judging by this limited test) that Reason is 40% as efficient at running VST instuments as Reaper. Or, putting it differently, Reaper is almost 250% more efficient than Reason. Incredible!

[antic604]

I am finally having performance issues. It's on an i3-6100u with 6GB of RAM running 28 instances of SAW-1 and 3 Alligators along with 19 other misc effects and utils. An i3930k runs it all with no issues showing at most 3 DSP bars through the track. The i3 is maxing out a few times and crackling during play back but no freeze ups and the export is fine.

What's your point here? Because the 'k' i3 is a desktop, 45watt silicon, whereas the 'u' is a low power, mobile variant. Can't check but probably number of cores differs as well. So what you're describing is a correct behavior.