Delays in playback with Reason

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siriussounds
Posts: 29
Joined: 22 Mar 2019
Location: Sweden
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22 Mar 2019

Hi,

This is my first post here, and I just joined the forum. I have been a Reason user for many years for all kinds of productions.

Starting a year and a half ago I have started making electronic music (mainly progressive trance), and I have encountered a big problem that makes music production and playing live difficult. I would be very grateful for any help and suggestions on how to solve. I have already contacted Propellerheads, but they couldn't help me.

The problem is that there are severe delays which come in different situations:

1) If I create a few audio tracks and start adding different sounds that come many times, let's say a bass drum, and then a bass on another channel, a hihat on a third etc., then quite soon, every time I want to mute, unmute, delete, move or paste these notes I have to wait for a long time for the command to execute, while looking at the "wheel of death". This hasn't been a problem before, although, I haven't been making music like this before. Previously I used RedRum and created patterns. So, the problem only occurs when I have many instances of short samples.

2) When I open a new song and play for the first time after opening it, there will be a short delay when the playhead comes to a new section. E.g. when a new channel is introduced. This only seems to occur the first time I play the song, as if the computer has loaded the song in the RAM after that. I don't know. But in any case, this makes it almost impossible to use Reason while playing live, since it is unacceptable to have these glitches when I play trance music to an audience. My workaround is to export the song and then play it as an audio file, but that means that it isn't really live any more. I have been considering switching to Ableton Live for this purpose, but I live Reason and would love to be able to create music and make real live sessions.

Nb. In both the abovementioned cases the DSP meter is on 1 or 2, so that is not the problem.

I am currently using Reason version 9.5 under OS X 10.13.6

Many thanks in advance,

Christopher

mashers
Posts: 435
Joined: 05 Nov 2018

22 Mar 2019

What hardware are you running on?

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Loque
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Joined: 28 Dec 2015

22 Mar 2019

For short samples like kickdrums you can have a look, if time-stretching is disabled since you do not need it. That could help in the first place.

In second, as long as you do not really need the samples in the sequencer, load it into a sampler like NNXT and play midi notes . can make things and performance much easier.

Beside mutin individual samples, why not mute the track or the channel? Would make much more sense imo.


Check the overall delay in the bottom right area beside the PDC or check the delay values in the mixer. Maybe there is something, that causes too much delay and uses way too much CPU.

For many samples, you need a lot of RAM. For big samples, you need a SSD to speed up things. Which hardware config do you have?
Reason12, Win10

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Boombastix
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22 Mar 2019

I don't know, but are you using an SSD? Maybe it is HD lag. Reason will wait until it gets a flag that the buffers are filled (I think) so if you have a crappy HD and many audio files, maybe that is causing the lag?
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siriussounds
Posts: 29
Joined: 22 Mar 2019
Location: Sweden
Contact:

22 Mar 2019

mashers wrote:
22 Mar 2019
What hardware are you running on?
MacBook Pro 2,2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

siriussounds
Posts: 29
Joined: 22 Mar 2019
Location: Sweden
Contact:

22 Mar 2019

Boombastix wrote:
22 Mar 2019
I don't know, but are you using an SSD? Maybe it is HD lag. Reason will wait until it gets a flag that the buffers are filled (I think) so if you have a crappy HD and many audio files, maybe that is causing the lag?
Yes, I have an SSD, and the computer is 1,5 years old.

siriussounds
Posts: 29
Joined: 22 Mar 2019
Location: Sweden
Contact:

22 Mar 2019

Loque wrote:
22 Mar 2019
For short samples like kickdrums you can have a look, if time-stretching is disabled since you do not need it. That could help in the first place.
Thanks, I didn't know that.
In second, as long as you do not really need the samples in the sequencer, load it into a sampler like NNXT and play midi notes . can make things and performance much easier.
Thanks, I guess I will have to do that. I actually thought that Reason was "smart enough" to treat repeating samples that way, but it seems that each incident of the sample is stored as a separate sample, rather than as pointers to that particular sample (as is the case if I load the sample into the NNXT, the RedRum etc.)
Beside mutin individual samples, why not mute the track or the channel? Would make much more sense imo.
I might mute a sample, to see what works and what doesn't, listen to the track and then unmute that sample again. This is part of my working process to fine tune the track. The normal mute buttons on the tracks and channels do not cause any noticeable delays.
Check the overall delay in the bottom right area beside the PDC or check the delay values in the mixer. Maybe there is something, that causes too much delay and uses way too much CPU.
How do I do that?? I think you're right. Something seems to be using way too much CPU, but for some reason or other it doesn't show up in the DSP meter at the bottom right. What are the ideal dealy values in the mixer?
For many samples, you need a lot of RAM. For big samples, you need a SSD to speed up things. Which hardware config do you have?
I have a MacBook Pro 2,2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 with a 256 GB SSD

mashers
Posts: 435
Joined: 05 Nov 2018

22 Mar 2019

siriussounds wrote:
22 Mar 2019
mashers wrote:
22 Mar 2019
What hardware are you running on?
MacBook Pro 2,2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
That should be more than capable. Try running Reason in low res mode. There are performance issues running it on retina Macs.

siriussounds
Posts: 29
Joined: 22 Mar 2019
Location: Sweden
Contact:

26 Mar 2019

mashers wrote:
22 Mar 2019
siriussounds wrote:
22 Mar 2019


MacBook Pro 2,2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
That should be more than capable. Try running Reason in low res mode. There are performance issues running it on retina Macs.
Thanks, I think that helps a bit.

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