Reason Multi-Core Support

[signal]

What is the latest status on Reasons ability to use multiple cores? How many cores can it use?

I am upgrading my "general purpose" desktop to a new 2019 iMac 27", and moving my Mac Pro to be dedicated to Reason/Music Production. But its a 12-core Mac Pro and I am hoping Reason can take advantage.

[jam-s]

Reason can use multiple cores since a few versions back. There is afaik no limit, but the job scheduler might not be the best in pre 10.4 version when running with very high number of cores (>10+).

[jlgrimes]

What is the latest status on Reasons ability to use multiple cores? How many cores can it use?

I am upgrading my "general purpose" desktop to a new 2019 iMac 27", and moving my Mac Pro to be dedicated to Reason/Music Production. But its a 12-core Mac Pro and I am hoping Reason can take advantage.

It will support it but that many cores might not add value in regards to DAW performance.

If single core performance is your biggest bottleneck, 12 might not help.

I think a 4-6 core processor with good single core performance is better than a 12 core with worse single core performance in terms of DAWS.

They did make a buffering improvement in version 10 but I dont know how it affects multi core performance.

Might want to talk to some 12 core users though.

From what I remember there were some who weren't happy.

6-8 is probably more reasonable though.

[Loque]

Not everything can be calculated in parallel, thus its recommended to have a CPU with a high performance for each core instead of a medium performance for many cores. Often CPUs with many cores have a lower single core performance than CPUs with less cores.

[esselfortium]

Multi-core support is fine, but as stated above you'll want to make sure your CPU's single-core performance is good, because audio inherently involves a lot of serial processing. If you know the exact model of CPU in your computer, you can check it on UserBenchmark or a similar site to see how it holds up.

Your mileage may vary with hyperthreading, though. I have to keep that disabled on my i9-9900k, as it was causing frequent buffer misses (audio crackles).

[mcatalao]

Multi-core support is fine, but as stated above you'll want to make sure your CPU's single-core performance is good, because audio inherently involves a lot of serial processing. If you know the exact model of CPU in your computer, you can check it on UserBenchmark or a similar site to see how it holds up.

Your mileage may vary with hyperthreading, though. I have to keep that disabled on my i9-9900k, as it was causing frequent buffer misses (audio crackles).

The 9900k is the best of 3 worlds. 8 fast and stable cores.

On my 4790k enabling ht helped, maybe because the affinitty change gave reason a new real core. On systems with more cores its harder to understand the benefits and only by trialling an error you can check what is the best setting in your system.

@JLGrimes:
10.3 got a really good performance boost and it got a little stabler. But the biggest difference was regarding the way vst's worked. The audio buffer change does not affect res. What this means is that the program behaves a little better in these context, but not by far (a 20% performance boost where some vsts have performance boosts of 200%).

[Breach The Sky]

Multi core support is just fine! Hyper threading is still a no go on my end tough. I think that has to do with way you work in Reason more than bad coding tough?
If you have many track with short device chains HT might be fine. I instead, have few tracks with elaborate effect chains etc, so HT worsen the performance.

[Boombastix]

Also, check your VST, it may have a multi-core setting on its own. Uhe Diva, goes from CPU hog, to smooth as butter when enabling its multi-core setting.