Serious Bug in Reason 11

[DecafDreams]

I've been doing some extensive testing trying to optimise my system for heavy songs and I noticed something I'm wondering if other people can replicate on their machines. On my system it seems to be that Reason 11 has a serious bug with its memory management.

I've only tested this on Mac and don't have access to a Windows machine but would be interested to know if this can be reproduced by anyone on either OS. Here are the steps:

1) Start a new empty song
2) Open Activity Monitor/Task Manager and find Reason and note its RAM use (mine is ~450MB on an empty song)
3) Add in 4 instances of a RAM-heavy Rack Extension and watch the RAM usage go up (mine went up to 3GB)
4) Delete all those REs from the song
5) See that the RAM usage of Reason does not get freed up (mine stayed on 3GB)
6) Add a new 4 instances of the exact same RAM-heavy Rack Extension to the song
7) See what happens to the RAM usage for Reason in Activity Monitor/Task Manager (mine went up to 6GB)

I did these steps in Reason 10 and found that the RAM would always be freed back up when removing the REs, so repeating the steps many times never caused the RAM to go beyond the 3GB in use point; as expected. Not so in Reason 11. On my system, doing these steps several times in R11 eventually caused all RAM to be exhausted and the system to start compressing RAM and then writing to swap - going over 12GB usage which is more physical RAM than I have in the computer. Performance was severely reduced as a result.

On my system it seems like Reason 11 is hoarding RAM, never freeing it up despite REs being removed from the song file, and then eventually ends up compromising system stability as a result. Reason 10 does not do this.

Can anybody else replicate this bug on their systems? If so it seems like quite a serious bug in R11 to me.

[Aquila]

Does this happen with one specific RE or several types?

[xylyx]

Interesting. I just tried on Win 10 and it does exhibit some odd behaviour. I don't have any really large rack extensions (220MB is the largest) but it does appear not to free the memory when removing the REs. Even more strange is that when I opened a new blank song file and then closed the test file, it still didn't free the memory up. Re-opening the test file, added that memory usage on top of the currently used memory, so something is amiss here.

I don't have time to check but I wonder if the same happens with the RRP?

[Loque]

Maybe something with the Undo History...But it shouldnt hold the whole RE in memory...

[xylyx]

I wondered about the undo history which is why I opened a new Reason file and then closed the one that I was testing with, so the closed file's undo history should be moot at that point, I would have thought...

[DecafDreams]

I wondered about the undo history which is why I opened a new Reason file and then closed the one that I was testing with, so the closed file's undo history should be moot at that point, I would have thought...

I just tested opening different songs on Reason 10 vs Reason 11 and you're right, this is even worse than I'd thought. Closing a song in R11 keeps all its memory hogged too.

Opening a song in Reason 10, then opening another one (whilst keeping the Reason application open), and then closing the first one, frees up all the memory which that first song was using. When using Reason 11, however, every device in every song ever opened stays in RAM forever, even duplicate devices! If you work in Reason 11 for a long enough amount of time, opening and closing songs, chopping and changing memory hungry RE devices, then soon enough all the RAM gets filled and the system gets very unresponsive!

Thanks for testing this for me guys; it sounds like confirmation that Reason 11 on both macOS and Windows does indeed have this very serious memory bug and it isn't just my system.

Anyway, it's back to Reason 10 for me, I've had enough of Reason 11 and its problems. Not even going to waste my time logging this bug with Reason Studios, the last bug I raised with them I never got an email reply or anything.

[Billy+]

I wondered about the undo history which is why I opened a new Reason file and then closed the one that I was testing with, so the closed file's undo history should be moot at that point, I would have thought...

I just tested opening different songs on Reason 10 vs Reason 11 and you're right, this is even worse than I'd thought. Closing a song in R11 keeps all its memory hogged too.

Opening a song in Reason 10, then opening another one (whilst keeping the Reason application open), and then closing the first one, frees up all the memory which that first song was using. When using Reason 11, however, every device in every song ever opened stays in RAM forever, even duplicate devices! If you work in Reason 11 for a long enough amount of time, opening and closing songs, chopping and changing memory hungry RE devices, then soon enough all the RAM gets filled and the system gets very unresponsive!

Thanks for testing this for me guys; it sounds like confirmation that Reason 11 on both macOS and Windows does indeed have this very serious memory bug and it isn't just my system.

Anyway, it's back to Reason 10 for me, I've had enough of Reason 11 and its problems. Not even going to waste my time logging this bug with Reason Studios, the last bug I raised with them I never got an email reply or anything. Reason Studios is dead. Long live Propellerhead.

When you say confirmed is that ticketed and confirmed by Reason Studios?

[exxx]

Perhaps they don't have time to create a sound pack for market next week.

And I also experience that my work is not optimized during use.

It is just holding on to the computer's own capabilities

[diminished]

Perhaps they don't have time to create a sound pack for market next week.

priorities

[DecafDreams]

I just tested opening different songs on Reason 10 vs Reason 11 and you're right, this is even worse than I'd thought. Closing a song in R11 keeps all its memory hogged too.

Opening a song in Reason 10, then opening another one (whilst keeping the Reason application open), and then closing the first one, frees up all the memory which that first song was using. When using Reason 11, however, every device in every song ever opened stays in RAM forever, even duplicate devices! If you work in Reason 11 for a long enough amount of time, opening and closing songs, chopping and changing memory hungry RE devices, then soon enough all the RAM gets filled and the system gets very unresponsive!

Thanks for testing this for me guys; it sounds like confirmation that Reason 11 on both macOS and Windows does indeed have this very serious memory bug and it isn't just my system.

Anyway, it's back to Reason 10 for me, I've had enough of Reason 11 and its problems. Not even going to waste my time logging this bug with Reason Studios, the last bug I raised with them I never got an email reply or anything. Reason Studios is dead. Long live Propellerhead.

When you say confirmed is that ticketed and confirmed by Reason Studios?

Confirmed by me based on my testing experience and also seeing other people are likewise reporting the same thing happening on their machines.

[jappe]

When you say confirmed is that ticketed and confirmed by Reason Studios?

Confirmed by me based on my testing experience and also seeing other people are also reporting the same thing happening on their machines.

Hello,

I removed the "Confirmed" part in the thread title for now, looks potentially misleading to me as afaik RS hasn't confirmed it's a defect.

Don't know how Reason handles memory management, but maybe the memory could be released if/when needed depending on some memory handler decision..

I'll discuss this with the other mods.

[Billy+]

Confirmed by me based on my testing experience and also seeing other people are also reporting the same thing happening on their machines.

Defcaf, it really sounds like you should report this issue, and perhaps add the case number to the thread, James has stated he will take case numbers for bugs into his Monday meeting

I removed the "Confirmed" part for now, looks potentially misleading to me as afaik RS hasn't confirmed it's a defect.

Don't know how Reason handles memory management, but maybe the memory could be released if/when needed depending on some memory handler decision..

I'll discuss this with the other mods.

Sounds like a good idea, it might also be worth PM'ing James about this thread as he said he would happily accept priority bugs although I think he would prefer that they have a support ticket case no.

[joeyluck]

Perhaps they don't have time to create a sound pack for market next week.

priorities

Right... Because DNA Labs, Kickback Couture, etc. are the ones programming Reason

[joeyluck]

Confirmed by me based on my testing experience and also seeing other people are also reporting the same thing happening on their machines.

Defcaf, it really sounds like you should report this issue, and perhaps add the case number to the thread, James has stated he will take case numbers for bugs into his Monday meeting

I removed the "Confirmed" part for now, looks potentially misleading to me as afaik RS hasn't confirmed it's a defect.

Don't know how Reason handles memory management, but maybe the memory could be released if/when needed depending on some memory handler decision..

I'll discuss this with the other mods.

Sounds like a good idea, it might also be worth PM'ing James about this thread as he said he would happily accept priority bugs although I think he would prefer that they have a support ticket case no.

I can't speak for James, but I think he is more interested in reports about Companion and Reason as it relates to Reason+. I don't think he wants to receive bug reports about everything pertaining to Reason. You can report general bugs via the support form.

[DecafDreams]

Like I said, I'm not gonna bother. I do not expect this to get fixed for a long time. On a machine with 16GB of RAM, this bug probably won't show up unless you're a really heavy Reason user and even then closing the app and reopening it will flush the RAM it's using. A lot of people probably won't be affected. A lot of VSTs use disk streaming so won't be affected by this as much.

The problem is that on my older machine my workflow is seriously affected by this bug. My machine only has 8GB of RAM and I use a lot of RAM-heavy REs and I like to flick a lot between patches and chop and change memory hungry devices. In R11 this causes the RAM to fill up rapidly, never get released, and then quite quickly the machine grinds to a halt and the Reason app needs perpetually restarting to clear the RAM out.

It seems like a regressive bug to me that wasn't present in R10. It doesn't seem like anything intelligent is going on with improved RAM management in this newer version, it literally just seems like RAM is now being mismanaged in error and on older machines this is a disaster.

[joeyluck]

I'm going to check this out later. I haven't noticed any issues or changes in performance with 8GB of RAM on my MacBook Air, so I also haven't had my eye on Activity Monitor...

I also wonder if it's related to OS version? I'm on Mojave (nothing to report yet though).

[DecafDreams]

I'm going to check this out later. I haven't noticed any issues or changes in performance with 8GB of RAM on my MacBook Air, so I also haven't had my eye on Activity Monitor...

I also wonder if it's related to OS version? I'm on Mojave (nothing to report yet though).

OK Joey, let us know how you get on!

[Billy+]

I can't speak for James, but I think he is more interested in reports about Companion and Reason as it relates to Reason+. I don't think he wants to receive bug reports about everything pertaining to Reason. You can report general bugs via the support form.

Totally accept that, however going on this post :- viewtopic.php?p=541446#p541446 it would appear that James is happy to be made aware of issues "that have actual tickets"

I don't have time to test the issue, so it would be wrong for me to report it.

[joeyluck]

I can't speak for James, but I think he is more interested in reports about Companion and Reason as it relates to Reason+. I don't think he wants to receive bug reports about everything pertaining to Reason. You can report general bugs via the support form.

Totally accept that, however going on this post :- viewtopic.php?p=541446#p541446 it would appear that James is happy to be made aware of issues "that have actual tickets"

I don't have time to test the issue, so it would be wrong for me to report it.

Right. That relates to a prompt of "Reason+ Companion missing" when launching the RRP.

[Billy+]

Right. That relates to a prompt of "Reason+ Companion missing" when launching the RRP.

Fair play, I miss understood the sentiment.

Either way it would be better to at least get the issue ticketed. Glad to see your going to take the time to confirm it. a mods job is never done

[jappe]

Interesting. I just tried on Win 10 and it does exhibit some odd behaviour. I don't have any really large rack extensions (220MB is the largest) but it does appear not to free the memory when removing the REs. Even more strange is that when I opened a new blank song file and then closed the test file, it still didn't free the memory up. Re-opening the test file, added that memory usage on top of the currently used memory, so something is amiss here.

I don't have time to check but I wonder if the same happens with the RRP?

I guess since you verified the issue it shouldn't be related to the audio driver; assuming you've got different interfaces.

Maybe the audio settings affects the issue?

i e the settings of "Use multi-core audio", "Render audio using audio card buffer size setting", "User hyper-threading" .

[DecafDreams]

Interesting. I just tried on Win 10 and it does exhibit some odd behaviour. I don't have any really large rack extensions (220MB is the largest) but it does appear not to free the memory when removing the REs. Even more strange is that when I opened a new blank song file and then closed the test file, it still didn't free the memory up. Re-opening the test file, added that memory usage on top of the currently used memory, so something is amiss here.

I don't have time to check but I wonder if the same happens with the RRP?

I guess since you verified the issue it shouldn't be related to the audio driver; assuming you've got different interfaces.

Maybe the audio settings affects the issue?

i e the settings of "Use multi-core audio", "Render audio using audio card buffer size setting", "User hyper-threading" .

I already tried toggling all of these settings on and off incase I discovered something that prevented the bug.

It was actually the ProjectSAM RE that made me notice this bug, as I was switching around between the different presets for about half an hour, going back and forth between the sounds, and then noticed suddenly that the system had ground to a halt and the Activity Monitor showed RAM all gone, memory compressed to full and GBs being written to the swap file!

I initially thought that the ProjectSAM RE must have a memory leak bug, but then after further investigation discovered that it's Reason 11 itself never releasing any memory ever; once it's used, it's never coming back.

[Yonatan]

Serious bug there! Mist be an urgent one to solve
Unbelievable it has not been spotted until now.
I have become used to find Reason heavy to use.

[plaamook]

I'll confim too.
A bit of screwing around in R11...open an empty rack. System showing 770meg's
Restart R11, empty rack showing 440 meg's

I don't know what a RAM heavy RE would be. I don't use any that load samples, except maybe Audiomatic, not sure.

Running Mojave. 16GB Ram so no issues as such but still...

[chimp_spanner]

Can confirm this on Catalina, 2017 MBP 16GB RAM. Empty project is 540-ish in RAM. Loaded RDK RE and it went up to 900+. Removed RDK, didn't go down. But crucially, repeatedly adding and removing it is adding to the RAM usage. I've managed to get it up to 5GB just by removing and adding the same RE. Will definitely file a report now, and I suggest everyone who can confirm the behaviour does the same so it doesn't appear as an isolated/system specific problem.