I see that native M1 support has been pushed out to some time in 2022

[Steedus]

I don't know anything 100%, but people have been prophesying that VST2 licences were no longer being issued for at least a year and a half, but companies like AudioThing keep releasing new plugins in the format, so I wonder if it's just people's general anxiety thinking it's doomsday until Reason supports VST3.

[avasopht]

I don't know anything 100%, but people have been prophesying that VST2 licences were no longer being issued for at least a year and a half, but companies like AudioThing keep releasing new plugins in the format, so I wonder if it's just people's general anxiety thinking it's doomsday until Reason supports VST3.

No it's not mere Doomsday anxiety.

Firstly, vst3 has new features (like better side chaining and stuff).

Secondly, we are seeing a few plugins from major developers coming out as vst3 only (most recently from korg and Roland).

And no, if you don't already have a vst3 license, you definitely cannot get one.

Steinberg doesn't even allow in house use without a licence, which they stopped issuing out years ago.

This means any new company cannot LEGALLY create vst2 plugins. Period.

[helmutson]

I don't think that M1 support brings sooo much better performance. Compared with the latest Ableton Live versions (M1 vs Rosetta) I saw not so much performance plus, whatever ... The current performance of R12 on my Macmini M1 und Rosetta is veeery good, I have zero problems with all my projects, so I can understand that RS will working first on more relevant things ...

[buddard]

I did not realize Steinberg had ever released Apple silicon support in the VST2 SDK and it sounded as if they'd announced they never would.

Explicit support is not needed in the VST SDK, it's basically just a bunch of header files you include in your own project which you compile yourself for any platform you want. (This is of course a simplified explanation, there's slightly more to it than that, but you get the idea)

For example, I've built Apple Silicon native VSTs using an SDK that was released back in 2018, before Apple Silicon was even announced.

[Heater]

I don't think that M1 support brings sooo much better performance. Compared with the latest Ableton Live versions (M1 vs Rosetta) I saw not so much performance plus, whatever ... The current performance of R12 on my Macmini M1 und Rosetta is veeery good, I have zero problems with all my projects, so I can understand that RS will working first on more relevant things ...

Check out this vid on Ableton live. A big improvement using M1 native.

[Re8et]

I just bought a secondhandMac M1 mini plus new Lenovo touchscreen M14t for the price of a new mac M1 mini!!

I had constant issues with my Roland gears and I saw Roland is releasing native M1 drivers for all boutiques...
It's gonna arrive in a couple of weeks... I have no idea how will my Motu Fw behave with it, i tried everything to update my
old macbook 4.1 to Yosemite but no luck getting the installer... now I can make also the installer and hopefully I can make use
of the old macbook with firewire 400 ports!!

Anyway, 10 touch points on the M14t touchscreen monitor, it's only 1080p, but I can't wait to try multitouch with Reason!!!!
I guess I need to upgrade to win 12 for high def... is multitouch on map??

I would have liked to post an M1 mini video with reason 12 but there's none...

theres a mc pro M1 tho

and this

[Jagwah]

I can't wait to try multitouch with Reason!!!!

[integerpoet]

I did not realize Steinberg had ever released Apple silicon support in the VST2 SDK and it sounded as if they'd announced they never would.

Explicit support is not needed in the VST SDK, it's basically just a bunch of header files you include in your own project which you compile yourself for any platform you want. (This is of course a simplified explanation, there's slightly more to it than that, but you get the idea)

For example, I've built Apple Silicon native VSTs using an SDK that was released back in 2018, before Apple Silicon was even announced.

Fascinating. I guess I assumed there'd be some binary piece that needed to be included somewhere, even if it only lives in DAWs.

[Eprom]

I don't think that M1 support brings sooo much better performance. Compared with the latest Ableton Live versions (M1 vs Rosetta) I saw not so much performance plus, whatever ... The current performance of R12 on my Macmini M1 und Rosetta is veeery good, I have zero problems with all my projects, so I can understand that RS will working first on more relevant things ...

Native M1 performance will be most noticeable on machines with limited RAM. If programs run natively they don't have to rely on Rosetta, that uses a fair bit of memory itself.

[tronam]

I don't think that M1 support brings sooo much better performance. Compared with the latest Ableton Live versions (M1 vs Rosetta) I saw not so much performance plus, whatever ... The current performance of R12 on my Macmini M1 und Rosetta is veeery good, I have zero problems with all my projects, so I can understand that RS will working first on more relevant things ...

It has to because R12 doesn't properly distribute audio processing threads to the M1's CPU cores or take advantage of its GPU potential for UI acceleration. It's really obvious, especially on Mac Studio where the majority of the performance cores are barely being utilized. In some cases the switch to native hasn't been that dramatic because those DAWs were already better optimized from the ground up for multithreaded processing many years ago. It has never felt mature in Reason, even before M1, and I suspect this will be a major part of their under-the-hood overhaul for R12.5/R13 or whatever they end up calling it.

[stillifegaijin]

After a few weeks now of working on my new Mac Studio I can safely say that, yeah, sure, Reason works fine. It might even run a little smoother under heavy loads than on my old Intel Mac Pro, but Reason is by FAR the slowest and least smooth program of any that I've been using on this machine. Photoshop, Davinci Resolve, Logic, and everything else is screaming fast. Compared to the clear improvements in those programs, Photoshop and Resolve are night and day, Reason is kind of disappointing in its current Rosetta state. I would LOVE M1 native support sooner rather than later. I was convinced there was no way I would buy an M1 computer before Reason was native. Apparently I was way wrong.

[scdave]

Max spec M1 Macbook pro here.

It's a bit of a weird one. Whilst for sure it runs far better than my old machine, there's some things that Rosetta/Reason cannot deal with properly and I get random CPU spikes because of it. The biggest thing I've noticed is instruments that use multiple voices. I love using Vital, Europa and Kontakt in what I do but it doesn't quite seem to handle them very well. It gets quite annoying when realising I want to use x plugin in something I'm making for a client and then realise it's not a wise idea currently.

What makes this particularly weird is that even though I can run now Reason at 96khz now, when changing the sample rate down to 44.1 the performance issues are still present. So I'm getting the horsepower of the M1 which means I can now experience errors at a higher resolution lmao.

This might be a case of trying to wrestle with a bunch of legacy code requiring major re-writes. VSTs, while they now work OK, do still suffer with some issues (graphical lag being the largest IMO). So I imagine if VST3 is the pre-requisite to M1 support they'll have to improve the overall audio engine. Therefore in my optimistic view once M1 support is released, there'll be a huge performance increase for all users. Probably. Who knows.

I'm holding my breath and hoping things get cleared up soon-ish. I've signed up to the beta program and have been documenting issues as I go. Just hoping for the best!

[stillifegaijin]

Max spec M1 Macbook pro here.

It's a bit of a weird one. Whilst for sure it runs far better than my old machine, there's some things that Rosetta/Reason cannot deal with properly and I get random CPU spikes because of it. The biggest thing I've noticed is instruments that use multiple voices. I love using Vital, Europa and Kontakt in what I do but it doesn't quite seem to handle them very well. It gets quite annoying when realising I want to use x plugin in something I'm making for a client and then realise it's not a wise idea currently.

What makes this particularly weird is that even though I can run now Reason at 96khz now, when changing the sample rate down to 44.1 the performance issues are still present. So I'm getting the horsepower of the M1 which means I can now experience errors at a higher resolution lmao.

This might be a case of trying to wrestle with a bunch of legacy code requiring major re-writes. VSTs, while they now work OK, do still suffer with some issues (graphical lag being the largest IMO). So I imagine if VST3 is the pre-requisite to M1 support they'll have to improve the overall audio engine. Therefore in my optimistic view once M1 support is released, there'll be a huge performance increase for all users. Probably. Who knows.

I'm holding my breath and hoping things get cleared up soon-ish. I've signed up to the beta program and have been documenting issues as I go. Just hoping for the best!

Have you tried un-checking "Use multi-core audio rendering"? I always used that on my old Intel Mac Pro but I find that if it is checked on my M1 Mac Studio that I get instant CPU spikes and glitchy issues. Without that box checked Reason seems to run far better on M1.

[scdave]

Max spec M1 Macbook pro here.

It's a bit of a weird one. Whilst for sure it runs far better than my old machine, there's some things that Rosetta/Reason cannot deal with properly and I get random CPU spikes because of it. The biggest thing I've noticed is instruments that use multiple voices. I love using Vital, Europa and Kontakt in what I do but it doesn't quite seem to handle them very well. It gets quite annoying when realising I want to use x plugin in something I'm making for a client and then realise it's not a wise idea currently.

What makes this particularly weird is that even though I can run now Reason at 96khz now, when changing the sample rate down to 44.1 the performance issues are still present. So I'm getting the horsepower of the M1 which means I can now experience errors at a higher resolution lmao.

This might be a case of trying to wrestle with a bunch of legacy code requiring major re-writes. VSTs, while they now work OK, do still suffer with some issues (graphical lag being the largest IMO). So I imagine if VST3 is the pre-requisite to M1 support they'll have to improve the overall audio engine. Therefore in my optimistic view once M1 support is released, there'll be a huge performance increase for all users. Probably. Who knows.

I'm holding my breath and hoping things get cleared up soon-ish. I've signed up to the beta program and have been documenting issues as I go. Just hoping for the best!

Have you tried un-checking "Use multi-core audio rendering"? I always used that on my old Intel Mac Pro but I find that if it is checked on my M1 Mac Studio that I get instant CPU spikes and glitchy issues. Without that box checked Reason seems to run far better on M1.

Honestly I've had a tinker with the settings and it didn't seem to improve that much. That being said I'm in the middle of a new project and I've turned it off per your comment. Once it's fully fleshed I'll toggle it to see if there's any difference.

Should I also keep hyper threading on or off?

[thedude]

definitely keep the hyper threading off. made my m1 mac performance better that way.

[scdave]

definitely keep the hyper threading off. made my m1 mac performance better that way.

Rodger that. I'll report back!

[npinero1]

definitely keep the hyper threading off. made my m1 mac performance better that way.

Rodger that. I'll report back!

I am interested in your results. I have a Macbook Pro M1 Pro and I am considering trading up to a Mac Studio.

[stillifegaijin]

Yes, I'm running on my Mac Studio with both multi-core audio rendering and hyper threading off and it's smooth. As I ranted above, it's not as smooth as the other programs that are optimized for M1, but it's working and a little better than my old Mac Pro.

[Steedus]

So after struggling with some heavy plugins (IK) I opened up the settings to see I did in fact have Hyper Threading enabled - so after reading this thread I switched it off and hot damn! I reckon I've gain back about 15-20% DSP power (at least it feels that way). Insane.

Even though I'm on a Macbook Pro with an Intel chip, it's made a vast difference!

[scdave]

Yes, I'm running on my Mac Studio with both multi-core audio rendering and hyper threading off and it's smooth. As I ranted above, it's not as smooth as the other programs that are optimized for M1, but it's working and a little better than my old Mac Pro.

That's weird. So, results wise:

Turning hyperthreading off = Performance decrease
Turning multi core rendering off = Massive performance decrease
Turning BOTH off = Does not run at all lol

Did this test on something else I was working on. Weird how we got different results. What flavour M1 do you have? I got the M1 Max 10/32c with 64gb of RAM. Running latest version of Reason.

Am I doing something stupid?

[stillifegaijin]

[/quote]

That's weird. So, results wise:

Turning hyperthreading off = Performance decrease
Turning multi core rendering off = Massive performance decrease
Turning BOTH off = Does not run at all lol

Did this test on something else I was working on. Weird how we got different results. What flavour M1 do you have? I got the M1 Max 10/32c with 64gb of RAM. Running latest version of Reason.

Am I doing something stupid?
[/quote]

That is very weird. I don't think you're doing anything stupid, it's just as likely I am except we're both just doing whatever seems to run best on our machines. I have no idea what's causing the variation. I have a Mac Studio M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 48-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine. 64GB RAM. Also the latest version of Reason.

I just did some more tests with a couple files and actually the multi-core rendering seems to be the only setting of the two that makes a real difference for me. With it ON I get glitches and stutters, with it OFF everything runs smoothly. Hyper-Threading seems make no change to CPU usage or the DSP meter at all. Which is odd because on my old Intel Mac Pro Hyper-Threading would immediately crash everything.

Check out the attached screen shots of my Activity monitor. Multi-Core OFF is barely touching them and running fine. Multi-Core ON and they all jump up, everything stutters. My percentage of CPU usage jumps about 10-12 times higher with Multi-core ON.

Most of my issues seem to be DSP related due to the fact that I use a lot of VSTs. I'd be curious to see if a "pure" Reason file using only audio files and/or REs might react differently? I can't honestly say I understand all the technical details here. But since I use a lot of VSTs I run a 4096 buffer size most of the time while mixing, on less crazy sessions I can run lower. I'm using a Steinberg UR-RT4 interface which is also not M1 optimized. I feel like there's a lot of factors playing a role here.

What audio interface are you using and what buffer size are you running at?

[scdave]

... What audio interface are you using and what buffer size are you running at?

Alright yeah something is clearly up *somewhere* my end. I'm currently running a Focusrite 6i6 (normally at 1024 samples for composing) and have done for the past few years. I was under the impression that didn't factor into my issues too much. Should I also consider upgrading my soundcard to something more M1 friendly? If yes what'd you recommend?

[npinero1]

This is extremely helpful. And OMG!!! The activity monitor on the Mac Studio looks SOOOOO NICE compared to my MacBook Pro M1 Pro (10 Cores).

I also use a lot of VSTS (e.g.UAD, Waves, Fabfilter, Izotope, Soothe, Gulfoos, Native Instruments, Valhalla, Soundtoys and more). I've always wanted to try to install Reason on my other computer with NO other VSTs. I am sure it would run so clean especially now on my amazing MBP M1 Pro with 32GB of Ram and 2TB HD.

I really hope M1 native makes a difference. I have heard that Studio One M1 version still has a few glitches and doesn't work as well as the version running in Rosetta.

[stillifegaijin]

This is extremely helpful. And OMG!!! The activity monitor on the Mac Studio looks SOOOOO NICE compared to my MacBook Pro M1 Pro (10 Cores).

I'm pretty sure you should have the same activity monitor viewer. It's a separate window within activity monitor app under the "window" menu>CPU usage (command+2)

[stillifegaijin]

... What audio interface are you using and what buffer size are you running at?

Alright yeah something is clearly up *somewhere* my end. I'm currently running a Focusrite 6i6 (normally at 1024 samples for composing) and have done for the past few years. I was under the impression that didn't factor into my issues too much. Should I also consider upgrading my soundcard to something more M1 friendly? If yes what'd you recommend?

I can't say for sure that you need a new interface or what I'd recommend. Since that Focusrite is the previous generation I'm sure it's not M1 optimized but as I said, neither is my Steinberg.

Is 1024 the highest your buffer size goes? In general I will use lower buffer sizes for composing and recording, as low as possible to reduce latency, usually 128. Then, once I'm mixing and loading on the VSTs I will raise is up to wherever it functions best - 1024, 2048, or 4096 for the excessive ones. Buffer size will always have an effect on your playback.