Reason (or just VST) performance suffering after installing numerous VSTs?

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mr_slime
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Joined: 11 May 2021

11 May 2021

I've been running Reason 11 for the past year on my new PC without performance issues, and use an E-RM Multiclock to minimize MIDI jitter when syncing my analog synths to Reason--basically this requires me to run a VST plugin in Reason that generates an audio signal that I route to an audio out that I don't use for monitoring. My interface is a 3rd gen Focusrite Scarlett.

I have a lot of VST plugins from my previous PC that I had not installed on my new PC until last night. Anyway, this morning I was recording some tracks and started experiencing occasional performance hiccups in Reason that have never happened before, where basically the performance kind of lags and stutters for a split second. This is prohibiting me from recording for more than a minute or so at a time, and the hiccups are bad enough that they're disrupt the audio clock signal running to the Multiclock, which is throwing my entire project out of sync. What I can't pin down is whether these hiccups are from something causing the Multiclock VST to not run smoothly, or if Reason as a whole is suffering.

I should emphasize that I am not actually using any of the VSTs I installed last night and my DSP load has remained at zero when this happens, I'm running a basic 4 track setup in Reason without any internal or external effects outside of the Multiclock VST plugin (which I've been using for months without problems).

So my question is, is there any sort of performance burden caused by installing lots of VSTs that could cause the kind of hiccups I described above, even when none of them are in use? Or are there any VSTs out there that are known to cause these issues in Reason as soon as they're installed?

Thanks for any help I'm at a loss.

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jam-s
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11 May 2021

Just an idea: You could try to disconnect your machine from any LAN/Wifi to stop possible background tasks that want to transfer/check things from/to the internet to generate IO which might screw up your session.

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Noise
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11 May 2021

Check if this helps: Power saving options > shoud be in "Ultimate Performance"
I was having a lot of "crackling" audio issues, and the setting was in "balanced mode". Don't know why it reverted to this.
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danc
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11 May 2021

Even if you (or anyone else reading this post) don't use Focusrite equipment... the list of tips here really enhances a PC ready for music production... well worth a read and following through...

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-10

It worked wonders on my PC.
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DaveyG
Posts: 2499
Joined: 03 May 2020

11 May 2021

mr_slime wrote:
11 May 2021

So my question is, is there any sort of performance burden caused by installing lots of VSTs that could cause the kind of hiccups I described above, even when none of them are in use? Or are there any VSTs out there that are known to cause these issues in Reason as soon as they're installed?
No, there is no performance impact of having lots of VSTs installed until you use them. If you have thousands of them Reason might take a little longer to start-up whilst it scans them but that's about it.

What I think is happening is something else on your PC is grabbing occasional large spikes of CPU power, interrupting the audio stream from the multiclock VST. It can be hard to track this stuff down. Have you installed or upgraded anything recently, or had one of the big Windows updates? Or maybe changed system settings or graphics card settings?

mr_slime
Posts: 2
Joined: 11 May 2021

11 May 2021

Really appreciate the replies and suggestions so far, thank you everyone. Good to know that I shouldn't expect issues just from installing the VSTs (other than prolonged startup times). Between the Focusrite vid and some of the suggestions with tweaking performance settings and disabling LAN I'm hoping one of these works--it would be nice if this turned out to be a Windows update in the background or something temporary. I'll report back later if one thing in particular turns out to be the answer.

avasopht
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12 May 2021

You first want to diagnose:
1. Does this happen in Reaper with the same buffer settings?
2. Hit Ctrl+Shift+Escape and check to see if is the CPU, Memory or Disk usage high (or spiking).
3. Do you have any background tasks causing CPU contention that you could disable? Auto updaters tend to do this, especially if there are lots of them.

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