Guys what is the best cpu for reason?

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EnochLight
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30 Oct 2018

Boombastix wrote:
30 Oct 2018
I don't understand why the performance discussion always focuses on CPU cores and CPU frequency but omits RAM performance. In the CFD world, computer fluid dynamics, it is all about solving mathematical equations, isn't DSP the same, a lot of math? The computer performance gurus in the CFD world really puts an emphasis on RAM performance as the CPU has to shuffle info back and forth to RAM as it is solving the equations, RAM being the bottle neck, not CPU performance. When I built my workstation some years ago I made sure I picked a MB that had four parallel RAM busses and not the typical two, dramatically increasing the math solving performance. I put in 4x 4Gb of RAM with the fastest RAM I could find. Shouldn't this be part of the discussion for how to build a fast music making machine?

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These days, while RAM speed can certainly affect your overall performance, in the DAW and plugin realm it is vastly more affected by CPU speed. There are far more learned people than me who I’m sure can chime in on this, though.
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Boombastix
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30 Oct 2018

EnochLight wrote:
Boombastix wrote:
30 Oct 2018
I don't understand why the performance discussion always focuses on CPU cores and CPU frequency but omits RAM performance. In the CFD world, computer fluid dynamics, it is all about solving mathematical equations, isn't DSP the same, a lot of math? The computer performance gurus in the CFD world really puts an emphasis on RAM performance as the CPU has to shuffle info back and forth to RAM as it is solving the equations, RAM being the bottle neck, not CPU performance. When I built my workstation some years ago I made sure I picked a MB that had four parallel RAM busses and not the typical two, dramatically increasing the math solving performance. I put in 4x 4Gb of RAM with the fastest RAM I could find. Shouldn't this be part of the discussion for how to build a fast music making machine?

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These days, while RAM speed can certainly affect your overall performance, in the DAW and plugin realm it is vastly more affected by CPU speed. There are far more learned people than me who I’m sure can chime in on this, though.
Total RAM speed is very dependent on number of RAM busses, 2 or 4 busses. Any MoBo with 8 busses, I don't know? But if this is the No 1 issue in the CFD world, but not discussed in the DAW world, it makes me wonder...

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EnochLight
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30 Oct 2018

Boombastix wrote:
30 Oct 2018
Total RAM speed is very dependent on number of RAM busses, 2 or 4 busses. Any MoBo with 8 busses, I don't know? But if this is the No 1 issue in the CFD world, but not discussed in the DAW world, it makes me wonder...
CFD world... do you mean Computational Fluid Dynamics?
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Boombastix
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30 Oct 2018

EnochLight wrote:
Boombastix wrote:
30 Oct 2018
Total RAM speed is very dependent on number of RAM busses, 2 or 4 busses. Any MoBo with 8 busses, I don't know? But if this is the No 1 issue in the CFD world, but not discussed in the DAW world, it makes me wonder...
CFD world... do you mean Computational Fluid Dynamics?
Yes, that's correct.

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jam-s
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30 Oct 2018

In CFD you've got quite a large memory region (for the cells of the simulation) that has to be read and updated each cycle. For audio processing you've only got a few small buffers that have to written to quite fast (and can most likely be kept in the CPU cache). So the situation is quite different for CFD simulations and audio processing.

prophecy
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31 Oct 2018

Without wanting to diss the theory, has anyone built with a recent AMD chip and seen/heard issues? I'm in the soon to build boat and can't justify paying twice the price for my musical hobby.
I'm so new as to not know what my buffer and latency is off the top of my head, and I might have missed many threads with these experiences already in.
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EnochLight
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31 Oct 2018

prophecy wrote:
31 Oct 2018
I'm so new as to not know what my buffer and latency is off the top of my head, and I might have missed many threads with these experiences already in.
Well, this is a serious part of the equation, and one facet you should become aware of. Open up Reason, go into Preferences, and check your audio card's sample buffer setting. Do you typically run it at 256-512 samples? If so, you'll likely be perfectly fine on AMD's Ryzen or Threadripper. Do you typically run at 64-128 samples? If so, you'll likely be fine - but won't be able to run nearly as many plugin instances as you would at that latency compared to a newer Intel system. What your threshold tolerance is will obviously vary, depending on what you expect out of plugin instances.
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sonicbyte
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31 Oct 2018

Anyone knows how good are the Razer notebooks for Reason or audio production in general ?

https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/ra ... de-stealth

For instance the 13 inch comes in two CPU options:
- Quad-Core 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U Processor with Hyper Threading 1.8 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Base/Turbo)
- Dual-Core 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7500U Processor with Hyper Threading 2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz (Base/Turbo)

I asume quad always is better for Reason... any tips about this brand ?

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EnochLight
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31 Oct 2018

sonicbyte wrote:
31 Oct 2018
Anyone knows how good are the Razer notebooks for Reason or audio production in general ?

https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/ra ... de-stealth

For instance the 13 inch comes in two CPU options:
- Quad-Core 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U Processor with Hyper Threading 1.8 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Base/Turbo)
- Dual-Core 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7500U Processor with Hyper Threading 2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz (Base/Turbo)

I asume quad always is better for Reason... any tips about this brand ?
Forget laptop model or brand - it always boils down to the actual CPU. And with that said, cpubenchmark.net is your friend:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 4vs2863vs2

The 8550U model would be your best bet, but seriously - in single-thread performance (which, again, is what all DAW really benefit from) it's barely faster than my almost 7 year old desktop chip. They're both slower in multi-thread.


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Last edited by EnochLight on 31 Oct 2018, edited 1 time in total.
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antic604

31 Oct 2018

sonicbyte wrote:
31 Oct 2018
For instance the 13 inch comes in two CPU options:
- Quad-Core 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U Processor with Hyper Threading 1.8 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Base/Turbo)
- Dual-Core 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7500U Processor with Hyper Threading 2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz (Base/Turbo)
13'' screen will be really painful for Reason, so I'd recommend 15'' Razer Blade with a i7-8750h CPU. Recently they've introduced a "base" model that is relatively cheap (for the brand). It smokes the two you mentioned out of the water (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 3064vs2863)

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sonicbyte
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31 Oct 2018

antic604 wrote:
31 Oct 2018
sonicbyte wrote:
31 Oct 2018
For instance the 13 inch comes in two CPU options:
- Quad-Core 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U Processor with Hyper Threading 1.8 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Base/Turbo)
- Dual-Core 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7500U Processor with Hyper Threading 2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz (Base/Turbo)
13'' screen will be really painful for Reason, so I'd recommend 15'' Razer Blade with a i7-8750h CPU. Recently they've introduced a "base" model that is relatively cheap (for the brand). It smokes the two you mentioned out of the water (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 3064vs2863)
Yeah, the laptop screen size doesn't matter for me too much because I use Reason in multiple screens... but thanks for the model tip

antic604

31 Oct 2018

sonicbyte wrote:
31 Oct 2018
thanks for the model tip
No problem. Just found the review of the "new" base model - the one with 256GB SSD / 2TB HDD at $1800 is the one I'd get:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Razer-Bla ... 591.0.html

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EnochLight
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31 Oct 2018

sonicbyte wrote:
31 Oct 2018
Yeah, the laptop screen size doesn't matter for me too much because I use Reason in multiple screens... but thanks for the model tip
Curious: if you're using it hooked up to multiple displays, why don't you just get a desktop (which will have a vastly faster CPU and return on investment)?
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kitekrazy
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31 Oct 2018

sonicbyte wrote:
31 Oct 2018
Anyone knows how good are the Razer notebooks for Reason or audio production in general ?

https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/ra ... de-stealth

For instance the 13 inch comes in two CPU options:
- Quad-Core 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U Processor with Hyper Threading 1.8 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Base/Turbo)
- Dual-Core 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7500U Processor with Hyper Threading 2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz (Base/Turbo)

I asume quad always is better for Reason... any tips about this brand ?
They are also built for DAWs. Imageline partners with them. Usually you go for highest clocking base core. Odd the 1.8 jump to 4.0.

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Boombastix
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31 Oct 2018

sonicbyte wrote:Anyone knows how good are the Razer notebooks for Reason or audio production in general ?

https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/ra ... de-stealth

For instance the 13 inch comes in two CPU options:
- Quad-Core 8th Gen Intel[emoji2400] Core[emoji769] i7-8550U Processor with Hyper Threading 1.8 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Base/Turbo)
- Dual-Core 7th Gen Intel[emoji2400] Core[emoji769] i7-7500U Processor with Hyper Threading 2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz (Base/Turbo)

I asume quad always is better for Reason... any tips about this brand ?
If I were you I'd look into how they perform under constant load. Can the laptop handle Turbo speed without heat issues? If it cannot take a constant high DSP load due to heat it will dial back the CPU speed and cut performance dramatically.

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prophecy
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31 Oct 2018

EnochLight wrote:
31 Oct 2018
prophecy wrote:
31 Oct 2018
I'm so new as to not know what my buffer and latency is off the top of my head, and I might have missed many threads with these experiences already in.
Well, this is a serious part of the equation, and one facet you should become aware of.
I'll make sure to put on my serious trousers.
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EnochLight
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31 Oct 2018

prophecy wrote:
31 Oct 2018
EnochLight wrote:
31 Oct 2018


Well, this is a serious part of the equation, and one facet you should become aware of.
I'll make sure to put on my serious trousers.
Good idea! Just be sure to zip up your fly. No one needs to see that stuff.
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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FlowerSoldier
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31 Oct 2018

Just...Don't buy what Hydlide bought.

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Catblack
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01 Nov 2018

FlowerSoldier wrote:
31 Oct 2018
Just...Don't buy what Hydlide bought.
He spent so much on a cpu that he can't afford light bulbs.
If you ain't hip to the rare Housequake, shut up already.

Damn.

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EnochLight
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01 Nov 2018

Catblack wrote:
01 Nov 2018
FlowerSoldier wrote:
31 Oct 2018
Just...Don't buy what Hydlide bought.
He spent so much on a cpu that he can't afford light bulbs.
LOL! You guys... :lol:

Seriously though, a simple cursory search would have revealed that the single thread performance of the CPU he chose was pretty lame by current standards. More cores does not necessarily equal better, I'm afraid.
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Heigen5
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01 Nov 2018

You can't polish a turd but you can route it via a million dollar Reverb and make it a "million dollar reverbera turd".
That said, soundquality is oftenly in a source and not in a saviour magic-chain. Did my i7 @3,4 become a victim of these million dollar Reverberas?

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Heigen5
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01 Nov 2018

Lets emulate the higher quality DSP with less CPU hungry solutions.com

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EnochLight
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01 Nov 2018

Heigen5 wrote:
01 Nov 2018
You can't polish a turd but you can route it via a million dollar Reverb and make it a "million dollar reverbera turd".
That said, soundquality is oftenly in a source and not in a saviour magic-chain. Did my i7 @3,4 become a victim of these million dollar Reverberas?
Heigen5 wrote:
01 Nov 2018
Lets emulate the higher quality DSP with less CPU hungry solutions.com


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Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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Heigen5
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01 Nov 2018

Just thinking aloud here. I know how soundquality/code in a digital world doesn't know what sounds good.

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candybag
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01 Nov 2018

I'm getting the i9 9900k on sunday if everything goes well. It might very well be the fastest, but not the best. The ludicrous pricing and heat generation holds it back.

Got some projects hitting the DSP ceiling, will be interesting how this monster handles it. Currently using an i7 6700k.
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9900K - 16 GB - 3xXB270HU - GTX 1080 ti

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