Does Reason work with Mac Mini M1?

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npinero1
Posts: 146
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

04 Jan 2021

Happy new year everyone.
I was planning on getting a new Mac Mini with the M1 chip because I do video editing, but I also want to use Reason on this Mac. So I was wondering if anyone had tried using Reason within this Mac, and If so, can you share your experience on how well or not well it worked?

Thank you in advance.
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Thousand Ways
Posts: 252
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04 Jan 2021

As far as I know, Reason isn't yet compatible with any new Macs that have the M1 chip.

Baylo
Posts: 149
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

04 Jan 2021

There is a full compatibility statement here: https://help.reasonstudios.com/hc/en-us ... ed-Dec-15-

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fieldframe
RE Developer
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04 Jan 2021

There's a thread I can't find at the moment, but another user reported that Reason 11 runs fine on an M1.

When you launch Reason (or any other Mac app compiled for Intel), there's a behind-the-scenes translation to Apple Silicon using a system called Rosetta2. It works seamlessly for most, software, although there are a few exceptions.

In ideal conditions, Rosetta-translated apps can run at 80% native speed, so some Intel-based apps actually run faster on an M1 than on many Intel chips. Various factors can make translated performance slower, though, and in the same thread, an M1 user ran one of those Reason benchmark song files and it didn't perform quite as well. It was still perfectly usable, just not on par with some of the other M1 benchmarks out there.

Basically, you can use Reason on an M1 without issue right now, but you may not be blown away by the performance until Reason Studios releases an ARM-native version.

[edit] Per the above link, Reason can only be run in online mode on an M1. CodeMeter (Reason's offline copy-protection scheme) uses what's known as a kernel extension in MacOS, which is one of the types of software Rosetta2 doesn't support.

npinero1
Posts: 146
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

04 Jan 2021

Awesome, thank you. I am not in a huge rush but I am having issues with audio tracks in Reason on my current iMac mid 2011. I think 9.5 years is long enough for a computer especially with the broader set of productions I plan on doing.

I hope that optimization is coming soon.
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fieldframe
RE Developer
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04 Jan 2021

Actually, if you're coming from a 2011 iMac, I think you'll see a major improvement regardless of Reason's less-than-stellar Rosetta2 performance! Your new M1 Mac might run Reason like a 2017-2018 Mac until there's a native version, but that would still give you some more audio tracks to work with.

Thousand Ways
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04 Jan 2021

:oops: Well, I got this wrong.

npinero1
Posts: 146
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04 Jan 2021

I appreciate it, thanks!
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tronam
Posts: 486
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05 Jan 2021

On the M1 MacBook Pro it's been running reliably under Rosetta so far, although I haven't extensively tested its VST performance/compatibility yet. They did all scan successfully though and appear to load properly. One difference I've noticed is quite snappy rack scrolling, even on large multi-column racks. That's a bit surprising because I'm accustomed to a pretty low chunky frame rate while scrolling, even on higher end systems with dedicated GPUs.
Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

olive6741
Posts: 294
Joined: 11 May 2016

05 Jan 2021

I Tested Reason 11 on the new Mac Book Air M1 of my daughter - 'entry' model - (for few hours this weekend) and it works. But in terms of performance my results are mixed, as there are drop outs in the audio stream when multicore is enabled in Reason. When I disable multicore support, it looks like it works better (and however 4 Cores of M1 are used), but I can't obtain same performance than running Reason on my quad core Intel Mac Book Pro 2018 13" (when multicore enabled). Less heat obviously. And silence. M1 MBA is great on this side. And Rosetta 2 is an impressive translation layer! All in all, it's finally impressive it just works IMHO. (in my test, there were 2 DIVA synths, one in 'best' and another in 'divine' and some 3 other 'lighter' VSTs FX + 7 Europa RE synth, each (and Divas) playing 5 notes generated by Chords and Arpeggio players (intruments patches with some sustain - just to obtain somehow musical though heavy) + 14 RE fx (Sweeper and Quartet x7) + 1rhytmic and Beatmap before reaching 'audible' limit (drop outs) - 44.1Khz - internal coreaudio - 512.) Had some troubles with other buffer size (bigger or smaller). I understand it is said 'non-compatible' by Reason Studios, because there are some drawbacks - but in fact, it's not too bad.

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antic604
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05 Jan 2021

tronam wrote:
05 Jan 2021
...I'm accustomed to a pretty low chunky frame rate while scrolling, even on higher end systems with dedicated GPUs.
That's because Reason doesn't use GPU to render the GUI. All is done on CPU. This will change with the new, high-res update, though.
Music tech enthusiast.
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tronam
Posts: 486
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05 Jan 2021

antic604 wrote:
05 Jan 2021
tronam wrote:
05 Jan 2021
...I'm accustomed to a pretty low chunky frame rate while scrolling, even on higher end systems with dedicated GPUs.
That's because Reason doesn't use GPU to render the GUI. All is done on CPU. This will change with the new, high-res update, though.
Right, not GPU accelerated, but the rack assets still have to exist in GPU memory and I’m wondering if the overall responsiveness is benefiting from the M1’s unified memory architecture.
Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

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antic604
Posts: 1134
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05 Jan 2021

tronam wrote:
05 Jan 2021
antic604 wrote:
05 Jan 2021


That's because Reason doesn't use GPU to render the GUI. All is done on CPU. This will change with the new, high-res update, though.
Right, not GPU accelerated, but the rack assets still have to exist in GPU memory and I’m wondering if the overall responsiveness is benefiting from the M1’s unified memory architecture.
If it's not rendered by GPU, then the assets are not in there either. Only the final image which was pieces together by the CPU from the assets in RAM is sent to GPU to display.

So while I don't agree with the premise, you're definitely onto something about the speed of unified / embedded RAM :)
Music tech enthusiast.
DAW, VST & hardware hoarder.
My "music": https://soundcloud.com/antic604

npinero1
Posts: 146
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

05 Jan 2021

olive6741 wrote:
05 Jan 2021
I Tested Reason 11 on the new Mac Book Air M1 of my daughter - 'entry' model - (for few hours this weekend) and it works. But in terms of performance my results are mixed, as there are drop outs in the audio stream when multicore is enabled in Reason. When I disable multicore support, it looks like it works better (and however 4 Cores of M1 are used), but I can't obtain same performance than running Reason on my quad core Intel Mac Book Pro 2018 13" (when multicore enabled). Less heat obviously. And silence. M1 MBA is great on this side. And Rosetta 2 is an impressive translation layer! All in all, it's finally impressive it just works IMHO. (in my test, there were 2 DIVA synths, one in 'best' and another in 'divine' and some 3 other 'lighter' VSTs FX + 7 Europa RE synth, each (and Divas) playing 5 notes generated by Chords and Arpeggio players (intruments patches with some sustain - just to obtain somehow musical though heavy) + 14 RE fx (Sweeper and Quartet x7) + 1rhytmic and Beatmap before reaching 'audible' limit (drop outs) - 44.1Khz - internal coreaudio - 512.) Had some troubles with other buffer size (bigger or smaller). I understand it is said 'non-compatible' by Reason Studios, because there are some drawbacks - but in fact, it's not too bad.
Super helpful, thanks!!!
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jacobh
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22 Jun 2021

I've encountered similar results with my M1 Macbook Air. It works, but doesn't have as good a performance as my 2008 8 core Xeon Mac Pro, or a 16 inch Macbook Pro 2013. When I play heavy projects that worked on my other machines, I get drop outs and stutters, even though the performance meter shows lower CPU usage on the M1. After Reason is optimized for M1 I think it will likely perform really well, but until then I'm a bit disappointed by the performance.

Other music apps, such as Ableton Live, seem to perform better without the dropouts. Curiously, I even tried running Reason Rack inside Ableton Live, and was able to get better performance with the same devices without dropouts.

thedude
Posts: 110
Joined: 08 May 2021

23 Jun 2021

jacobh wrote:
22 Jun 2021
Other music apps, such as Ableton Live, seem to perform better without the dropouts. Curiously, I even tried running Reason Rack inside Ableton Live, and was able to get better performance with the same devices without dropouts.
And that says a lot, because Live 11 is garbage on m1 macs, and is, in general, not as optimized as 10 was. My best experience so far as been running Logic Pro with all silicon coded AUs - but those are in the minority.

We went through this same ordeal with the original Rosetta when PPC switched to Intel, and it sucked for a few years. I guess I am just hoping that the universal binary version of Reason will be better than what we have now.

helmutson
Posts: 211
Joined: 30 Mar 2015

23 Jun 2021

Since Logic Pro is my main DAW I'm really happy with my new MacMini M1. R11 as AU plugin under Rosetta2 works very well. No problems here. The performance on these new M1 machines is awesome. I tried Ableton Live 11 and the performance is not that good as in Logic, it's OK, but in comparisation with Logic it is very bad. Even a single Drum Rack (from Live's Drum Booth) consuming 50% of the cpu power (says the Live cpu meter). Reason 11 standalone working very well too, no problems here ...

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