Poor performance on M1 Mac (Reason 12)

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dvdrtldg
Posts: 2386
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

11 May 2022

So I've just taken delivery of a new MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip, and suddenly Reason 12 (through Rosetta 2) is laggy & stuttery. Sessions and plugins that ran fine on my previous machine are now way too CPU heavy

I've disabled hyper-threading, sample rate 48K, buffer size 1024 samples (I also tried switching off multi-core audio rendering, just for the fuck of it, which didn't help). Anything else I could try? I know other people on these machines are doing fine

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deeplink
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11 May 2022

What version of R12 is running?
I would submit a bug report through the beta channel
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Chi-Individual
Posts: 386
Joined: 09 Apr 2020

11 May 2022

I had problems with Reason running on my M1 Pro like that. After some testing it was my Sonarworks plugin, which at the time was not M1 compatible, and that was causing me all types of issues. So if you have any VSTs installed that aren't M1 compatible I would check with removing those first to see if performance improves cause some just don't play well with Reason using Rosetta.

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dvdrtldg
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Joined: 17 Jan 2015

11 May 2022

Chi-Individual wrote:
11 May 2022
I had problems with Reason running on my M1 Pro like that. After some testing it was my Sonarworks plugin, which at the time was not M1 compatible, and that was causing me all types of issues. So if you have any VSTs installed that aren't M1 compatible I would check with removing those first to see if performance improves cause some just don't play well with Reason using Rosetta.
Ahhh OK, maybe this is it. I'll do some search & destroy on the VSTs, thanks

Steedus
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Location: Melbourne, AU

11 May 2022

dvdrtldg wrote:
11 May 2022
Chi-Individual wrote:
11 May 2022
I had problems with Reason running on my M1 Pro like that. After some testing it was my Sonarworks plugin, which at the time was not M1 compatible, and that was causing me all types of issues. So if you have any VSTs installed that aren't M1 compatible I would check with removing those first to see if performance improves cause some just don't play well with Reason using Rosetta.
Ahhh OK, maybe this is it. I'll do some search & destroy on the VSTs, thanks
Please report back if things improve! I am planning on upgrading the an Apple chip machine at some point this year.

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dvdrtldg
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11 May 2022

Steedus wrote:
11 May 2022
Please report back if things improve! I am planning on upgrading the an Apple chip machine at some point this year.
The machine itself is lovely and Reason 12 seems to be running fine on it, as long as I don't try using certain VSTs (e.g. Acustica plugins, which are notoriously heavy on CPU. They were running fine on my previous MacBook but now they slow everything to a crawl. The Acustica website says that their plugins have been made M1 compatible, BUT they don't perform well in Rosetta 2. So with those, I'm going to have to wait until Reason gets updated for M1)

Similar story with Waves plugins - all mine are v13, which are fully supported in M1 "on certain DAWs" which don't include Reason. They're also fully supported to work in Rosetta 2... on Reason 11, but not Reason 12. At the moment, some of my Waves plugins are working fine, but a bunch of others aren't even showing up in the browser

Softube VSTs have been updated to work on native M1 DAWs, but all mine seem to be working fine in Reason (while they don't work at all in my other main DAW which is WaveLab)

And then there are other plugin developers who haven't yet gone M1 compatible at all (e.g. Sonible), and some that have updated their newer plugins but not their older ones (e.g. Audio Thing, D16 Group). Some non-updated plugins still work fine on my new machine, others crash Reason. I'm still going through them all to find out which ones I can use and which ones I can't

So in short: complete clusterfuck. Fortunately I have a ton of VSTs and if something's not working, I can often swap it out for something else without too much trouble. But of course it's a pain with old sessions where you've got your mixes exactly how you want them, or with particular instruments that are impossible to substitute

So it's a case of buyer beware. I wanted to hold off getting a new MacBook until Reason went M1 native, but I upgrade my laptop every year as a tax thing, and it always has to be done by end of May. Not complaining though - it's technology, things change, whaddaya gonna do

Steedus
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Joined: 31 Aug 2015
Location: Melbourne, AU

12 May 2022

dvdrtldg wrote:
11 May 2022
Steedus wrote:
11 May 2022
Please report back if things improve! I am planning on upgrading the an Apple chip machine at some point this year.
The machine itself is lovely and Reason 12 seems to be running fine on it, as long as I don't try using certain VSTs (e.g. Acustica plugins, which are notoriously heavy on CPU. They were running fine on my previous MacBook but now they slow everything to a crawl. The Acustica website says that their plugins have been made M1 compatible, BUT they don't perform well in Rosetta 2. So with those, I'm going to have to wait until Reason gets updated for M1)

Similar story with Waves plugins - all mine are v13, which are fully supported in M1 "on certain DAWs" which don't include Reason. They're also fully supported to work in Rosetta 2... on Reason 11, but not Reason 12. At the moment, some of my Waves plugins are working fine, but a bunch of others aren't even showing up in the browser

Softube VSTs have been updated to work on native M1 DAWs, but all mine seem to be working fine in Reason (while they don't work at all in my other main DAW which is WaveLab)

And then there are other plugin developers who haven't yet gone M1 compatible at all (e.g. Sonible), and some that have updated their newer plugins but not their older ones (e.g. Audio Thing, D16 Group). Some non-updated plugins still work fine on my new machine, others crash Reason. I'm still going through them all to find out which ones I can use and which ones I can't

So in short: complete clusterfuck. Fortunately I have a ton of VSTs and if something's not working, I can often swap it out for something else without too much trouble. But of course it's a pain with old sessions where you've got your mixes exactly how you want them, or with particular instruments that are impossible to substitute

So it's a case of buyer beware. I wanted to hold off getting a new MacBook until Reason went M1 native, but I upgrade my laptop every year as a tax thing, and it always has to be done by end of May. Not complaining though - it's technology, things change, whaddaya gonna do
Awesome thanks for all that!

BlueEddie
Posts: 25
Joined: 24 Aug 2016

14 May 2022

Hi Everyone,

I was running a 2008 Mac Pro (16GB RAM) and finally decided to upgrade my computer as I basically couldn't use any new software - so got a new Mac Studio M1 Ultra - 64GB RAM. I've upgraded everything (I think) including to Reason 12.2.6 but am having the same problem as above jittery and stuttering music with super high DSP usage on songs that worked fine on my old computer. I've reduced sample rate to the lowest and increase buffer size to the highest - both not the case on my previous computer. I pretty much only use plug-ins from the below all of which claim to be M1/Monterey compliant with some exceptions on the NI stuff.

Universal Audio - switching off certain DSP heavy plug-ins here seems to help a bit which I don't understand as they run on their own DSP so shouldn't be using the Mac's?
Arturia
Native Instruments

What's more I've worked through deleting tracks until I'm literally running one track and still get the jittering and stuttering (I've tried leaving one track with both audio and midi tracks - same thing). So it seems to me that there is something more fundamental that's wrong here.

Have people found that plugs ins need to be active on a project to cause problems or is even just having them installed causing issues?

Any ideas at all? Pretty depressing as I thought I'd be cruising now with a newer more powerful machine but it's actually worse!

Thanks!

Steedus
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Joined: 31 Aug 2015
Location: Melbourne, AU

14 May 2022

BlueEddie wrote:
14 May 2022
Hi Everyone,

I was running a 2008 Mac Pro (16GB RAM) and finally decided to upgrade my computer as I basically couldn't use any new software - so got a new Mac Studio M1 Ultra - 64GB RAM. I've upgraded everything (I think) including to Reason 12.2.6 but am having the same problem as above jittery and stuttering music with super high DSP usage on songs that worked fine on my old computer. I've reduced sample rate to the lowest and increase buffer size to the highest - both not the case on my previous computer. I pretty much only use plug-ins from the below all of which claim to be M1/Monterey compliant with some exceptions on the NI stuff.

Universal Audio - switching off certain DSP heavy plug-ins here seems to help a bit which I don't understand as they run on their own DSP so shouldn't be using the Mac's?
Arturia
Native Instruments

What's more I've worked through deleting tracks until I'm literally running one track and still get the jittering and stuttering (I've tried leaving one track with both audio and midi tracks - same thing). So it seems to me that there is something more fundamental that's wrong here.

Have people found that plugs ins need to be active on a project to cause problems or is even just having them installed causing issues?

Any ideas at all? Pretty depressing as I thought I'd be cruising now with a newer more powerful machine but it's actually worse!

Thanks!
Hey one issue that might be slowing things down is, although a plug-in might be
M1 compatible, I’ve read that if the host DAW isn’t M1 compatible then everything will just get run via Rosetta (compatible mode, not native) so those plugins won’t be running native until Reason is. Hopefully that happens in the next few months!

robussc
Posts: 463
Joined: 03 May 2022

14 May 2022

It seems premature to be switching to the M1 processor when Reason itself isn’t native? Rosetta 2 is an amazing bit of tech, but it is like running software with the handbrake on (especially software that needs to run in real time), not to mention all the possible mismatches with the VSTs. The fact that Reason hadn’t yet made it to a native port indicates to me that there is a decent amount of low-level code (i.e. assembly language) that doesn’t simply translate over.

I’m sure it will come out this year, these M1 systems are perfect for the studio environment.
Software: Reason 12 + Objekt, Vintage Vault 4, V-Collection 9 + Pigments, Vintage Verb + Supermassive
Hardware: M1 Mac mini + dual monitors, Launchkey 61, Scarlett 18i20, Rokit 6 monitors, AT4040 mic, DT-990 Pro phones

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stillifegaijin
Posts: 250
Joined: 27 Oct 2020

14 May 2022

BlueEddie wrote:
14 May 2022
Hi Everyone,

I was running a 2008 Mac Pro (16GB RAM) and finally decided to upgrade my computer as I basically couldn't use any new software - so got a new Mac Studio M1 Ultra - 64GB RAM. I've upgraded everything (I think) including to Reason 12.2.6 but am having the same problem as above jittery and stuttering music with super high DSP usage on songs that worked fine on my old computer. I've reduced sample rate to the lowest and increase buffer size to the highest - both not the case on my previous computer. I pretty much only use plug-ins from the below all of which claim to be M1/Monterey compliant with some exceptions on the NI stuff.

Universal Audio - switching off certain DSP heavy plug-ins here seems to help a bit which I don't understand as they run on their own DSP so shouldn't be using the Mac's?
Arturia
Native Instruments

What's more I've worked through deleting tracks until I'm literally running one track and still get the jittering and stuttering (I've tried leaving one track with both audio and midi tracks - same thing). So it seems to me that there is something more fundamental that's wrong here.

Have people found that plugs ins need to be active on a project to cause problems or is even just having them installed causing issues?

Any ideas at all? Pretty depressing as I thought I'd be cruising now with a newer more powerful machine but it's actually worse!

Thanks!
We've been having these conversations and troubleshooting in another thread and it seems different folks with different M1 machines are getting different results. But I also have a Mac Studio Ultra and I have found that I need to uncheck both "Use multi-core audio rendering" and "Use hyper-threading audio rendering" - I have never used hyper-threading on a Mac but have always previously used multi-core rendering (I had a 2010 Mac Pro and various laptops) but I suspect that Reason, while not M1 optimized, maybe because of Rosetta, does not process the multi-core rendering in a way that works with M1. Without multi-core checked Reason runs better than it did on my Mac Pro, though not as well as programs optimized for M1 like Photoshop or Resolve, but it runs well. With multi-core checked it's stuttering, glitchy garbage.

Of course, as I mentioned others have said they get exactly the opposite results. But give it a try. See if it helps you since we have the same machine!

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tobypearce
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15 May 2022

We've been having these conversations and troubleshooting in another thread and it seems different folks with different M1 machines are getting different results. But I also have a Mac Studio Ultra and I have found that I need to uncheck both "Use multi-core audio rendering" and "Use hyper-threading audio rendering" - I have never used hyper-threading on a Mac but have always previously used multi-core rendering (I had a 2010 Mac Pro and various laptops) but I suspect that Reason, while not M1 optimized, maybe because of Rosetta, does not process the multi-core rendering in a way that works with M1. Without multi-core checked Reason runs better than it did on my Mac Pro, though not as well as programs optimized for M1 like Photoshop or Resolve, but it runs well. With multi-core checked it's stuttering, glitchy garbage.
Yes - that's my experience too.

It will be a nice day when Reason becomes M1 compatible and we can switch multi-core back on again. I suspect the performance increase will not be slight.
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BlueEddie
Posts: 25
Joined: 24 Aug 2016

15 May 2022

Hi Everyone,

So the unticking of "Use multi-core audio rendering" and "Use hyper-threading audio rendering" did the trick and now it runs really well with no issues. I was sure I had tried this before posting but all's well that ends well :-) Thanks for everyone's responses. I did delete and re-install all the NI and Arturia plug ins but not sure that many any difference

Might be an idea for Reason to stick this on their M1 compatibility statement or known issues list...?

Thanks everyone!

avasopht
Competition Winner
Posts: 3932
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

15 May 2022

Seems like a missed easy-win for Reason to not have the most sensible defaults.

They've been capturing analytics for long enough to know what to set the defaults to.

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