Necessary Computer Specs to Avoid Overwhelming CPU

[JamesKerwin]

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum, but I love everything I've ran into so far. I'm looking for some tips on what computer specs I'd need to have uninterrupted playback in Reason. I have a Windows 10, i5, 2.4GHz processor with 8 GB of Ram. I bought this computer specifically for production, but when the effects and tracks start to stack up, playback gets slow and crackly - often impossible to playback. I'm stuck on a tune now where I have nearly 40 tracks, some of which are quite complex Combinator patches.

I do most of my writing within Reason so I need it to experiment with different synth sounds, automations, and effects. A lot of advice I've received is to bounce my tracks, but this tends to inhibit my writing process. I'd like to avoid it unless it's a last resort. I've done all the necessary optimization in my computer, but it really has not helped. I've contacted Propellerhead support twice and they take a long time to get back to me. The last they've said is that they think my tracks may be too complicated for my computer.

Thanks guys!

[Skullture]

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum, but I love everything I've ran into so far. I'm looking for some tips on what computer specs I'd need to have uninterrupted playback in Reason. I have a Windows 10, i5, 2.4GHz processor with 8 GB of Ram. I bought this computer specifically for production, but when the effects and tracks start to stack up, playback gets slow and crackly - often impossible to playback. I'm stuck on a tune now where I have nearly 40 tracks, some of which are quite complex Combinator patches.

I do most of my writing within Reason so I need it to experiment with different synth sounds, automations, and effects. A lot of advice I've received is to bounce my tracks, but this tends to inhibit my writing process. I'd like to avoid it unless it's a last resort. I've done all the necessary optimization in my computer, but it really has not helped. I've contacted Propellerhead support twice and they take a long time to get back to me. The last they've said is that they think my tracks may be too complicated for my computer.

Thanks guys!

Hi James, two solutions here.. One is to get a system with much higher CPU specs, think i7. If you feel like not upgrading your system, then you should start resampling. You can do this by selecting rec source on the SSL panel in the rack from your instrument. Then creating a new audio source, set it to stereo, selecting the device from the dropdown list. And record the whole thing in real time. Having your synths in WAV reduces the amount of CPU usage drastically. Synths like Zero are super CPU demanding, so resampling for a, i5 based system is a must. But I've heard stories from people with an i7 based system struggling as well. I myself would really like to upgrade to an i7. I really regret getting an i5

[jappe]

Hello James,
welcome to the forum.

You can find some performance related posts and also a benchmarking thread here.

First run the benchmark, and compare your result with the others:
http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... =benchmark


http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... erformance

http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... erformance

http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... erformance

[tibah]

Of course, upgrading is always a nice solution, but you can only get so far. Meaning, knowing a bit of performance management is always a plus. In certain ways, stacking certain type of voices/effects, using layers, having a reverb insert on every instrument itself, instead of using 1-2 send effects for the same task etc.

When you say complex Combinators, does that include or exclude use of Rack Extensions? Because, until this date, the stock devices are very, very, VERY light on CPU, even when using some more complex patches within a Combinator. So even with an i7, but still the same way of writing your music, which sounds to choose and how to process them, you obviously can do more than now, but you also might still be as baffled as now when you reach the limits of the new specs.

I had a very bad rig for a kinda long time, dual core AMD. When I went for a quad core Intel, I was basically set, since I developed loads of habits to deal with the performance of my old system.

Some general tips:
- Use send effects instead of inserts, for reverb and delay, revisit some Combinator patches inside your projects and see if too many single reverb units are in there

- device selection can be key, does it have to be this intense synth patch or do you might have a sampler patch in some ReFill that does kinda give you the same result, replacing heavier real-time synthesis with samples patches

- how much processing, in terms of EQ and compression can be done by the SSL, delete those extra EQs and comps from the your project

This is something more instant than upgrading your computer/notebook, but it takes a different approach and it might not be your cup of tea, but I figured I would post it anyway! And welcome to RT!

[dana]

Your computer is underpowered for Reason. Only expect to write small songs with such a setup.

You need at least a Quad Core 2.8Ghz i7 processor with an SSD drive and 16Gb of memory.

Check cpu mark (PassMark) for cpu power:
Intel Core i7-5960X @ 3.00GHz - 15,983 - expensive but the best you can get for now without buying server cpus.
Intel Core i7-4960X @ 3.60GHz - 13,890
Intel Core i7-4980HQ @ 2.80GHz - 10,065 (the one i have)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Upgrade, or write an initial loop then bounce all tracks to disk then import the audio files into a new song and continue.

[JamesKerwin]

Thank you all for your help and input. I will try the benchmark tests this evening or tomorrow morning at some point. But I think I may need an upgrade. My tracks are quite complex and require a lot of CPU. Bouncing them constantly will hinder the songwriting process, I know. I'm at the point now where I bounce to Allihoopa every time I want to hear a clear play-through, and it's pretty much impossible to get the creative juices flowing. I feel excited though that my problems may be over for the most part. Thank you again and I'm glad to be a part of this cool community!

[AJ_3000]

I've heard stories from people with an i7 based system struggling as well.

I too experience everything slowing and stuttering with playback becoming interrupted, and I am on an i7. Same with Ableton Live. Everything has been checked and rechecked as far as the systems setup, and everything is as it should be with what ought to be plenty of RAM fitted. I habour the concern even more power would lead to even more taxing projects, reaching the same impasse, with the improved system overloading.

I would like to avoid too the necessity to bounce / free to help experimenting as the yen takes me. I don't know how with the demands the latest synths make that keeping everything running live until completion is practical, so some compromises are unfortunately necessary, primarily such as using bouncing.

I am not saying any of the following is directly relevant to your particular situation James , it's just a few of points (hopefully) connected to the topic. However,recently I have come to understand what I have read about bouncing having an upside , and that trying to fix ideas I find has proved beneficial in helping me become more productive , finishing tracks more quickly (or even actually just in some cases finishing them at all!). Adopting the old adage 'less is more' can offer dividends too, maybe - I know personally as an inexperienced hobbyist with too much kit for my own good, I have terrible issues having to fight to avoid the 'everything and the kitchen sink approach', when it comes to using effects and processors not necessarily to any particularly useful purpose. In doing this, I usually end up with inserts piled high. Sometimes I would probably have got a more coherent balanced result and saved CPU planning send effects and bussing to them from various instruments. Other times a bit more work on the sound from the synth or the choice of the arrangement of the notes in the part would have had a greater impact. Something I find good to keep in mind myself is that accepted wisdom supports the idea strong core musical ideas do not rely on massively involved instrumentation, eg many classic songs work perfectly sung with acoustic guitar accompaniment.

One approach maybe is to work out something with simple instrumental voicings, maybe using stock plugins, almost I guess producing something akin to a demo. Then the separate elements could be taken in turn, replaying or recycling the original parts, fleshing out and polishing them to produce audio stems which could then be substituted, affected, processed, mixed, repeating as required to produce a finished article with the depth and complexity which does the piece justice. Having just one or two elements un-bounced as 'live' instruments, and the rest as audio could overcome the need for further CPU power, while maybe giving a slightly more fluid workflow? When it's necessary to bounce the products of the work on each section use the natural break productively taking a couple of minutes to walk about or have a good stretch, getting away from the screens, maybe refreshing one's drink, hopefully returning reinvigorated ready to take another section further. By taking on smaller, manageable layers, this might give scope to develop them untrammelled by CPU limits. Possibly this offers a route avoiding reaching the point when the system is overloading and the creative flow stops suddenly, risking one losing one's thread while perhaps some backtracking is done, to reach a position when you can hear progress enabling a clear decision to be made what parts can be safely bounced and where parts definitely must be further kept as live rack extensions and MIDI / automation parts. What I guess I am saying is better to accept the inevitable and plan to work given the constraint, adopting a strategy to minimize the negative impact on your experimental flair than come across the horrendously frustrating step when things are in the flow and you add one more effect and playback drops off, and then you have to start juggling and bouncing tracks etc using your brain's opposite hemisphere. It's a pig, but I suspect it's necessary to periodically free CPU however vast your computer resources, if complex layered parts are produced in Reason.

One thing I find has helped on occasion to squeeze a few more edits before being forced to bounce if the moments not right, is to temporarily drop the sample rate of the project, remembering to restore it when the point comes to bounce. Additional techniques may be found in the operation manual, Chapter 23 'Optimizing Performance'.

I feel it would be so helpful for all Rack Extensions to offer the user the option to run them in economy mode, normal mode and high quality mode when CPU load critical, not an issue or when bouncing to give maximum quality output respectively. It would be good if PH could make it simple for a developer to implement and to highly encourage them to adopt these features, if technically not too detrimental. Pie in the sky perhaps, but it would be worthwhile I feel if it gave the choice for a trading off quality to promote quicker working methods while developing a project, offering an alternative which avoiding the CPU overload problem mentioned in the original post. I would be very interested to learn the reaction from the perspective of a developer to including economy / high quality modes.

[Stranger.]

ΣΣΣ

[satyr32]

Have a look on your Sample Buffer Size in the settings, probabilly you already know that you can have more power in trade for latency.
I have a 2.2 i7 and struggling in ever song due to REs. I am really hoping that in Reason 9 they either find a way to reduce CPU or that they implement a freeze function to easily bounce tracks in a non-destructive way. Otherwise I am going to build a hackintosh with an 4.0 i7.

[jappe]

One thing that could be a problem, is to have extremely long tails of reverbs/decay.

Devices also consume significant Resources even when idle. Perhaps it's possible to get rid of that by automating on/off/bypass on the devices to only enable the devices currently used?

It could be a good idea to remove stuff one by one, trying to find some main culprit for the poor performance.

[boobytrap]

I use dual core with 8gb RAM and windows 10. No problem to me up to 40 tracks with full size combiners. Mostly stock device. I wish if I have i3 or i5. But mainly I use SSD device. That makes huge difference. Also I use ATI 2 GB GPU. That's also make big effect than onboard GPU. I suggest you upgrade SSD and graphic card if you still not. Or you can buy ALIENWARE. Problem solved !

[guitfnky]

Your computer is underpowered for Reason. Only expect to write small songs with such a setup.

You need at least a Quad Core 2.8Ghz i7 processor with an SSD drive and 16Gb of memory.

Check cpu mark (PassMark) for cpu power:
Intel Core i7-5960X @ 3.00GHz - 15,983 - expensive but the best you can get for now without buying server cpus.
Intel Core i7-4960X @ 3.60GHz - 13,890
Intel Core i7-4980HQ @ 2.80GHz - 10,065 (the one i have)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Upgrade, or write an initial loop then bounce all tracks to disk then import the audio files into a new song and continue.

You don't need an SSD or 16 GB of memory to run Reason just fine. I've only ever used it on an i7, but I suspect that too is also false. Also, there is an i7 6700 and 6700K out now (which I have in the new PC I just put together).

Anyway, the point is, it really depends on what you're doing. If you're doing mostly audio tracks with a few synths, and don't go overboard on effects, you shouldn't need a super-fast CPU. If you're not using a lot of patches that need to load samples, you won't need that much RAM (I got by just fine on 4 GB in the first couple of years working on Reason, and 8GB worked perfectly up until I got my new setup). Also, you absolutely do not need an SSD. Until about a week ago, I'd never used an SSD with Reason, and I've been known to put Reason through its paces with audio track counts. Never encountered a hitch, for as long as I've had a decent 7200 RPM drive.

The OP's computer may well be underpowered for use with Reason, but you certainly don't need to go all out to run it, and run it well.

[JamesKerwin]

Hello James,
welcome to the forum.

You can find some performance related posts and also a benchmarking thread here.

First run the benchmark, and compare your result with the others:
http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... =benchmark


http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... erformance

http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... erformance

http://reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... erformance

I ran the Benchmark song and it quit at 2.01 seconds I think my computer is slower than myself and everyone else expected. Next step is upgrading, I assume?

[tibah]

I ran the Benchmark song and it quit at 2.01 seconds I think my computer is slower than myself and everyone else expected. Next step is upgrading, I assume?

Yes and no. As mentioned already, there are plenty of options available for you to balance performance.

I upgraded 3 years ago to the top model i5 back then. i5-3570K to be specific. 8 GB RAM. Balance audio-interface. No SSD. I hit around 36 seconds on that benchmark file and I never, ever get into any troubles the way I produce and approach music making on this machine. Just going to say, it doesn't have to be the latest and greatest.

[guitfnky]

I ran the Benchmark song and it quit at 2.01 seconds I think my computer is slower than myself and everyone else expected. Next step is upgrading, I assume?

Based on how you've said you use it (lots of Combinators), I'd say yes, you probably would want to upgrade, if you're only able to get 2 seconds in before it stops playback. Assuming, of course, you'd set your buffer as high as it goes, before running the test.

Keep in mind, though, you don't need mind-blowing specs to get something that will work well for you. You won't need an i7, 16 GB RAM, or an SSD. However, those are all very nice things to have. The faster i7 will give you plenty of processing headroom for synths and effects, extra RAM will be helpful if you plan to use a lot of sample-based instruments (drum patches, NNXTs, etc.), and an SSD is just so nice to have because it reduces load times so significantly (especially noticeable if you're using one for your OS boot drive for the first time; you'll never want to go back). They'll also arguably last you longer, because of all of that extra performance headroom.

[boobytrap]

SSD is Necessary, Must needed, the most important fact. nobody can deny that. Also better workstation GPU. coz reason isn't 8bit graphics GUI application.

[kuhliloach]

I agree with dana and boobytrap about the fact that SSD drives make all the difference. They are also quieter than spinning drives because they have no moving parts; this means less chance of a whine or hum getting into your mics. A good CPU helps but the SSD factor is the most important computer "upgrade".

[guitfnky]

SSDs are absolutely 100% *not* a requirement.

no way. they are very nice to have, but people have been recording on magnetic hard disk drives in DAWs for many years now; since LONG before SSDs were even commercially available. to state that an SSD is a necessity is simply false.

the sound a physical hard disk puts out is, however, a legitimate consideration, but it's not something that can't be easily managed.

[JamesKerwin]

Well, I put together a PC component build list and this is what I've come up with so far. Any tech savvy people may shed some light if certain parts are overkill - or underkill I guess.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($318.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: SilenX EFZ-92HA3 48.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($16.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z87 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($127.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($63.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Raidmax ATX-502WBG ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $801.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-09 16:50 EDT-0400

[tibah]

Well, I put together a PC component build list and this is what I've come up with so far. Any tech savvy people may shed some light if certain parts are overkill - or underkill I guess.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($318.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: SilenX EFZ-92HA3 48.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($16.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z87 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($127.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($63.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Raidmax ATX-502WBG ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($83.89 @ OutletPC)

The CPU might be a bit overkill, but it will last you for a very, very long time, regarding DSP based music production with Reason.

[JamesKerwin]

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($318.99 @ SuperBiiz)

The CPU might be a bit overkill, but it will last you for a very, very long time, regarding DSP based music production with Reason.

Well, that's something to consider. Thanks!

[Stranger.]

ΣΣΣ

[guitfnky]

Looks like a solid build. I wouldn't say the CPU is overkill, but as tibah says, it should definitely work well for you for a good long time! I'm going to just go ahead and plug my own CPU cooler, because it's actually really surprisingly quiet. I went with a Scythe Kotetsu (based on someone else's suggestion). As long as it fits in the case, it'll keep you nice and cool while staying nice and quiet. it's a bit pricier than the one you've got, ($50, I think), but it was definitely worth it.

Oh, and good call on the modular PSU. I went non-modular, and my cable management is a mess, as a result.

Also, check out this video, regarding obtaining Windows 10 for $20:

I wish I'd seen this before I ordered my OEM disk for $95. Guy's got a reputable channel, so it's worth looking into.

Speaking of disks, you will need a DVD drive of some sort to install OEM Windows 10 onto your hard drive (unless you only bought it for the license key, in which case, you can DL it to a USB using another computer, and install it that way). That was another thing I learned the hard way.

[JamesKerwin]

Found this: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul15/a ... e-0715.htm Seems to be a pretty solid and recent resource for CPU choice.

[devilfish]

Xeon CPU with registred ECC RAM .. = stable

taking a lot of cores is much better, because you don't need a fast Single Core Clock for Reason!! (3 GHz or more)..


Intel Xeon E5-2650 (280€)
8x 2GHZ with 8 cores to 16 threads (more L2 Cache!)

Quadcore i7
4x4 GHZ with 4 cores to 8 threads

Intel Xeon E5-2630V4 (<800€)
2,2 GHz x 10-Core to 20 Threads (25MB Cache!)