CPU usage - more than other DAWs?

[Squiksilvery]

I use(d) Logic 5, and it never slowed even with a shed load of FX on lots of tracks. Reaper on the other hand seems to suffer??

[pipelineaudio]

something is going wrong then. REAPER is ridiculously efficient.

What sort of buffer are you running on your asio driver?

See if you can use the cpu meter to isolate any fx that might be doing it.

Also, use taskman to look at cpu use. A lot of app's cpu meters lie, so make sure you are doing an apples to apples comparison at the same latency

[Squiksilvery]

Pipe,

Thats what I thought. I'm running 2 Presonus Firepods. What settings do I need to be looking at?

I'm using a 1.7ghz PC with 2Gb RAM, which has been fine with logic.

Cheers

[pipelineaudio]

check your asio buffer size in logic and then see if you are running the same size in reaper.

I havent tried multiple firepods, only singles, but the cpu use was low at 256 samples

[Squiksilvery]

Hey Pipe,

The only thing I can change with the configuration of the firepods is the Latency and sample rate; which was the same with Logic. So I presume its settings within Reaper?

[pipelineaudio]

what sort of cpu use is taskman showing in logic vs reaper on the same project with no plugins?

I'd start there. Also, there is an incredibly active reaper chat at http://www.mixxnet.net/java/?channel=reaper

We can get it figured there

Lots of firepod and ex logic users on

[Hard2Hear]

Was Logic5 even 24 bit? Thats an OLD program.

Reaper's effeciency is much better than any commercial program Ive ever used.

Reaper is as lightweight as Windows Sound Recorder.

[warble2]

Originally Posted by danny.guitar

Reaper is as lightweight as Windows Sound Recorder.

You know, I almost agree with this one. For all it does, it is indeed very light. Maybe not quite that light though

[TimOBrien]

Unless you are running EXACTLY the same plugins (and the same versions of them), you cannot compare the performance under any modern sequencer to any old one.

All programs (even Word, Excel, and web browsers) take far more resources now than they did even a couple of years ago..... that's the way the computer game works.

Originally Posted by warble2

You know, I almost agree with this one. For all it does, it is indeed very light. Maybe not quite that light though

Yeah that might have been a slight exaggeration.

But unlike other clunky DAWs, Reaper's GUI is lightweight, I'm not quite sure how, with all the theming/skinning options it supports, PNG transparency, etc. I have no idea how he managed to do all this and not have it run sluggish.

It even runs fine on my mom's 400MHz computer with 64MB RAM. Not including FX of course.

[jasonbmerrill]

Logic 5 was created at a time when pcs were a bit slower than they are now.

remember that reaper uses a 64 bit mixing engine all the way through -- that means more memory usage and possibly cpu usage per track than an app that works at 32 bit.

The difference is not apparent in newer systems, but i could definetly see logic v5 running at lower cpu than reaper on a pr 1.7 ghz system. I used to have the same processor and noticed a difference between reaper and older apps as well.

That being said, reaper IS incredibly lightweight for what it does, and the ease of workflow makes it all worth it for me, on a 1.8 ghz athlon laptop, it really smokes

[Squiksilvery]

I've played with settings all afternoon, with little to no performance increase. I think the only thing to do appart from getting a new computer, is to use an old machine and ReaMote the FX.

Will a Slave PC running ReaMote be as significantly demanding on its CPU as the Master (running Reaper) is... because if it is, I'll need a half decent PC for this too?

[pipelineaudio]

Ive used a clunky old p4 for reamote for a few fx before, worked ok

[Squiksilvery]

well I ReaMote'd the old laptop to the 1.7ghz 2gb pc and it worked for a bit, then lots of glitchy spluttering.. and the CPU was peaking around 55% (on the laptop)

something aint right, I tell you!

[pipelineaudio]

what plugins are you running?

[kizza]

I had a go at crossing over to Reaper myself the other day and seemed to run into a wall with cpu performace. I had created a project in Cubase that was pushing the machine to the edge. It had a few Kompakt based vsti's (Bosendorfer, EWQLSO, EZDrummer). They were all sent through a few levels of group channels with a few Waves Channel Inserts in the mix and it was right on the edge of stuttering (getting the odd click or pop).

As an experiement, I tried to set up the same project in Reaper. I found that whilst the cpu meter didn't max out. The interface became very non responsive (Meters, VU's & plugin displays lagging). There were more clicks and scrolling through the project whilst playing introduced a huge amount of stutter. Sadly it was unusable (I was sooo hoping for an excuse to jump over ).

The interface lag surprised me, Cubase whilst on the limit still remained smooth and updated its vu's & meters nicely. Reaper didn't seem to be able to manage the same and was even worse with the scrolling artifacts. The thing I will reiterate though was that the cpu usage wasn't maxed so there are obviously still some incompatibilities with 3rd party plugins and Reaper. If I get a chance, I may try to setup the project again but use reaper native plugs as much as possible.

System Specs:
Firepod in 24/48
Athlon 64 X2 3800
3Gb Ram
Separate SATA HDD's for OS, Music project and Vsti source files.