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Old 01-02-2011, 07:24 PM   #1
nofish
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Default Does Reaper allocate too much RAM ?

I'm currently having trouble running a bigger Reaper project. (50 tracks in total, ~ 35 audio tracks, rest is busses and Aux, no VSTi's, just FX).

I was curious so I left process explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896653) running while opening the project.

Note that for this test I disabled buffering completely (set Media buffer size to 0 ms in preferences) prior to loading and checked the "Open with FX offline (recovery mode)" tickbox in the loading dialog.

Here's the screencap of what I got:
http://img585.**************/img585/5783/ramuse.gif

Reaper allocates 1,6 GB RAM loading the barebones project, ie just the Audio items. If this helps, the tracks in this project contain usually two or three lanes and lots of small Audio snippets, usually crossfaded.

I wonder why Reaper takes so much RAM, being on WIN XP (having 4 gigs installed and recognized by Windows) I cannot run this project properly. Even with buffering disabled and FX loaded offline I get massive GUI glitches and and after a short time the project crashes.

Here's what Reaper looks like (using default theme, click to enlarge):

[IMG]http://img820.**************/img820/7605/guiglitch2.th.png[/IMG]


In case anyone wonders, I started this project with the 3 GB switch enabled which worked, but I've read in this forum that this can cause other problems (ie with some plugins), so I did this test with the standard Windows boot (no 3 GB switch).

Is the RAM use normal and expected or is there something strange going on ?

Win XP32, SP3, Reaper 3.74 rev1f3295

edit:

Some more info:

I converted the Reaper project with AA translator into a Vegas project and opened it in Vegas.
Of course I don't get all the Reaper specific stuff there (lanes, crossfades) but all Audio items are imported and the project plays as it should.
Looking at process explorer, this Vegas project uses only ~ 600 MB, so taking into consideration that Vegas is a bigger app to start with and probably has some buffering enabled by default (didn't check) I definately suspect there's something going on with Reaper's high RAM use.

Last edited by nofish; 01-02-2011 at 09:15 PM.
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Old 01-03-2011, 07:09 AM   #2
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bump

Any thoughts ?

Should this go ruther in the bugs section ?
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Old 01-03-2011, 07:33 AM   #3
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Default Does Reaper allocate too much RAM ?

How much ram does it show when you load Reaper without the 50 tracks?
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Old 01-03-2011, 07:39 AM   #4
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I have a session with ~60 tracks.. 48audio and 12 buss/FX.. running on my internal laptop HD(lol) with a mild amount of slices and fades.
Only 32 FX running including mastering FX on the Master channel

And I'm sitting at Reaper using 350mbs ram(self reported as well as Task Manager)and 65% CPU on my Turion 2.2 Dual core with 3gbs ram laptop in Windows 7 32bit.

I'd be willing to try and open up your session.. but i may not have all the plugins.

You might be using 1 plugin that has a memory leak with Reaper..
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:00 AM   #5
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Thanks for the replies.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paradiddle View Post
How much ram does it show when you load Reaper without the 50 tracks?
I assume you mean deleting all Audio items and loading the projects just with the used FX ?
I just tested this and it shows a constant 325 MB.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyGinese View Post
I have a session with ~60 tracks.. 48audio and 12 buss/FX.. running on my internal laptop HD(lol) with a mild amount of slices and fades.
Only 32 FX running including mastering FX on the Master channel

And I'm sitting at Reaper using 350mbs ram(self reported as well as Task Manager)and 65% CPU on my Turion 2.2 Dual core with 3gbs ram laptop in Windows 7 32bit.

I'd be willing to try and open up your session.. but i may not have all the plugins.

You might be using 1 plugin that has a memory leak with Reaper..
Yeah I also suspected a memory leak first, but I think this can be excluded given the above test. Also, as mentioned in my first post, I loaded the FX offline (which then should use almost no RAM) and still got this high RAM usage.
While writing this post I have the session open without Audio items, just with the used FX watching process explorer - no memory leak noticeable.

I think sending you the session is not practical because you would need the Audio files to compare (as said, loading the session without them is fine) and it's quite huge.

Your session seems roughly comparable to mine, only difference I think is that I have huge amounts of fades and slices.
I scliced and xfaded almost every single hit using the slip editing method.
http://tutorialsforreaper.com/2010/0...ws-extensions/

I think that's where the culprit is, slices/crossfades seem to take huge amounts of memory when doing lots of them.

Would be nice if a dev could join in and comment on this and say if might be possible doing something about it.

Last edited by nofish; 01-03-2011 at 09:10 AM.
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:28 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post
I'm currently having trouble running a bigger Reaper project. (50 tracks in total, ~ 35 audio tracks, rest is busses and Aux, no VSTi's, just FX).

I was curious so I left process explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896653) running while opening the project.

Note that for this test I disabled buffering completely (set Media buffer size to 0 ms in preferences) prior to loading and checked the "Open with FX offline (recovery mode)" tickbox in the loading dialog.

Here's the screencap of what I got:
http://img585.**************/img585/5783/ramuse.gif

Reaper allocates 1,6 GB RAM loading the barebones project, ie just the Audio items. If this helps, the tracks in this project contain usually two or three lanes and lots of small Audio snippets, usually crossfaded.

I wonder why Reaper takes so much RAM, being on WIN XP (having 4 gigs installed and recognized by Windows) I cannot run this project properly. Even with buffering disabled and FX loaded offline I get massive GUI glitches and and after a short time the project crashes.

Here's what Reaper looks like (using default theme, click to enlarge):

[IMG]http://img820.**************/img820/7605/guiglitch2.th.png[/IMG]


In case anyone wonders, I started this project with the 3 GB switch enabled which worked, but I've read in this forum that this can cause other problems (ie with some plugins), so I did this test with the standard Windows boot (no 3 GB switch).

Is the RAM use normal and expected or is there something strange going on ?

Win XP32, SP3, Reaper 3.74 rev1f3295

edit:

Some more info:

I converted the Reaper project with AA translator into a Vegas project and opened it in Vegas.
Of course I don't get all the Reaper specific stuff there (lanes, crossfades) but all Audio items are imported and the project plays as it should.
Looking at process explorer, this Vegas project uses only ~ 600 MB, so taking into consideration that Vegas is a bigger app to start with and probably has some buffering enabled by default (didn't check) I definately suspect there's something going on with Reaper's high RAM use.


@ 24 bit 44100
44100 24 bit samples = 1.0584 Mbit/sec = 0.1323 MByte/sec

for stereo

0.2646 MByte/sec

for 5 minutes (300 secs)

1 track should be approx 79.38 MByte

Mult by 50

79.38 * 50 = 3969 MBytes or 3.969 GBytes.

I would think Reaper would want approx 4 Gigs of Ram for a 50 track project (if project was totally done in Ram) in an ideal case, but then it would be less because of disk streaming (which I am not sure how that works).

You could probably check your disk streaming performance. (This is what really allows us to work on very large projects without using much ram). I know using software samplers, disk streaming can provide a significant reduction in Ram, but it probably depends on the capabilities of the disk and what is on it.

Also a near full disk and fragmented drive will ultimately make your ram usage goes up if your disk speed isn't fast enough to keep up.
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:36 AM   #7
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Just to point out that even if the 4 gig of RAM is recognized Win XP 32 bit may not be able to use properly it or programs that you are using as it's not just the O/S.

http://www.motherboardpoint.com/maxi...p2-t36160.html

http://chris.pirillo.com/32-bit-windows-and-4gb-of-ram/


I would remove you hack and try again with the project.Note also that allocated RAM is not the same as actual used RAM.

If you want to use more RAM then it's best to move to a 64 bit O/S but from what I've read Win XP64 was a bit of a cludge and if I was to move up my O/S from WinXP 32 I'd go straight to windows 7.


Just for giggles make a new folder and try consolidating the project using the .ogg format and then see if it will run?

PS
I've just done a silly test.I've duplicated a guitar track on a project I'm working on so the project now has 52 tracks/102 VSTs and is running at 19% CPU on my Quad Core AMD using 768 meg of RAM and still runs at no problems.All at 24 bit 44.1Khz.
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File Type: jpg ReaperRamCPU52tracks.jpg (40.0 KB, 411 views)
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Last edited by Sheppola; 01-03-2011 at 09:46 AM.
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:52 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jlgrimes11 View Post
@ 24 bit 44100
44100 24 bit samples = 1.0584 Mbit/sec = 0.1323 MByte/sec

for stereo
0.2646 MByte/sec for 5 minutes (300 secs)

1 track should be approx 79.38 MByte
Mult by 50
79.38 * 50 = 3969 MBytes or 3.969 GBytes.

I would think Reaper would want approx 4 Gigs of Ram for a 50 track project....

Nice math attempt, but sequencers do not load up the entire audio files in ram.
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:57 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post
I think that's where the culprit is, slices/crossfades seem to take huge amounts of memory when doing lots of them.
Yep. 2-5 MB each slice, they add up quick. Glue is your friend.
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Old 01-03-2011, 10:33 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bullshark View Post
Yep. 2-5 MB each slice, they add up quick. Glue is your friend.
Bingo !

Thanks for confirmation bullshark, you brought light into into quite a heavy issue for me.

That seems quite much no ?
Any chance this could be optimized from the devs side ?

(I know glue is my friend in this case but still...)
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Old 01-03-2011, 02:46 PM   #11
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Seems i might have an issue with that as well.
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Old 01-03-2011, 03:47 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Arnar View Post
Seems i might have an issue with that as well.
Yeah, I thought of your thread in the bug report section when doing this test, might be related.
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=70630

Btw, it happened to me also today that I suddenly lost Audio items, no undo available as you described.

Will do a crosspost in your thread for linking to this one.
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:28 PM   #13
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Can you post the project file used, and your reaper.ini? Also, can you post some basic information about the media (specifically, sizes of .wav files, and the .wav.reapeaks files as well)?

This is completely strange and should not be the case -- if I load a relatively large project with plenty of third party plug-ins and everything, I see around 400mb use.
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Old 01-03-2011, 09:40 PM   #14
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Thanks for replying Justin. Really appreciate it.

Sure, I'll upload everything asked.
(Will probably only get around doing it tomorrow though)

edit:
sent to support[at]cockos.com

Last edited by nofish; 01-04-2011 at 11:16 AM.
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Old 01-04-2011, 01:59 PM   #15
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Schwa was nice enough too look at this and figure out the problem:

The issue appears to be that there are over 1300 separate .wav files used. REAPER by default has some buffers per file, for performance, and you can change the size of these buffers via Prefs/Buffering/Advanced. Try making a change there, and closing and reopening the project. Use caution in decreasing these sizes, though, as you might see some performance degradation!

In the future, if you've been slicing and gluing a ton, I'd suggest not gluing. If REAPER has the same file open in thousands of instances, it can often reduce it by a lot (and only open a few times), whereas keeping multiple files open is always keeping unique data around..
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Old 01-04-2011, 02:11 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin View Post
Schwa was nice enough too look at this and figure out the problem:

The issue appears to be that there are over 1300 separate .wav files used. REAPER by default has some buffers per file, for performance, and you can change the size of these buffers via Prefs/Buffering/Advanced. Try making a change there, and closing and reopening the project. Use caution in decreasing these sizes, though, as you might see some performance degradation!

In the future, if you've been slicing and gluing a ton, I'd suggest not gluing. If REAPER has the same file open in thousands of instances, it can often reduce it by a lot (and only open a few times), whereas keeping multiple files open is always keeping unique data around..

Now given this, would it be a good thing to use the action to clean the project folder of all unused media? or a bad thing?
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Old 01-04-2011, 02:34 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hopi View Post
Now given this, would it be a good thing to use the action to clean the project folder of all unused media? or a bad thing?
The files in the project folder would not have any real effect -- it's only files referenced by the project that are an issue.
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Old 01-04-2011, 04:37 PM   #18
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Thanks for the fast response.
I'll check out the advanced settings and see how it goes.

Yes, there are lots of .wav files used in this project, but here's the part I don't quite get:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin View Post

In the future, if you've been slicing and gluing a ton, I'd suggest not gluing. If REAPER has the same file open in thousands of instances, it can often reduce it by a lot (and only open a few times), whereas keeping multiple files open is always keeping unique data around..
In this project I haven't glued anything, not even once used the glue function. These are all unique recorded files, sliced and crossfaded.

Could you elaborate a bit this statement, or was it meant more as a general advice not necessarily related to me in particular.

Thanks again for the great support.
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Old 01-04-2011, 05:15 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post
In this project I haven't glued anything, not even once used the glue function. These are all unique recorded files, sliced and crossfaded.
It seemed unlikely that you made 1367 separate recordings (that's how many individual media files are referenced in the project). It seemed much more likely that a smaller number of actual recorded files were sliced and then the slices glued (rendered) to render many small files.

Is there any chance you used a custom action or extension action to create the slices, that invisibly glued (rendered) them? Or that you used "apply take FX to items" or a similar rendering action?

To be clear, if you have a 5-minute recorded take and split it 1000 times, it is still only a single audio file on disk. The .rpp file itself holds the split and fade information, and there is file buffering overhead for only one media file. But if you glue or render the 1000 slices, you then have 1000 unique media files on disk, each of which has file buffering overhead.
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Old 01-04-2011, 06:27 PM   #20
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Just had a look in my Audio files folder, there are indeed 1367 Audio files there.
None of them with "glued" suffix, also I didn't use any custom actions which involve rendering actions.

What I didn't say though (but probably should have) is that this project contains the complete recordings for a band which will finally be a full length CD (playtime ~ 1 hour, drums multi-mic'ed, horn section, lots of punch ins etc).

So yes, these are all individual recorded files.

Seems to me that part of this problem is the relatively high RAM usage for individual slices/crossfades as mentioned by bullshark. I've used the slice/slipedit/crossfade method a lot in this project. If this makes a difference, it would be nice if there possibly could be made some optimisations in future Reaper versions for this.

Meanwhile, I can just split the big project in smaller ones of course.
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Old 01-04-2011, 06:32 PM   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post

What I didn't say though (but probably should have) is that this project contains the complete recordings for a band which will finally be a full length CD (playtime ~ 1 hour, drums multi-mic'ed, horn section, lots of punch ins etc).
You have their ENTIRE session in ONE project file? Pardon me... but isn't that just begging for disaster?

D
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Old 01-04-2011, 07:08 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Diogenes View Post
You have their ENTIRE session in ONE project file? Pardon me... but isn't that just begging for disaster?

D
Yeah, actually I thought about that a lot before doing this project hehe.
I think I even made a thread about this question (one big project vs several smaller ones) some time ago (too lazy to search atm).

I have to say, apart from the issues I'm facing mentioned in this thread, I'm quite happy doing it in a big project.
I think it makes much sense having it all in one big project (for example mix consistency, since it's the same setup for all songs I do the basic mix for the entire CD in one go and don't have to jump between projects all the time.)

But that's a bit off topic anyway...
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Old 01-04-2011, 07:26 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post
Yeah, actually I thought about that a lot before doing this project hehe.
I think I even made a thread about this question (one big project vs several smaller ones) some time ago (too lazy to search atm).

I have to say, apart from the issues I'm facing mentioned in this thread, I'm quite happy doing it in a big project.
I think it makes much sense having it all in one big project (for example mix consistency, since it's the same setup for all songs I do the basic mix for the entire CD in one go and don't have to jump between projects all the time.)

But that's a bit off topic anyway...
I understand the reasons WHY. Consider next time using a project template once you kind of establish a set 'method'? Then use that template and keep songs separate. Less chance of getting hosed by a drive glitch, power snafu or disturbance in the Force or whatever...



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Old 01-04-2011, 07:55 PM   #24
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Quote:
I think it makes much sense having it all in one big project
Agreed but convenience and/or what makes sense will always eventually outrun available resources and because of this it's pretty much a must to consider where that can/will happen and adjust accordingly. In otherwords no matter how high the ceiling is raised or how efficient the process is made the ceiling is still there and there is always a way to eventually hit it.

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Old 01-04-2011, 08:16 PM   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Agreed but convenience and/or what makes sense will always eventually outrun available resources and because of this it's pretty much a must to consider where that can/will happen and adjust accordingly. In otherwords no matter how high the ceiling is raised or how efficient the process is made the ceiling is still there and there is always a way to eventually hit it.

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Old 01-04-2011, 10:30 PM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nofish View Post
Seems to me that part of this problem is the relatively high RAM usage for individual slices/crossfades as mentioned by bullshark. I've used the slice/slipedit/crossfade method a lot in this project. If this makes a difference, it would be nice if there possibly could be made some optimisations in future Reaper versions for this.
I think the high RAM use is simply caused by the fact that this one project uses 1367 separate media files on disk that REAPER needs to buffer. As Justin said, in Preferences/Audio/Buffering/Advanced, you can try reducing the buffer size, or even disabling read buffering, but the playback performance may suffer (or it may not, you'll have to try it and see). You will need to close and reopen the project after changing those settings.

The amount of RAM used by a split, fade, or crossfade is probably not meaningful compared to the amount of RAM used (intentionally) to buffer a file.
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Old 01-04-2011, 10:42 PM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa View Post
I think the high RAM use is simply caused by the fact that this one project uses 1367 separate media files on disk that REAPER needs to buffer. As Justin said, in Preferences/Audio/Buffering/Advanced, you can try reducing the buffer size, or even disabling read buffering, but the playback performance may suffer (or it may not, you'll have to try it and see). You will need to close and reopen the project after changing those settings.

The amount of RAM used by a split, fade, or crossfade is probably not meaningful compared to the amount of RAM used (intentionally) to buffer a file.
Would it be a good idea for Reaper to have a "Large session" mode or something that will only buffer files within the next XX time and remove files form the buffer after XX has passed from playback?

this way if you had a buffer at about 1 minute... and you were in the middle of a 1 hour session... only 2 minutes worth of the files would be in the ram buffer(1 before the cursor and 1 after the cursor).

.. of course I have no idea if this is possible. :-) Just an idea.
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Old 01-12-2011, 12:23 PM   #28
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Just a little update on this:

I tested some tweaks on the "Advanced Disk I/O settings":

- set Read buffers from default 3 to 2
- set Read buffer size from default 262144 to 131072 (/2)
- disabled "Allow memory mapping of peak-files"

Although I have little idea about the "inner workings" of these settings (are they documented somewhere, could these settings cause potential trouble ?) this resulted in more than 1/2 GB less RAM use (tested on the big project mentioned above) which is great and enables me to continue working on this project.

In the short tests I did with these settings I couldn't spot any performance differences so far compared to the default settings.

So thanks for pointing this out.
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Old 01-12-2011, 12:56 PM   #29
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Hey that's great, I'm glad you were able to keep working!


Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyGinese View Post
Would it be a good idea for Reaper to have a "Large session" mode or something that will only buffer files within the next XX time and remove files form the buffer after XX has passed from playback?
There are a couple of reasons why this wouldn't work in practice. The main one is that projects don't just play through from start to finish, you need to be able to seek around in the project as well. Keeping any media that is used in the project offline would create CPU spikes when the media is suddenly needed, and needs to be buffered while other playback is continuing.
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Old 01-12-2011, 01:06 PM   #30
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speaking of buffers.

I find that at 64 samples I get tiny stutters/glitches in playing back files in media explorer and no hope at all with CD tracks.

Tried a few things in bufferering options including the disk settings but nothing has worked yet. Any one else get this?
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Old 01-12-2011, 01:11 PM   #31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by musicbynumbers View Post
speaking of buffers.

I find that at 64 samples I get tiny stutters/glitches in playing back files in media explorer and no hope at all with CD tracks.

Known issue. All entered in bug tracker. Media Explorer doesn't have a proper buffering system, that's why it fails in some cases.
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Old 01-12-2011, 01:15 PM   #32
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Known issue. All entered in bug tracker. Media Explorer doesn't have a proper buffering system, that's why it fails in some cases.
Thought I'd seen it mentioned somewhere thanks.

Schwa and Justin since a lot of people work at latencies this low now, any chance we could see buffers on the media explorer?
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Old 05-12-2015, 04:30 AM   #33
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There are a couple of reasons why this wouldn't work in practice. The main one is that projects don't just play through from start to finish, you need to be able to seek around in the project as well. Keeping any media that is used in the project offline would create CPU spikes when the media is suddenly needed, and needs to be buffered while other playback is continuing.
What about using a percentage along with a fixed number? For example: 10% or 1200ms whichever is smaller. That way, 1 hours worth of 1-second long wav files doesn't take 1 hours worth of RAM. Loading thousands of small wavs should not be something REAPER has trouble with. Native Instruments Kontakt does it just fine.
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Old 05-13-2015, 01:58 AM   #34
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What a great thread! I hit the ram limit so many times... I bet reducing buffer size will help me too!

Thanks
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Old 05-14-2015, 11:32 AM   #35
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I thought the point of setting media buffer size to 0 is that the project loads without using a s*** ton of RAM. wtf... Edit: Oh, didn't read instructions properly...
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Old 05-14-2015, 11:37 AM   #36
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I thought the point of setting media buffer size to 0 is that the project loads without using a s*** ton of RAM. wtf...
That didn't work for me either, see my opening post (edit: I still don't know what this setting actually does).

Only thing that helped to reduce RAM use was go to 'advanced' and tweak the settings there (posts #26, 28).
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Old 05-29-2015, 12:49 PM   #37
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Why all the worry of the amount of memory, if you are trying to create a project that needs 16 GB then just up grade your memory to what you need. Memory is fairly cheap these days.
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Old 05-29-2015, 03:22 PM   #38
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Why all the worry of the amount of memory, if you are trying to create a project that needs 16 GB then just up grade your memory to what you need. Memory is fairly cheap these days.

Not much point considering his hardware and OS.

"And I'm sitting at Reaper using 350mbs ram(self reported as well as Task Manager)and 65% CPU on my Turion 2.2 Dual core with 3gbs ram laptop in Windows 7 32bit."
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Old 05-30-2015, 01:36 PM   #39
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Can you post the project file used, and your reaper.ini? Also, can you post some basic information about the media (specifically, sizes of .wav files, and the .wav.reapeaks files as well)?

This is completely strange and should not be the case -- if I load a relatively large project with plenty of third party plug-ins and everything, I see around 400mb use.

Very cool thread! The title itself of this thread caught my attention first, but upon reading along I'm finding this both fascinating and some seriously 'need to know' info here. For example, I always suspected crossfades ate RAM but was never sure.

nofish, like some murder/suspense movie, I'm on the edge of my seat here. I've only used up all my RAM maybe once while using Reaper, but the Guide does not cover much about this, and for future reference I need to know more about specifically what items/processes use lots of RAM.
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Old 04-20-2017, 09:01 PM   #40
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I tested some tweaks on the "Advanced Disk I/O settings":

- set Read buffers from default 3 to 2
- set Read buffer size from default 262144 to 131072 (/2)
- disabled "Allow memory mapping of peak-files"
I did this, with the exception of "Allow memory mapping of peak-files".

on a ~2000 clip, ~900 file, ~440 track project, RAM use went from 1.9G to 1.2G, so I am happy. Thanks devs & nofish.

Previously, with no tweaks, R4 had unusable performance, R5 was usable, so I'm testing this on 5.
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