Old 06-20-2017, 05:46 PM   #1
Boss281
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Default New Windows computer

I've spent the last couple of weeks on my 2011 era Dell laptop with Windows 7, 6MB RAM and fast, large hard drive and Reaper (using Presonus AudioBox iOne and drivers). Slow learning curve but I'll get there. I'm a Windows guys, and always will be, although as a software developer I once wrote programs for Apple (going back to the Apple IIe, prior to the Mac, and then later for the early Macs!). Also, while I've tried many PC vendors over the years, I have always come back to Dell and am looking to buy something exclusively for recording. The laptop is fine for EVERYTHING else I do.

So, question 1: laptop or desktop? Does the expandability and flexibility of the traditional desktop apply for recording (card-based interface vs USB interface). I DO like the idea of getting a monster screen.

Question 2: hardware specs. I can't find minimal requirements for Reaper anywhere on the website (I'm sure I overlooked it) but how much RAM, what processor, what kind of harddrive, etc?

For output, I'm using Mackie CR Series CR3 - 3" Creative Reference Multimedia Monitors and Sony MDR-7506 headphones. I think they're fine but if someone things I can get better sound out of either with something else please chime in.

Thanks in advance.
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Old 06-20-2017, 06:33 PM   #2
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What is your budget?
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Old 06-20-2017, 07:33 PM   #3
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What is your budget?
$2k including system, screen, monitors.
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Old 06-20-2017, 10:46 PM   #4
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i think there is a better price performance ratio on a stationary computer, especially if you build it yourself. any modern computer you can build yourself today using new components will be more than enough to run Reaper well.

if your interface works on your new system, don't change anything.

all this is super subjective depending on what you'll use it for.
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Old 06-21-2017, 02:31 AM   #5
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Only get a laptop if it has to be mobile on a regular basis.
If you will only be needing portability for the odd occasion build or buy a proper computer instead and get a cheap laptop in back up.

Other than space and portability there are no technical advantages to a laptop at all. OTOH there are a multitude of significant technical compromises.

For any given generation and price point laptops are inferior computers, but the best examples are technical marvels of portable design.
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Old 06-21-2017, 02:50 AM   #6
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Only get a laptop if it has to be mobile on a regular basis.
If you will only be needing portability for the odd occasion build or buy a proper computer instead and get a cheap laptop in back up.
I would also want to mention noise. It is absolutely possible to build a nearly dead silent Desktop.

The available space for airflow in NBs is much smaller than in a DT-Computer,
hence smaller fan with more rpm means more noise.
The need for mobility is the actual Point imho.
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Old 06-21-2017, 02:55 AM   #7
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I've spent the last couple of weeks on my 2011 era Dell laptop with Windows 7, 6MB RAM and fast, large hard drive and Reaper (using Presonus AudioBox iOne and drivers). Slow learning curve but I'll get there. I'm a Windows guys, and always will be, although as a software developer I once wrote programs for Apple (going back to the Apple IIe, prior to the Mac, and then later for the early Macs!). Also, while I've tried many PC vendors over the years, I have always come back to Dell and am looking to buy something exclusively for recording. The laptop is fine for EVERYTHING else I do.

So, question 1: laptop or desktop? Does the expandability and flexibility of the traditional desktop apply for recording (card-based interface vs USB interface). I DO like the idea of getting a monster screen.

Question 2: hardware specs. I can't find minimal requirements for Reaper anywhere on the website (I'm sure I overlooked it) but how much RAM, what processor, what kind of harddrive, etc?

For output, I'm using Mackie CR Series CR3 - 3" Creative Reference Multimedia Monitors and Sony MDR-7506 headphones. I think they're fine but if someone things I can get better sound out of either with something else please chime in.

Thanks in advance.
One really important question to answer is: What will you use the system for?
Midi composing (just sketches or big orchestral arrnagements), live recording, live gigging,......

If you need just a 16 track recorder you could go with a fairly low-tech machine - it depends
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Old 06-21-2017, 05:17 AM   #8
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One really important question to answer is: What will you use the system for?
Midi composing (just sketches or big orchestral arrnagements), live recording, live gigging,......

If you need just a 16 track recorder you could go with a fairly low-tech machine - it depends
Good point. Since I'm new to this, after noodling on my laptop and figuring out what I want to record, I'd shift to my old spare bedroom turned music studio and record by mic'ing amps and record voice. Bass, drums and keys will have to be either backing tracks or MIDI snippets I find and adapt. Once I get fluent, I'll consider a MIDI keyboard to generate those other instruments myself. So you ask a good question: recording voice and guitar live through mics into the AI, and eventually MIDI into the system as well. Give me a year to get to the latter...

Again, looking for suggestions on RAM, Intel processor, type and size of hard drive, etc. I can figure out the rest...
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Old 06-21-2017, 07:56 AM   #9
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Here is a list of components that I would recommend for a powerful, expandable/upgradeable and virtually silent PC - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/LbzqM8 And I would put the rest of your budget into a couple of really nice monitors (and maybe a good stand or desk if you don't have one).

Quick rundown of the parts -

Ryzen 1700 - 8 cores, easily overclockable up to 3.8GHz or higher, great balance between multi and single core performance at that price.

Noctua D15s - You don't necessarily need this as the CPU comes with a decent stock cooler, but the big D15s will be quieter at load. Be aware of the difference between the D15 and the D15s, the s version has better compatibilty with RAM and the top PCI slot, it's not in the way as much basically.

B350/X370 motherboard - Go for x370 if you need more USB ports, B350 + some extensions to adapters from the headers on the board will likely be plenty though. I chose a Gigabyte board as that is what I have and I've been very pleased with how well it performs as well as the solid BIOS updates. I really like that there is fan curve control integrated into the BIOS, something you will want to do for the lowest noise.

16GB DDR4 RAM - 16GB will be plenty unless you really get into some really huge projects. I would have chosen 32GB but the prices are crazy high for DDR4 right now, so I feel like it makes more sense to for a perfectly adequate amount right now then upgrade when or if you need to.

M.2 NVME SSD: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB - Good price for a very high performing drive, use this as the boot drive you install Windows and all your programs on.

SATA SSD: Sandisk Ultra II 960GB - This will be your main storage for all your projects, recordings and samples. It's solid state so no moving parts and no noise, much faster than any spinning hard drive. I have the 480GB version and it has been great. You can get more GB for your money with hard drives but honestly I want to ditch them altogether now, the single 2TB HDD I have in my system is easily the noisiest element. 960GB will probably suffice, and you can always get a fast external HDD for backups if you need it.

Gigabyte GTX 1050 2GB Windforce OC - I picked this one over a lower end model as it is one of the few that has multiple HDMI ports as well as a Displayport and DVI, which will be useful when you try to plug in multiple monitors. The fans should also stop spinning at idle, which if you are just doing music will be all the time, so it's effectively silent. Might help if you wanted to do some creative visual work too. When buying a GPU check for pictures of the rear IO, this is what you want to see.

Fractal Define C case - Pretty much as compact as a full ATX gets, without compromising on cooling, noise, or compatibility of parts. I have the Define S and it does a great job of keeping everything cool and quiet, plus it's very easy to work in. Also comes with a couple of decent fans, think they might only be 120mm though, should be fine at lowest RPMs anyway.

EVGA Supernova G3 - I highly, highly recommend getting a very good power supply, it's the most important part in a PC. And this one will be basically silent for the enitire time you are using it, it's near perfect.


I was deliberating over whether to recommend either an i7 7700k or Ryzen 1700 based system. I was favouring the 7700k as it has onboard graphics, which means you wouldn't need to buy a seperate graphics card, then I remembered that you specified monitors so that would require a GPU with multiple display outputs. So on balance I would recommend going for an AMD Ryzen based system right now, though the 7700k will perform very well too. One of the biggest problems and annoyances I have with Intel CPUs right now is that they are running hotter than they should due to them using inferior thermal paste as opposed to solder like the Ryzen chips, this means potentially more heat and noise at the same level of performance as Ryzen. Which is less than ideal. Not so much of an issue if you you keep the voltages and clock speeds low, but then I feel like Ryzen becomes a better deal at that point.

However there will be a new lineup of CPUs coming from Intel in the next few months called Coffee Lake, there is a 6 core rumored which if it's priced competitively will likely be very good. Hopefully Intel will respond to the criticism and solder them this time...

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Old 06-21-2017, 08:33 AM   #10
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A small additional consideration: the desktop will have more ports, much more convenient than a laptop. I do a lot of location recording, and I got a card-reader built into mine that handles all 3 flavors currently used in portable recorders--also very convenient.
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Old 06-21-2017, 08:55 AM   #11
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As for laptop recommendations I can recommend something like a Lenovo Thinkpad T or X series. I have a 5 year X230 with an i7 3520m which I got recently for £180 on ebay. I upgraded the RAM and storage got an additional extended battery pack and it has been excellent for use at uni for music projects.

The X series Thinkpads have removeable battery packs including a extended ones that double up as a very handy grip for using while standing up, in the case of the latest models they have a backup battery in the front so you can hot-swap if it starts to run low. They have flush fitting SD ports which I've found to be incredibly useful at uni, transferring files back and forth between the iMacs and my laptop with a 128GB SD card. Great keyboards, good selection of processors including SKUs to easily beat a Macbook Pro. Excellent repairability too, only need a couple of screws to be able to remove and replace the keyboard module for example. For a professional and portable machine I would take a Thinkpad over a more expensive and less practical Macbook 'Pro' any day.

You need at least 3 USB ports for it to be any good as music production machine.
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Old 06-21-2017, 09:00 AM   #12
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Here is a list of components that I would recommend for a powerful, expandable/upgradeable and virtually silent PC - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/LbzqM8 And I would put the rest of your budget into a couple of really nice monitors (and maybe a good stand or desk if you don't have one).<CLIP>
Thank you for an amazing, detailed parts list, with explanations on each. As I read up on the components, I may have to throw you an additional question or two as they come up.

I appreciate the time it took for you to spell this out. It is extremely helpful. Also didn't know about he intel cpus coming out, will look up as well.
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Old 06-21-2017, 12:50 PM   #13
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Seconding the fractal design case. It is absolutely silent and I track with it in the room.
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Old 06-21-2017, 02:55 PM   #14
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I don't think there is a point in buying an 8-core CPU with hyperthreading (whatever it's called in AMD CPU) for audio. A DAW presents mainly a single-core load. Better get a decent i5 CPU with high clock speeds.

As to laptop vs desktop, the former will provide about half of the processing power of the latter for about the same money (my own very rough estimate). Note I'm not talking about ultrabooks but about heavy, bulky laptops with a 45w CPU.
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Old 06-21-2017, 03:34 PM   #15
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I don't think there is a point in buying an 8-core CPU with hyperthreading (whatever it's called in AMD CPU) for audio. A DAW presents mainly a single-core load. Better get a decent i5 CPU with high clock speeds.

As to laptop vs desktop, the former will provide about half of the processing power of the latter for about the same money (my own very rough estimate). Note I'm not talking about ultrabooks but about heavy, bulky laptops with a 45w CPU.
It's a good point, you can practically run reaper off a hamster on a wheel. It doesn't need much. I custom built my PC for about £400 (not sure what that is US?) 5 years ago. That included everything! Monitor too. 22 inch. Quad core AMD 3.3Htz, 4GB RAM. 5 years later it still copes with Reaper and recording no probs. I'd love to drive a Ferrari but if the speed limit is 60MPH then all I'm going to look is pretty fancy and an expensive way from getting from A to B.

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Old 06-21-2017, 04:14 PM   #16
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A DAW presents mainly a single-core load.
This isn't true, and hasn't been for a while -

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Reaper's Justin Frankel told me that he routinely does a lot of his development on a dual quad-core Xeon PC, so it's hardly surprising that the default Reaper settings work well with up to eight-core machines, typically offering over 95 percent utilisation of all eight cores. Reaper mostly uses 'Anticipatory FX processing' that runs at irregular intervals, often out of order, and slightly ahead of time. Apparently, there are very few times when the cores need to synchronise with each other, and using this scheme he can let them all crank away using nearly all of the available CPU power. Exceptions include record input monitoring, and apparently when running UAD1 DSP cards, which both prefer a more classic 'Synchronous FX multi-processing' scheme.
- From a Sound On Sound article published in 2008.

In situations where you are loading a ton of effects and processing onto a single track then the higher clocked 7700k will allow you to go a bit further before the audio breaks up. But as long as you have a single core speed that is fast enough then having many more cores will benefit you, and allow the track's processing load to be spread evenly across the CPU.

It is true though that most modern 4 core CPUs can easily cope with most people's needs for music production. The demand for processing power for music production hasn't changed much in the last ten years probably, unlike stuff like gaming where developers are starting to make more use of the power available to them.

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Old 06-21-2017, 05:47 PM   #17
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This isn't true, and hasn't been for a while -

- From a Sound On Sound article published in 2008.

In situations where you are loading a ton of effects and processing onto a single track then the higher clocked 7700k will allow you to go a bit further before the audio breaks up. But as long as you have a single core speed that is fast enough then having many more cores will benefit you, and allow the track's processing load to be spread evenly across the CPU.

It is true though that most modern 4 core CPUs can easily cope with most people's needs for music production. The demand for processing power for music production hasn't changed much in the last ten years probably , unlike stuff like gaming where developers are starting to make more use of the power available to them.

Uh huh... Tell that to Urs over at U-he.
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Old 06-21-2017, 10:25 PM   #18
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This isn't true, and hasn't been for a while -

- From a Sound On Sound article published in 2008.

In situations where you are loading a ton of effects and processing onto a single track then the higher clocked 7700k will allow you to go a bit further before the audio breaks up. But as long as you have a single core speed that is fast enough then having many more cores will benefit you, and allow the track's processing load to be spread evenly across the CPU.

It is true though that most modern 4 core CPUs can easily cope with most people's needs for music production. The demand for processing power for music production hasn't changed much in the last ten years probably, unlike stuff like gaming where developers are starting to make more use of the power available to them.
Maybe it's my unique use case (probably not), but my machine (1st-gen mobile i7) never chokes on individual tracks with FX. However as soon as I begin to sink multiple tracks to a single track (as in parallel FX, groups etc), all of a sudden it can't cope. The reason for that is that in this situation, all the processing from all the relevant tracks shifts to 2 cores (in the case of stereo) - try this and see yourself.

For a purely recording machine, possibly more cores make sense because you typically don't do complex processing. But then you also typically don't do much processing in recording anyway. However in mixing, complex processing is inevitable and usually you will want to process all your tracks as a group at some point - and this is when you get an oops.

Maybe I should rephrase my claim: the processing bottleneck in a DAW use is way more likely to come from choking on a single-core load than from not having enough cores. Hence a higher-clocked, fewer cores CPU is a much better fit. The tradeoff between number of cores and the clock speed is not just an issue of price but also of processor design due to energy and thermal constraints. IMHO 4 cores is ideal for a DAW.

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Old 06-22-2017, 12:39 PM   #19
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Er ok I just did some testing to try and see if I could validate what you are saying about a single core bottleneck when routing multiple tracks into a single track, and I haven't been able to reproduce what you are describing...

I tried making two folder tracks each with some fx of their own, then for each I had an audio track under the folder that was routing to a few other tracks with some more FX that I then duplicated many times to see if I could see that one or two cores were getting overloaded.

The load was remarkably well spread across all threads of my processor, no single thread stood out. Reaper seems to do an excellent job of this.

Maybe there is something I'm missing or perhaps something about your specific configuration that gives you that problem? Do you have anticipative fx processing turned on? If you could detail how exactly you run into this and how you are routing the tracks then that would be really useful, I would genuinely quite like to know so I can be aware of the potential issue for future projects.

As far as I can tell the main issue with a lower single core speed is if you are loading many many plugins onto a single track. I tried this by loading a great number of Reaktor instances onto a single track and sure enough I could see that a single core was taking the brunt. Though interestingly it seemed like another thread was also being loaded though to a lesser degree, I think it may have been AMD's Simultaneous Multi-Threading in action, another reason to not just go for an i5... That was with a heck of a lot of plugins too, far more than most people would realistically use on a single track. Once again, as long as the single core speed is enough that you won't ever max a core out then having more cores will be a significant advantage.

Another thing to consider is that if you are getting to a single core bottleneck in your project then having more cores can potentially help with this just as much as if you had higher clock speeds. If the processing load from many tracks can be shared across many cores then that will reduce the load on any single core. With a 4 core i7 you can have 8 tracks with their own thread, once you add more then the processing will start piling on top until you max it out.
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Old 06-22-2017, 01:02 PM   #20
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Ok I stand partly corrected, just tried again with audio routing from a track with a live audio input with monitoring into a bunch of tracks with FX processing. In that instance then only a single core will be loaded.

So if you are needing to work with a lot of plugins on a live input then single core speed is most important. This is not an issue for my workflow personally, but I can why it might be a concern. I still don't think it is the primary bottleneck for most people, unless you are recording live bands and tracking with FX perhaps. I would still consider the single core speed for the Ryzen processors to be perfectly adequate.
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Old 06-22-2017, 05:22 PM   #21
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Maybe it's my unique use case (probably not), but my machine (1st-gen mobile i7) never chokes on individual tracks with FX. However as soon as I begin to sink multiple tracks to a single track (as in parallel FX, groups etc), all of a sudden it can't cope. The reason for that is that in this situation, all the processing from all the relevant tracks shifts to 2 cores (in the case of stereo) - try this and see yourself.

For a purely recording machine, possibly more cores make sense because you typically don't do complex processing. But then you also typically don't do much processing in recording anyway. However in mixing, complex processing is inevitable and usually you will want to process all your tracks as a group at some point - and this is when you get an oops.

Maybe I should rephrase my claim: the processing bottleneck in a DAW use is way more likely to come from choking on a single-core load than from not having enough cores. Hence a higher-clocked, fewer cores CPU is a much better fit. The tradeoff between number of cores and the clock speed is not just an issue of price but also of processor design due to energy and thermal constraints. IMHO 4 cores is ideal for a DAW.
This is pretty much my experience too. Almost every time I run out of CPU power and start getting glitching it is due to an overload of the RT CPU on a single CPU core.
The issue with live VSTi monitoring is a big consideration for me too. I frequently track with VST instruments.

These are some of the reasons I've chosen an i7 7700K for my new build. It has the fastest clock speed of its class and should give me the best performance for live monitoring.

I'm also primarily concerned with making sure this build is rock solid and Intel is a proven platform in this area.
Ryzen may turn out to be similar but I'm building this PC right now and am not willing to take any chances on a daily use PC which is the heart of my studio and workflow.
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Old 06-22-2017, 08:43 PM   #22
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Soooooo, while I'm recording NOW with just dry signal for later processing or only one or two guitar effects OR mic'ing my amp, I intend to move to full production of a "band" with drums, keys, bass (all synthed) and 1-3 layers of guitars, and multiple voice overdubs. Say in one year while I learn HOW.

So, back to processor: what is a safe bet?
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Old 06-23-2017, 07:43 AM   #23
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It depends on how much FX you will be piling on to a live input track, or tracks recieving from that input.

The 'safest' option for you will probably be the 7700x and Z270 motherboard for the better single core speed if you are using a lot of live instrumentation, and the z270/z170 platform has been around for a while now and should be very stable. Honestly either AMD or Intel are great choices right now, so glad to see there is some serious competition between the two companies again.

Something I just tried out is Reaper's live FX multiprocessing feature which is in the buffering section of the preferences, which actually seems to work very well. With that option checked the processing load from a single live input track gets spread across all cores, seems ok at low latencies too. Should be a great solution if you are needing to do a ton of parallel processing, worth giving it a try anyway.

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Old 06-23-2017, 01:10 PM   #24
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so glad to see there is some serious competition between the two companies again.
I fully agree. In fact, I'm in pretty much full agreement with your whole post.
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Old 06-23-2017, 09:26 PM   #25
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Something I just tried out is Reaper's live FX multiprocessing feature which is in the buffering section of the preferences, which actually seems to work very well. With that option checked the processing load from a single live input track gets spread across all cores, seems ok at low latencies too. Should be a great solution if you are needing to do a ton of parallel processing, worth giving it a try anyway.

That is interesting. The only time I run out of CPU is when playing live VSTi.
Or running my guitar through some amp-sim where the smallest possible buffer is crucial.
Does this apply to the situation, where the CPU-load as a whole is pretty small (e.g. 30%) but the RT-CPU is twice as high?
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Old 06-24-2017, 12:51 AM   #26
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Er ok I just did some testing to try and see if I could validate what you are saying about a single core bottleneck when routing multiple tracks into a single track, and I haven't been able to reproduce what you are describing...
Take a look at the attached project - it illustrates (in a simplified way) the typical mixing scenario where you have a big bunch of tracks with some plugins that sink their output to a group track. As soon as I enable a single FX on that group track, my CPU can't handle the load because most of the processing is shifted to a single core. I could still add tons of FX to individual tracks and get away with it if I had that one FX on the folder track disabled.

Perhaps your CPU is way more powerful, so to bring it to the single-thread choking point you may need to create a few duplicates of the tracks inside the folder track.


That said, looks like Reaper has improved in that regard sometime since my last testing as it seems to be doing some processing on some other cores now. Not ALL the processing is being done on the single core in this scenario, but only a major part of it.

Also modern Intel CPUs are smart in the sense that they can adaptively boost single-core performance when it is more important than multi-core (perhaps AMD CPUs have a similar feature but I never checked). This does not invalidate the fact that single-core performance is more important for mixing than core count, but that means that you may be more flexible in CPU selection. i7 will do a great job. However if looking for a cost-effective solution, a comparable quad-core i5 costs less and in the overwhelming majority of scenarios it will perform as well as i7.
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File Type: rpp single-core choking.RPP (75.5 KB, 126 views)

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Old 06-25-2017, 10:55 AM   #27
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Thanks. I've just tried your test project out and I'm not seeing a big single core load, it's quite even across the cores. I tried duplicating many tracks and adding more FX to the group track but I couldn't see the load being shifted to a single core like you said. (That was without live FX multiprocessing enabled too)

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This does not invalidate the fact that single-core performance is more important for mixing than core count
From all my testing and my findings above, it seems multi-core performance is more important for mixing, assuming there is little FX being applied to live inserts/send of outboard hardware (which I imagine would be the case for most people, I imagine the majority of modern DAW users use little to no 'real' hardware in that way). In a mixing situation where you are applying lots of effects to already recorded tracks the DAW (well Reaper at least) will balance it over your cores, and max single core speed is of less importance. There is certainly something to be said for single core when it comes to live inputs at low latencies, however the live FX multiprocessing option seems to help a great deal with that.

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That is interesting. The only time I run out of CPU is when playing live VSTi.
Or running my guitar through some amp-sim where the smallest possible buffer is crucial.
Does this apply to the situation, where the CPU-load as a whole is pretty small (e.g. 30%) but the RT-CPU is twice as high?

I haven't done any extensive 'real world' testing with this feature yet, so until I've done so I wouldn't like to say with any certainty how well it can scale in a busy project. It seems very impressive though, I was able to get a huge number more FX running from a live input compared to them all on one core. I would be interested to hear what people's results with it enabled are.
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Old 06-25-2017, 11:02 AM   #28
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Also modern Intel CPUs are smart in the sense that they can adaptively boost single-core performance when it is more important than multi-core (perhaps AMD CPUs have a similar feature but I never checked).
Yeah AMD Ryzen CPUs have 'Precision Boost' and XFR (Extended Frequency Range), the boost is basically the same as Intel's Turbo where a couple of cores can clock up to the chip's max boost clock under load, and XFR will clock them even higher for very short periods which is useful for bursts of loading.
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Old 06-25-2017, 03:46 PM   #29
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Thanks. I've just tried your test project out and I'm not seeing a big single core load, it's quite even across the cores. I tried duplicating many tracks and adding more FX to the group track but I couldn't see the load being shifted to a single core like you said. (That was without live FX multiprocessing enabled too)
Strange. Did you try to play it back? This is where Reaper gets to really process all that stuff.

P.s. live FX multiprocessing should play no role here, as I understand it. It should apply only to rec-armed tracks, no?
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Old 06-25-2017, 07:46 PM   #30
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Strange. Did you try to play it back? This is where Reaper gets to really process all that stuff.

P.s. live FX multiprocessing should play no role here, as I understand it. It should apply only to rec-armed tracks, no?
Yeah I was playing it back. It does hit a single core limit if I record arm the parent folder track. Maybe there's something in your preferences that is set up a little differently? I often wonder how many strange settings I've ended up with after maintaining the same configuration through so many updates.

Yes I believe live FX processing only works with tracks with record arm or input monitoring.

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Old 06-26-2017, 12:17 AM   #31
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Yeah I was playing it back. It does hit a single core limit if I record arm the parent folder track. Maybe there's something in your preferences that is set up a little differently? I often wonder how many strange settings I've ended up with after maintaining the same configuration through so many updates.
Just tested this with a portable installation of Reaper v5.40 to same effect (chokes on the first core).

Proofpic attached.

What happens when you duplicate the tracks until you saturate the CPU? The issue may only manifest in this condition (which is what really matters to our discussion).

A possible explanation for the difference, besides what I just wrote above, may be that I'm currently testing this with the built-in audio card, not a professional one (though I do own one and normally mix with it), and with WASAPI driver, not ASIO. Will test this soon with an RME and ASIO.

P.s. there is no point in putting more FX on the folder track, as well as duplicating it. To test the case, it only makes sense to duplicate tracks inside the folder track (or to add FX to all of existing ones, but the former is easier).
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Old 06-26-2017, 08:51 AM   #32
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I'm still seeing an even (if a little spiky) load across the cores as I duplicate them.



However after about 10-12% utilisation (about 35 of those 4-instance tracks with 256 buffer) some strange things start to happen and it caps out. With other VSTs I can scale almost all the way up, so I think how far you can get is highly dependant on the plugins. I guess there's some other internal bottleneck somewhere with ReaFIR that causes it to choke.

I tried WASAPI and ASIO and they seem about the same.
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Old 06-26-2017, 10:27 AM   #33
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I haven't done any extensive 'real world' testing with this feature yet, so until I've done so I wouldn't like to say with any certainty how well it can scale in a busy project. It seems very impressive though, I was able to get a huge number more FX running from a live input compared to them all on one core. I would be interested to hear what people's results with it enabled are.
So I did a bit testing today.
I donn´t see any difference at all in terms of performance.
RT-CPU is just the same as with the option "allow live fx processing" not ticked.

For stabilty reasons I leave it unticked but will keep an eye on it.
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Old 06-26-2017, 02:37 PM   #34
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So I did a bit testing today.
I donn´t see any difference at all in terms of performance.
RT-CPU is just the same as with the option "allow live fx processing" not ticked.

For stabilty reasons I leave it unticked but will keep an eye on it.
That's exactly what I found when I tried this last night. No difference at all which was a bit disappointing.
I tried it with u-he Diva (with multicore in Diva on and off) and with NI Reaktor Blocks 1.3 which I just installed (purchased the Komplete 8 standard to Komplete 11 ultimate upgrade).
Reaktor Blocks is fantastic but even more of a CPU hog than Diva!!
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Old 06-29-2017, 12:08 AM   #35
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However after about 10-12% utilisation (about 35 of those 4-instance tracks with 256 buffer) some strange things start to happen and it caps out. With other VSTs I can scale almost all the way up, so I think how far you can get is highly dependant on the plugins. I guess there's some other internal bottleneck somewhere with ReaFIR that causes it to choke.

I tried WASAPI and ASIO and they seem about the same.
ReaFIR is quite CPU-intensive when used with AA, which is why I used it for demonstration (in addition to it bundled with Reaper). It does behave a little weird as you described, but I believe that once you get into the area of CPU bottleneck in a similar scenario, plugin selection is not important. Normally I do not use ReaFIR, I use third-party plugins and the results are always the same.
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Old 06-29-2017, 07:55 AM   #36
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With Live FX Processing, I've found that you need to set it to the same or lower as the number of physical cores you have. Above that and you run into issues at uber low latencies. So in a 4 core/8 thread system it's 8 threads for Audio Processing and 4 (or less) for live FX processing.
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