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Old 01-19-2018, 11:17 AM   #1
nid
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Default Reaper superb performance, real or trick?

Hey everyone,

feeling a bit shy to post this monster I'm going to post... but where else if not in the Reaper forum! So in short, I started a thread in the Samplitude forum concerning the stability of Samplitude ProX3 (and other DAWs) versus Reaper and that the first is on average terms (=most of the systems I've used it with) heavy and very "sensitive" especially in low asio buffer situations, causing audio glitches, when Reaper looks like bulletproof, never causing audio dropouts. Someone posted that "Reaper is just dropping/ignoring errors and rounding the values from surrounded data" which is a very heavy comment... It would mean that Reaper is altering the audio data in order to fake out that everything is fine... What Reaper people have to say about this?

This is the thread: (but needs (free) registration to have access)
http://support2.magix.net/boards/sam...-do-the-test/&
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:32 AM   #2
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Reaper is just dropping/ignoring errors and rounding the values from surrounded data
That is incorrect (and ridiculous).
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:33 AM   #3
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Just one more ridiculous thread.
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:33 AM   #4
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Weird, someone , possibly me, has my user name, but it says my email address isn't recognized.
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:33 AM   #5
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That sounds like a butt-hurt fanboy arguing to justify his purchase.

Reaper is just more efficient and better at time management. With certain (default) settings, playback is not exactly real time. It will look ahead and make sure it gets the calculations done well before the time it needs to deliver the samples. That's not cheating, its optimization. It's not changing the audio, it's just doing it sooner. Plus, it doesn't have as much other stuff to do while it's trying to calculate those samples, so it actually can process those samples faster.

Hopefully somebody who's actually seen under the hood will show up soon, but I'm confident in my answer.
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:42 AM   #6
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Hopefully somebody who's actually seen under the hood will show up soon, but I'm confident in my answer.
Really do you have that kind of people in here?! Well then it is truly a paradise! In the Samplitude forum I have not personally seen a dev or some other person who has actually seen under the hood ever posting... I'm going to cry now... Reaper... I love you! Looking forward! And by the way I repeat I didn't make that comment and don't believe in it, I just came here for proof.
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:46 AM   #7
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I can categorically say that REAPER is not ignoring errors and "rounding the values from the surrounding data" which honestly doesn't even make sense from a DSP perspective. Underrun errors, which of course do occur in REAPER or any software that simply runs out of resources, cause entire buffer blocks to drop out, and you can't just draw a line across a missing buffer block and call it good.
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:52 AM   #8
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I can categorically say that REAPER is not ignoring errors and "rounding the values from the surrounding data" which honestly doesn't even make sense from a DSP perspective. Underrun errors, which of course do occur in REAPER or any software that simply runs out of resources, cause entire buffer blocks to drop out, and you can't just draw a line across a missing buffer block and call it good.
Yes this is what I was also thinking.

By the way is there any way of asio errors / dropouts indication in Reaper? Samplitude has this (dreaded) indication and I think it may be the only one or one of the few DAWs that does this. I sometimes even feel that this watchdog system alone could cause the dropouts... Just speculating.

In Reaper if say you left it recording while not being there for a moment and there was a dropout you will not find out until maybe much later. I'm very interested in this since I am myself a Reaper owner and part time user (Samp for studio work, Reaper for mobile recs). Thanks!
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Old 01-19-2018, 11:59 AM   #9
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By the way is there any way of asio errors / dropouts indication in Reaper?
The transport flashes red on a processing underrun, and optionally flashes yellow on a hardware underrun.

There is no persistent indication that an underrun occurred at a particular time, but there is an API function GetUnderrunTime, so one could write a script that would (for example) create a project marker when an overrun occurs.
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Old 01-19-2018, 12:06 PM   #10
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I'm still waiting for that special someone who will take advantage of thread name to promote his work,because this thread (as always) will have like 10 pages and 12040591 views.
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Old 01-19-2018, 12:19 PM   #11
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The transport flashes red on a processing underrun, and optionally flashes yellow on a hardware underrun.

There is no persistent indication that an underrun occurred at a particular time, but there is an API function GetUnderrunTime, so one could write a script that would (for example) create a project marker when an overrun occurs.

Where is that option found? I would like to see hardware underruns.

On the subject, this is the kind of magical thinking that undermines the engineer part of audio engineer.

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I'm still waiting for that special someone who will take advantage of thread name to promote his work,because this thread (as always) will have like 10 pages and 12040591 views.
And if I were an enterprising individual I would throw a blank post in right here on the first page so I can edit it once the thread has stretched to 10 pages...just saying

Last edited by plush2; 01-19-2018 at 12:25 PM.
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Old 01-19-2018, 12:25 PM   #12
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Old 01-19-2018, 01:03 PM   #13
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You'll see where this will inevitably erode to, when arguing against religion, the religion runs out of arguments and attacks the arguer instead of the argument. Its already happening there.
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Old 01-19-2018, 01:54 PM   #14
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Is it worth pointing out to the OP that Schwa (who answered several of his questions) IS one of the small team of devs who give us Reaper?

😁
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Old 01-19-2018, 01:59 PM   #15
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And how to use it from there? Sorry, newbie here with reaper actions, scripts and the like...
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Old 01-19-2018, 02:00 PM   #16
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Is it worth pointing out to the OP that Schwa (who answered several of his questions) IS one of the small team of devs who give us Reaper?

😁
Thank you!
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Old 01-19-2018, 02:28 PM   #17
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And how to use it from there? Sorry, newbie here with reaper actions, scripts and the like...
Scroll to the right in that dialog and it will say whether the option is currently on or off, it's off by default. Run the action, and the option will be enabled.
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Old 01-19-2018, 02:38 PM   #18
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Funny - I just joined the Samplitude forum (I have recently gotten the demo and decided to pass) & was curious to see exactly what WAS being said over there.
They have just as many delusional immature users as we do and hopefully an even larger number of rational human beings to counterbalance them, like we do.

Let`s all just agree to differ and get along, eh?
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Old 01-19-2018, 02:44 PM   #19
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Thank you!
Haha you're welcome... 😂 I've had Reaper a long time but only started using it a lot in the last year or so. So I'm in some ways a newbie myself.

I've found these forums to be generally very helpful and respectful. And it is really encouraging to see Justin (Frankel, Reaper's creator) and Schwa active on here, discussing ideas and feature requests, and helping out users. It's a real community feel.

And for the most part, even the most basic of questions gets a polite and helpful response - not just the kind of "RTFM" putdown you often see elsewhere.
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Old 01-19-2018, 03:13 PM   #20
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Haha you're welcome... 😂 I've had Reaper a long time but only started using it a lot in the last year or so. So I'm in some ways a newbie myself.

I've found these forums to be generally very helpful and respectful. And it is really encouraging to see Justin (Frankel, Reaper's creator) and Schwa active on here, discussing ideas and feature requests, and helping out users. It's a real community feel.

And for the most part, even the most basic of questions gets a polite and helpful response - not just the kind of "RTFM" putdown you often see elsewhere.
It's a great place here! You are going to be seeing me more often from now on. I own Reaper for many years now but I was never really very much into it because of lack of features back then in the early years. That certainly has changed and it's time to explore it more. And oh boy what to say about stability! It's really a phenomenon!
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Old 01-19-2018, 03:19 PM   #21
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If you went to that thread in the Samp forum and read the simple test I came up with, could you tell me what is it that LatencyMon does that doesn't affect Reaper AT ALL but brings to their knees Samp, Studio One and Cubase according to my findings?
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Old 01-19-2018, 03:41 PM   #22
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There is no persistent indication that an underrun occurred at a particular time, but there is an API function GetUnderrunTime, so one could write a script that would (for example) create a project marker when an overrun occurs.
Oooh, I do hope someone creates said script. Would be very handy.
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Old 01-19-2018, 03:53 PM   #23
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Oooh, I do hope someone creates said script. Would be very handy.
But then OCD nuts like me won't be able to get any work done because we'll be watching that monitor 24/7
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Old 01-19-2018, 03:57 PM   #24
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But then OCD nuts like me won't be able to get any work done because we'll be watching that monitor 24/7
Yeah, same. :-) My main use is for testing interface/DAW combinations (e.g. I'm using the linux build on a weak/old laptop for remote recording.) Currently I record multiple channels of a low-freq sine wave for like 2 hours and then scan through the waveforms visually to find any dropouts. (Suppose it'd be easy to write a program to scan the data and check for the same.) It would obviously be great to just check for markers. Or even just a button that ran a script that called that API function after a test run and reported any dropout it found.
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Old 01-19-2018, 06:28 PM   #25
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Something like this? (I'll release it tomorrow after more testing)



(The script checks for new underruns every 33ms or so, time and marker position can't be absolutely precise.)

Last edited by cfillion; 01-19-2018 at 06:38 PM.
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Old 01-19-2018, 06:29 PM   #26
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Yeah! Awesome, thanks!

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(The script checks for new underruns every 33ms or so so time and marker position can't be absolutely precise.)
Makes sense. Any sense on what kind of CPU load the script itself adds?
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Old 01-19-2018, 08:22 PM   #27
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What in the world is causing that many underruns
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Old 01-19-2018, 10:51 PM   #28
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What in the world is causing that many underruns
I notice it says "xrun" which I remember from Linux. In which case...everything is causing underruns, always, without any hope of stopping.

Update Nov 2018: No problems with xruns with this Linux install. Last time I tried Linux--years ago--I had issues getting the audio driver to work properly, in another DAW, with JACK. It's not a problem anymore with JACK or just ALSA in Reaper.

Last edited by JamesPeters; 11-09-2018 at 01:41 PM.
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Old 01-19-2018, 10:58 PM   #29
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I notice it says "xrun" which I remember from Linux. In which case...everything is causing underruns, always, without any hope of stopping.
* cough cough * -- smiley face noted, but I can't resist: historically some truth there, but these days I personally have less troubles of that sort on linux than windows. There are still plenty of reasons why i wouldn't recommend linux to an audio pro (though fewer every day!) but xruns isn't one of them. YMMV.

My assumption is that cfillion loaded that FX bay with excessive plugins for the purposes of testing.
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Old 01-20-2018, 12:16 AM   #30
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All fair enough indeed.
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Old 01-20-2018, 03:52 PM   #31
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Been playing around with Reaper. Action "Flash transport yellow on possible audio device underrun" state is on. Driving it to dropouts through heavy usage but I never see the transport flashing yellow when hearing dropouts. I've only see it flashing red sometimes but I think it's a data input inefficiency because I'm working on a NAS.
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Old 01-20-2018, 03:55 PM   #32
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Driving it to dropouts through heavy usage but I never see the transport flashing yellow when hearing dropouts. I've only see it flashing red sometimes but I think it's a data input inefficiency because I'm working on a NAS.
I'm fuzzy on the technical details, but do I remember something about the device needing to cooperate on some level in order to generate device underrun events? I.e. maybe it doesn't work with all drivers/devices? Someone will enlighten us, surely.
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Old 01-20-2018, 04:02 PM   #33
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What in the world is causing that many underruns
Way too many plugins.

The script is out now: "Project underrun monitor (xrun)" in ReaPack.
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Old 01-20-2018, 04:03 PM   #34
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The script is out now: "Project underrun monitor (xrun)" in ReaPack.
Thanks again -- looking forward to using it. :-)
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Old 01-20-2018, 04:10 PM   #35
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I'm fuzzy on the technical details, but do I remember something about the device needing to cooperate on some level in order to generate device underrun events? I.e. maybe it doesn't work with all drivers/devices? Someone will enlighten us, surely.
I'm using a Babyface Pro.
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Old 01-20-2018, 05:26 PM   #36
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Not all devices support the optional ASIO "kAsioOverload" message.

REAPER knows when there is a processing underrun and flashes the transport red. There could theoretically be some hardware overload that isn't associated with a processing underrun, which some hardware can report, and REAPER can optionally flash the transport yellow on those messages.
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Old 01-20-2018, 06:02 PM   #37
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Thanks Schwa. That yellow flash is going on by default round here.
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Old 01-21-2018, 02:48 AM   #38
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Not all devices support the optional ASIO "kAsioOverload" message.

REAPER knows when there is a processing underrun and flashes the transport red. There could theoretically be some hardware overload that isn't associated with a processing underrun, which some hardware can report, and REAPER can optionally flash the transport yellow on those messages.
Thanks for the info Schwa, would the red flashes indicate if there is say a DPC realted dropout cause be for example a buggy GPU driver?
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Old 01-21-2018, 04:12 AM   #39
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AFAIK, the yellow flashing works on os/x and linux. Though the ASIO specification has support for informing the host about overruns, no drivers seem to implement it, so no yellow flash on windows...:S
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Old 01-21-2018, 04:33 AM   #40
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Thanks for the info Schwa, would the red flashes indicate if there is say a DPC realted dropout cause be for example a buggy GPU driver?
No, ASIO buffer underrun is not equal to DPC dropout.
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