Are all hosts share more or less the same CPU performance when running plugins?

[jeffh]

Reap is best, by far, not even close. Did I mention how much better it is?

That you've tried. The "big boys", aka Cubase, Logic and ProTools are not getting mentioned as contestants whenever people declare Reaper to be the king, and I can only assume that was because they weren't ever tried in any depth

Ableton was always a weird niche kind of DAW that never favored MIDI or instruments, Fruity Loops was always just this weird thing marketed towards "beginners" just like Reason, and the newer stuff is likely not matured yet, just like the early days of Reaper found it a bit lacking in many ways...

But FFS, let's not declare Reaper superior to the "big boys" without actually trying them... and I personally despise Cubase, Logic and ProTools(nor have I personally tried their most recent versions), but fair is fair...

[hibidy]

Well, in all my years, CPU use has hindered me quite a bit so I often wonder how people do get by with older computers. I'll spare the boring details but until I went x64 and this now oldish i7, I couldn't do shit.

[chk071]

Well, Reaper is better than FL Studio and Sonar for sure (at least the versions I tried 7-10(?) years ago), but Cubase dominates the market for a reason...

Not sure what you are referring to, but on my system Reaper beats Cubase in terms of CPU efficiency. I know that it is not very scientific, but i made a comparison once running some plugins in Cubase, Reaper, and some other host i can't remember now, and Reaper was always able to play several voices more until the CPU limit was reached. Really, you can say what you want about Reaper (i ditched it some time ago for Cubase, so i'm not really biased), but the reports about it being the most CPU efficient are true.

[jeffh]

Well, Reaper is better than FL Studio and Sonar for sure (at least the versions I tried 7-10(?) years ago), but Cubase dominates the market for a reason...

Not sure what you are referring to, but on my system Reaper beats Cubase in terms of CPU efficiency. I know that it is not very scientific, but i made a comparison once running some plugins in Cubase, Reaper, and some other host i can't remember now, and Reaper was always able to play several voices more until the CPU limit was reached. Really, you can say what you want about Reaper (i ditched it some time ago for Cubase, so i'm not really biased), but the reports about it being the most CPU efficient are true.

Well, I ditched Cubase for Reaper too(before eventually ditching Reaper), but outside of running benchmarks to prove which one is faster, if you can get by with running a project in Reaper on a given PC, you can likely also get by with running a similar project in Cubase on the same PC.

Then again, if you're PC has no CPU headroom when running your projects, you need a new PC. If you own the fastest PC on the market(or even a mid-range quadcore, LOL) and still can't make music, then you're doing it wrong...

[sqigls]

...I ditched Cubase for Reaper...

[chk071]

Definitely. Still interesting how the different hosts compare in terms of CPU usage. Especially when using CPU heavy plugins.

[jeffh]

...I ditched Cubase for Reaper...

ZOMG, who would ever object to having to sit idle waiting for a new dongle to arrive because your old one broke, or the usual shiteness of a fresh X.0.0 release of Cubase, that will take Steinberg 6-12 months to fix, at which point the next version will be coming out with new features they could've put in the last version

[LawrenceF]

i'm just waiting for the cats to show up. Any minute now.

CPU cat, where are u? Here kitty kitty...

[CTStump]

OTOH, it's not like Reaper users are sitting pretty on Atom netbooks while Cubase, Logic, etc... users are sitting around waiting for faster 16 core CPUs to come out so that they can finally make some music. At some point years back, it became fanboy elitism to try to run projects with 300 tracks at 8 samples of latency, while real musicians are out there making great music with far fewer tracks and at far higher latency

In a Nutshell...

[LawrenceF]

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[bmanic]

I've used quite a lot of different DAWs and in my experience Reaper is by far the most efficient (not sure how it is on OS-X though). If you run into some stutters while mixing then simply dialing in a larger buffer for the anticipative engine will get you quite a lot more still.

I've mixed a few projects at 96kHz recently and had a crazy amount of plugins running.. this on a quite old i7 920.

I can only imagine how it runs on the current top of the line CPUs.

Cheers!
bManic

[DuX]

Logic is efficient because it hardly uses any CPU for a plugin that's loaded unless that plugin is processing audio.

Really? You think it's only Logic that does that? You haven't tried many DAWs, I suppose. I'm surprised that nobody commented your post.

[camsr]

More features = more cpu usage, UNLESS, they only do stuff when summoned.

[DuX]

Oh, and I ditched Cubase for EnergyXT. It was 200... something. Before Reaper. Why did I ditch it? It suffered from the "poof" syndrome that started to really bog me. And I worked with Cubase for about 10 years, on ATARI, and it had really rarely "poofed" [disappeared/crashed] on it. Since I started using it on PC, it was really unstable. I couldn't bear it any more. EnergyXT was much more stable for me, and Reaper even more so. I almost wrote "Repair" instead of "Reaper". Yeah, it "repaired" my faith in making audio with computers.

[machinesworking]

I've used quite a lot of different DAWs and in my experience Reaper is by far the most efficient (not sure how it is on OS-X though). If you run into some stutters while mixing then simply dialing in a larger buffer for the anticipative engine will get you quite a lot more still.

Reaper last time I checked was one of the worst on OSX.
Goes something like this:

1. DP/Logic 100% tied for first.

2. Cubase @ 80%

3. Reaper and Live 60-70%

Changing buffer settings helps any DAW load more plug ins.
256 or lower for composing and 1024 or higher for mix down.