Studio One 4.1.4 - V - Reason 10.3 - |Performance Compared|

[EnochLight]

On a practical level, if someone walks into a music store to buy DAW, and they say they want one that will give them the best performance for a new rig they have built...

..then they will be told to go home and buy Reaper online, or use it free in "demo mode" forever.

[Psuper]

On a practical level, if someone walks into a music store to buy DAW, and they say they want one that will give them the best performance for a new rig they have built...

..then they will be told to go home and buy Reaper online, or use it free in "demo mode" forever.

This.

[chk071]

To be clear then, you still have not run the test with the dynamic second buffer of undetermined size disabled, The Block size in S1's prefs is only for the "live" buffer for tracking.

As well, you have Reason's Hyperthreading turned off, and S1's Dropout protection also makes extensive use of processor threading to do it's Voodoo... (Now to be fair the Reason Hyperthreading support is probably crap, and I have it turned off as well. haven't run it since the update)

On a practical level, knowing how many concurrent instances of a plugin can be run in a sterile environment is not what making art is about. Penis size contests about DAW specs are irrelevant. Reaper would probably win all those anyway even though I profoundly dislike that app. There are quite a few scenarios where I would heartily recommend S1 (Mixing, Tracking Bands, etc...) I like it, and have it installed on my machine. My mouse still passes right by the S1 icon on the way to the Reason icon on a daily basis tho, even before the 10.3 update when performance was abysmal.

A bit too many maybe's and probably's to make for a factual rectification... fact is that Reason doesn't have something S1 has, thus performs MUCH worse. Which is important for real life use.

[spacepluk]

For the sake of peer review... and because I'm evaluating several DAWs at the moment. I downloaded the files and Reason can run 80 Hives on my laptop without issues (with hyperthreading on).

I haven't tried Studio One yet, I'll write my results when I do.

[THE INTRANCER]

Ran the test in Reason with hyperthreading also enabled today at 512 samples, which improved the number of instances up to about 54, beyond that... audio quality begins to suffer and by 58 occasional pops and clicks. Turning dropout protection to minimum which is as far as you can go reduces that to around 94 instances at 512 samples. Medium dropout protection 98 instances, and high dropout protection 102 instances. So still a significant difference even with Studio One stripped of it's turbo charger and set to it's lowest dropout setting at 512 samples in this test.

With the test in the video, I left hyperthreading option off having read that it's had some negative side effects from posts on forums about it. It didn't help things prior so enabling it might have been conflicting with something else running on my system. If there was something, it wasn't affecting Studio One in the same way.

Overall though, it does indicate how much more efficient and optimised Studio One is compared to how Reason is currently performance wise.

[xbitz]

fyi, if somebody needs a usable PR during the song starting phase in Reason

not as Ableton Live, which dies instantly if I drop a synth into the Rewired Reason, S1 uses all the cores if Reason is ReWired into it (btw. S1 can automate Reason devices directly without any MIDI CC magic which another + beside it)

[reggie1979]

On a practical level, if someone walks into a music store to buy DAW, and they say they want one that will give them the best performance for a new rig they have built...

..then they will be told to go home and buy Reaper online, or use it free in "demo mode" forever.

I thought after 60 days you need to buy it.

[EnochLight]

I thought after 60 days you need to buy it.

Reaper? Sure - you're supposed to buy it - but the "demo" works 100% even after 60 days. You just get a nag screen.

[xbitz]

Reaper would be free ... just nobody can trust in free products, so some price has been added to it AFAIK Justin has said some similar thing in an interview with him

[Distorted Horizon]

Ran the test in Reason with hyperthreading also enabled today at 512 samples, which improved the number of instances up to about 54..

Reason doesn't perform as well with vsti's as some other daw that has been optimizing for years.. Fine.. Now to the real world: How often do you need over 54 instances of Hive? I don't. If it EVER happens, I can bounce stuff that doesn't need midi open.

Conclusion? Your test is waste of time (at least for me).

/end of fanboi rant

[Psuper]

Reaper would be free ... just nobody can trust in free products, so some price has been added to it AFAIK Justin has said some similar thing in an interview with him

Absolutely true, and a good portion of people falsely believe it's no good because its just $60 (or $225 for the VAST majority of big bux producers who hang out here) as opposed to their $300-$600 bloatware DAWS. aka... daws you hate pole, pudding proof n nat.

[spacepluk]

Ok, so I repeated the test this time without anything running in the background and using Reason 10.3, Studio One 4.1.4, and Cubase Pro 10.0.20.

Here are my results on:

• Windows 10 (1809)
• Razer Blade (late 2016 i7-6700HQ)
• 512 sample buffer
• Integrated Realtek + ASIO4ALL drivers

Reason 10.3 (hyperthreading on): ~100 instances
Studio One 4.1.4 (Minimum dropout): ~130 instances
Cubase Pro 10.0.20 (ASIO Guard high): ~170 instances

Beyond those numbers I started to hear dropouts in all of them.

I also tried to set Studio One to the maximum dropout protection but it crashed twice while I was trying to test that (it was the only DAW in this test that crashed btw).

So, while there's obviously a difference I don't think it's that big and on my machine Cubase Pro has the best performance by a considerable margin.

It's fun to measure these things even though it's a completely unrealistic scenario. I also find that Reason's performance is very impressive taking into account the kind of routing it allows and that it's much harder (impossible?) to implement optimization tricks like in S1 and Cubase.

Just my 2c.

EDIT: Managed to test Maximum protection without S1 crashing and I get dropouts with 130 instances while the Minimum setting works fine.

[reggie1979]

I thought after 60 days you need to buy it.

Reaper? Sure - you're supposed to buy it - but the "demo" works 100% even after 60 days. You just get a nag screen.

I like reaper ok and feel that with that and my nektar I get enough control, but I still work more in Reason.


Then again I really miss impact xt in Studio One, I'm hopeless.

[EnochLight]

Then again I really miss impact xt in Studio One, I'm hopeless.

I feel you. I used to miss Impact XT as well, until I bought an actual Akai MPC Live. Now I just my MPC Live running the MPC Software as a VST plugin in Reason. I can't get inspired in Studio One or Reaper.

[THE INTRANCER]

Reason 10.3 (hyperthreading on): ~100 instances
Studio One 4.1.4 (Minimum dropout): ~130 instances
Cubase Pro 10.0.20 (ASIO Guard high): ~170 instances

Shouldn't ASIO Guard be set to low in Cubase if Studio One has been set to minimum dropout ? There's an option to not have it selected from the options too, I see from screenshots. I've rarely used Cubase over the years, other than the demo's which expire.

Alternately, if you were going to put Studio One head to head with Cubase, you would put Studio One at maximum drop out protection.

It's possible you overloaded Studio One using it's lowest setting thus why it crashed in your test.