Which daw has the best CPU load management?

[D-Fusion]

Thank you for your feedback and opinions.

Reaper seems to be the favorite.

I have a 13th generation i7 and 64 gigabytes of ram running Windows 11 home.

As an audio interface, I have the Audiofuse 16 Rig.

The PC is optimized for PC (Windows, DAW, VST management).

Some Daws like Cubase work better on Mac in fact.

Studio one also doesn't seem to be a good example.

Concerning the latter, it's a little ambiguous, because there is everything and its opposite on the opinions.

It’s true that the VSTs used are very resource intensive.

I guess I'm not the only one using this kind of vst?

So, I assume there must be a suitable solution other than changing VST and/or freezing the tracks.

That would really be very limiting.

Apart from Reaper and to a certain extent Fl Studio, the tenors are apparently not by far the best at this subject.

Who knows maybe Live 12, but I doubt it, Live is not the most reasonable in terms of CPU load.

It's still incredible that the vast majority of current daws are incapable of handling this kind of thing (apart from Reaper).

Then you should have plenty of horsepower to run everything without bouncing unless you need more than 30-50 tracks

I have a 13th gen intel i5 13500 and when i use the Roland System 8 as my benchmark synth since it is the most cpu intensive synth i have i can play 32 tracks at once without any problems but after that i need to bounce to audio (I can add almost the double if i Enable the optimize for cpu usage in System 8 but then it sounds horrible compared to full cpu mode).

This is in Studio one 6 and Bitwig 5 so both are equally great in terms of cpu usage.

I also have Cubase but Cubase seems to hate my System so i don't use it atm.

[chk071]

Then you should have plenty of horsepower to run everything without bouncing unless you need more than 30-50 tracks

Yeah, that's what I thought too. Not sure if it's worth thinking about which DAW is the most ressource friendly, especially as it's so much more important how you are able to work with it.

[machinesworking]

Yeah, that's what I thought too. Not sure if it's worth thinking about which DAW is the most ressource friendly, especially as it's so much more important how you are able to work with it.

It is, Bitwig and Live take more resources, that's all there is to it. It's not trivial, around 60-70% of the CPU of Logic, Cubase, DP and Reaper. I agree when you're talking about 10 or even 20% but it's noticeable in the 30-40% range.

Mostly if you're doing heavy mixing or orchestral work and own Bitwig or Live it's worth considering getting an old school style double buffer/Pre-rendering DAW to do those tasks.

[syntonica]

From what I've seen/experienced, Reaper is best with new Cubase and new DP not far behind. Logic is lagging due to its ignoring e-cores and only using p-cores.

Somebody mentioned MuLab, which is true, but it reports CPU usage in a funky way and it can seem higher than expected.

[machinesworking]

From what I've seen/experienced, Reaper is best with new Cubase and new DP not far behind. Logic is lagging due to its ignoring e-cores and only using p-cores.

Yep all this, I suppose it's possible Logic is more stable because it's not juggling lower CPU cores with higher ones? but as of now DP and Reaper are neck and neck with massive track counts. I don't own Cubase, but I've also heard the newest version is performing well.

In the bigger picture once everyone is on the newest Macs and PCs (M2 and i9 16-24 core machines), this stuff isn't as much of an issue, we're talking over 135 tracks of Diva here with Reaper and DP, 90 tracks in Live or Bitwig etc. isn't anything to sneeze at.

[spoontechnique]

I don't have any objective measurements, but I was always impressed with Renoise. Large projects always seemed to run smoothly. Especially if you mostly use stock effects.

And now Blockhead, which renders everything as you change it and has no constantly running plugins (or VSTs). I've never seen the CPU hit more than 10%, and usually it's around 2.5% even in medium to large projects. That's probably a result of it's unusual features (the aforementioned baking and no VSTs).

[syntonica]

Yeah, my MBA M1 2020 strolls in with only 110 tracks. Unless I'm scoring romantic chromaticism orchestral circa 1900, that's enough for me. I don't recall ever having used more that 24 tracks, actually. My 2014 MacBook Potato got 14 tracks, maybe 15 if I faced downwind.

Anyways, as long as you have a modern CPU, doesn't matter which DAW you use. Unless you're recording Gurre-Lieder...

[dikrek]

Logic does great on a Mac. It’s all super optimised and the OS and Logic are smart enough to let the E-cores do other stuff instead of taking away speed from the P-cores.

But for a PC, I’d say Reaper and then Cubase.

With Logic you also need to know the tricks to get the most out of it. For example, arm an empty track when mixing - otherwise it will try to optimize for real-time performance on the armed track, and if you do that, you could get single-core constrained.

I’ve tried Reaper and Logic on the same machine and wasn’t able to get more out of Reaper. The Reaper CPU meter showed as being less busy than what Logic said for the exact same project, but I started getting crackles at the same exact point with both.

And on machines with a lots of cores (more than 8 ), you may get more out of Bitwig if you tell it to use individual hosting per plugin. (You can also tell it to host by manufacturer - for example if you have plugins that talk to other instances like iZotope does, or Sonible).

Kinda the ultimate “it depends” scenario.

[osiris]

I've brought this up on the FL Forum. Reaper you add a track as you need it. FL just puts up @150 (is it) and you have no say in that. I've done huge projects but using maybe 15 (intensive)tracks and watched it as it saves the state of EVERY track when you close the project. I don't think this helps CPU wise.

[Milkman]

I see various responses to this, and being someone who has been in tech close to 40 years, I understand the variance.
Platform architecture and personal sysadmin skills are extremely important here.

I used cubase for over 22 years, starting around 2001. After decades of frustration, I switched to Bitwig SPECIFICALLY because of CPU usage, multi-threaded audio/hyperthreading performance, and stability. I ran cubase on PCs starting with a single core CPU, moving to a core2duo, then moving to multicore + hyperthreading CPUs. 3 PC workstations and 2 laptops, and in EVERY generation of hardware I had some sort of issue with cubase either forcing me to disable CPU cores, power management, or dynamic clocks. After reading about bitwig and giving it a 30 day trial, using the same workstations and laptops I ran cubase on, the improvements Bitwig showed me were significant. CPU performance for my entire studio is on average lower, though some heavy plugins use about the same resources in bitwig and cubase. The main benefit is multithreading and stability.

To be entirely honest about this though, I have never created a project with more than 30ish tracks in it, so I dont know what Bitwig will do at that level. However I have created 5-6 track projects in cubase that had trouble, and this is where bitwig succeeds.

[machinesworking]

I see various responses to this, and being someone who has been in tech close to 40 years, I understand the variance.
Platform architecture and personal sysadmin skills are extremely important here.

I used cubase for over 22 years, starting around 2001. After decades of frustration, I switched to Bitwig SPECIFICALLY because of CPU usage, multi-threaded audio/hyperthreading performance, and stability. I ran cubase on PCs starting with a single core CPU, moving to a core2duo, then moving to multicore + hyperthreading CPUs. 3 PC workstations and 2 laptops, and in EVERY generation of hardware I had some sort of issue with cubase either forcing me to disable CPU cores, power management, or dynamic clocks. After reading about bitwig and giving it a 30 day trial, using the same workstations and laptops I ran cubase on, the improvements Bitwig showed me were significant. CPU performance for my entire studio is on average lower, though some heavy plugins use about the same resources in bitwig and cubase. The main benefit is multithreading and stability.

To be entirely honest about this though, I have never created a project with more than 30ish tracks in it, so I dont know what Bitwig will do at that level. However I have created 5-6 track projects in cubase that had trouble, and this is where bitwig succeeds.

I don't know, I don't currently own a Windows machine and haven't ever spent too much time in DAWs on one, but Cubase has to be doing weird stuff to get worse performance than a DAW like Bitwig that doesn't do any sort of secondary buffer or pre-rendering like Bitwig. The big advantages of Live and Bitwig are their performance oriented engines, everything is being polled to make sure that it isn't being changed on the fly. This costs resources though, there's zero difference in CPU whether a track is armed or not in Bitwig, unlike DAWs that do prerendering and free up CPU from tracks that aren't currently armed for recording etc.

Bitwig does have the ability to share load between CPUs on a single tracks though, this is why you might be experiencing better performance in Bitwig on single heavy CPU demanding tracks, but it's not going to scale up with 35+ tracks and heavy plugin use, this is easily testable. Live I mentioned Armed tracks will conversely kill the Pre-rendering DAWs like Cubase because each track is now running it's processes in real time, and this is where there isn't any difference in performance between most DAWs, and where Bitwig might pull ahead being able to toss each plugin on a track onto a different CPU.

Another thing, I do not clearly know how Bitwig and Live do the "real time" thing, but neither even stutter when adding a plugin to a track while the sequence is playing, this is another advantage of no pre-rendering of non record enabled tracks, and it's part of the trade off, Live and Bitwig on lower track count projects can feel more stable than DAWs like Cubase, Logic etc.

[machinesworking]

Logic does great on a Mac. It’s all super optimized and the OS and Logic are smart enough to let the E-cores do other stuff instead of taking away speed from the P-cores.

IMO the jury is still out on that, DP and Reaper get a massive undeniable increase in track count over Logic, and both use all cores on my machine (Studio Ultra 24 core 16P 8E), we're talking about a 30% difference in track counts.

I’ve tried Reaper and Logic on the same machine and wasn’t able to get more out of Reaper. The Reaper CPU meter showed as being less busy than what Logic said for the exact same project, but I started getting crackles at the same exact point with both.

The only way you're going to get that result is by stacking a single track with plugins. I don't think besides Bitwig, there's any difference in performance DAW to DAW when you stack a single track with plugins, because they're all happening on the same CPU core.
In every test I've ever done with Reaper and Logic, reaper gets significantly more tracks than Logic, especially since the Performance and Efficiency core Apple Silicon CPUs came out.

And on machines with a lots of cores (more than 8 ), you may get more out of Bitwig if you tell it to use individual hosting per plugin. (You can also tell it to host by manufacturer - for example if you have plugins that talk to other instances like iZotope does, or Sonible).

Kinda the ultimate “it depends” scenario.

\
Again sort of the opposite effect, Bitwig performs fantastically with low plugin, track count, projects and even with stacked single tracks, it also does well with multiple tracks with plugins record enabled, but it hits CPU limits much faster than DAWs with pre-rendering like Logic, DP and Reaper.

Any of these DAWs can have a errant plugin that spikes a single core, this has happened in nearly every DAW I've used, and most definitely in Bitwig, DP and Logic. So three pretty obviously different approaches to CPU management, but some plugin will act up...

[jens]

Frankly, the differences aren't that big, so, I wouldn't really worry about it much. I'd much rather consider which workflow suits you the best.

This is absolutely false - the differences can be quite significant and systematic tests/measurements have shown this numerous times.

[jens]

Nobody mentionned Samplitude, wich is pretty good at managing cpu.

Absolutely.

[lfm]

Audio interface plays a significant roll in what cpu you get at which latency.

On my new computer beginning 2023, i7-12700F cpu, I tested two usb based interfaces.
Running Sonar last updated 2016 as only daw I use. Windows 11 Pro.

RME Digiface USB and Presonus 1824c.
- started at 64 samples on RME that I did for a long time, 5ms roundtrip
- to get same latency roundtrip around 5-6ms on Presonus I had to go to 32 samples buffer
- and presonus had double cpu getting in that range latency for the same project

So weakest link in the chain reasoning, look at all parts.

On my i7-12700F I finally turned off E-cores, 4 of them in that cpu.
- 13th generation I think 8 E-cores, and 14th even worse if 12 or so

E-cores are basically half speed cores compared to P-cores with HT.
- and no daws so far really support placing the right threads on P-cores only AFAIK.
- what I saw in ProcessLasso was same thread handling like E-cores were as main P-cores.
- just a year ago Cubase had warning not supporting E-cores, not sure if that is handled now

So which latency are you OK with?

StudioOne always has an extra asio buffer for processing making roundtrip longer for the same buffer size.

Reaper has similar as realtime monitoring goes, if any latency on a plugin, an extra buffer at least making roundtrip longer, not only as much as plugin uses. Discovered this already 2010 doing Reaper.

Cubase has asio guard which you can turn off if you like and target which plugins also as I recall. But doing video, not sure if Cubase fixed the new video engine to be comparable to other daws. Projects with video use 30% more cpu in Cubase compared to StudioOne or Sonar at the time I ran Cubase Pro 9.5.

So just looking for a daw that fix everything is too narrow approach as I see it.
- what latency are you ok with at which cpu?
- are you doing video at all?

And which daw is having the smoothest freeze handling of plugins if finally needing that?
- there is no smother than Cakewalk/Sonar IMO
- it's one click and plugins are rendered and resources released
- and one click to restore again
- you have built in oversampling as well, selected on plugin level to use or not

When I ran Cubase I had an issue I was troubleshooting, and found that when audio engine restarted it was 7 threads that restarted.
- what happends if a cpu has a good bunch of those threads at half speed E-cores?

You get higher benchmark result with E-cores enabled too, but I found that better to turn those off.
- cpubenchmark.net benchmark software gave me 31000 with E-cores, and 29000 without.
- if doing 13th generation with more E-cores it hurts more to turn off E-cores completely but you can tell a process to only use certain cores with a parameter in shortcut for daw.
- in my case with 12th generation, E-cores are the last 4 cores if using cpu affinity
- some people recommend Process Lasso to handle a process cpu like this

I get constant 4.5 GHz cpu, not jumping up and down in frequency the way I set it up.

Experiment and see what you like better.