Is there any host sequencer on Windows that can effectively use 32 cores/64 logical cores?

[Amelia70]

Sorry but even though the same result can be achieved, the workflow is not close to what i am talking about.


You still need to create points manually. And this seems restricted to comping?

[EvilDragon]

A 9900K is no where near powerful enough for us..All 10 cores in the mac pro run at their maximum turbo speed of 3.6ghz at all times and we barely scrape though with 2 HDX cards. I have never seen the cpu drop below 3.6ghz when using a DAW. We need at LEAST twice or even better, 2.5 to 3x the power we currently have natively if we are going to replace Pro tools HDX. I just don't see a 9900K running 256 or even more tracks of orchestral project in realtime without freezing, with tons of effects everywhere.

Wait. 2013 MP didn't have a 10-core option, so I assume you did an )?


Well, 9900K has a higher benchmark due to it going up to 5 GHz.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 2057vs3334


And let's reinstate this: single thread performance is STILL the most important thing for DAW workloads.

9900K can definitely run hundreds of tracks.

[EvilDragon]

Sorry but even though the same result can be achieved, the workflow is not close to what i am talking about.


You still need to create points manually. And this seems restricted to comping?

Of course not. You don't need to create points manually. You make a time selection and you drag the envelope segment down or up. Easy. And no, you don't even have to be comping at all. This also works on track volume envelope, not just take envelope.

[Amelia70]

A 9900K is no where near powerful enough for us..All 10 cores in the mac pro run at their maximum turbo speed of 3.6ghz at all times and we barely scrape though with 2 HDX cards. I have never seen the cpu drop below 3.6ghz when using a DAW. We need at LEAST twice or even better, 2.5 to 3x the power we currently have natively if we are going to replace Pro tools HDX. I just don't see a 9900K running 256 or even more tracks of orchestral project in realtime without freezing, with tons of effects everywhere.

Wait. 2013 MP didn't have a 10-core option, so I assume you did an )?


Well, 9900K has a higher benchmark due to it going up to 5 GHz.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 2057vs3334


And let's reinstate this: single thread performance is STILL the most important thing for DAW workloads.

9900K can definitely run hundreds of tracks.

Indeed. OWC. Of course the 9900K is more powerful. Do you honestly think it's 2 HDX cards worth more powerful than the 10 core we currently have? If so, maybe I am wrong. I presumed it might give us about 30% more plugins.. I need double minimum if i am to replace the HDX. If the 9900K is going to give me at least double the performance natively of what I have now, I will give it another look.

[Amelia70]

Sorry but even though the same result can be achieved, the workflow is not close to what i am talking about.


You still need to create points manually. And this seems restricted to comping?

Of course not. You don't need to create points manually. You make a time selection and you drag the envelope segment down or up. Easy. And no, you don't even have to be comping at all. This also works on track volume envelope, not just take envelope.

Well see, that's good to know. I trust videos too much.

[EvilDragon]

Kenny's videos are very good, but they don't necessarily cover everything. However he DOES cover a whole lot, and specific workflows. He's also a ProTools user that defected to Reaper by and large, BTW.

However it's still helpful to watch them all, if you have the time. He does break things down nicely.


(Also see the GIF that I added to my previous post - is that the workflow you're used to in PT? Also, see that knob in top left of the item? That's the item gain/clip gain that PT got way way after Reaper got it!)

[Amelia70]

A 9900K is no where near powerful enough for us..All 10 cores in the mac pro run at their maximum turbo speed of 3.6ghz at all times and we barely scrape though with 2 HDX cards. I have never seen the cpu drop below 3.6ghz when using a DAW. We need at LEAST twice or even better, 2.5 to 3x the power we currently have natively if we are going to replace Pro tools HDX. I just don't see a 9900K running 256 or even more tracks of orchestral project in realtime without freezing, with tons of effects everywhere.

Wait. 2013 MP didn't have a 10-core option, so I assume you did an )?


Well, 9900K has a higher benchmark due to it going up to 5 GHz.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 2057vs3334


And let's reinstate this: single thread performance is STILL the most important thing for DAW workloads.

9900K can definitely run hundreds of tracks.

Single core performance is not the most important thing for my sort of workload. You are mistaken and there's no point going around in circles about it cause we will never agree. I would take a 16 core 4ghz over an 8 core 5ghz any day, without a second thought. But you are welcome to do otherwise! of course I would take a 16 core FIVE ghz lol over an 8 core 5ghz also.

If you see the new mac pro 28 core video that's circulating on you tube with a large-ish project, around 100 tracks, you can see how well a good DAW takes advantage of those cores. Even Kontakt multi threads itself.. You do not need a 5ghz clock speed for a kontakt instance. I am sorry but I just don't agree with you but I DO appreciated you are really genuinely trying to help, so, thank you for that.

[Amelia70]

Kenny's videos are very good, but they don't necessarily cover everything. However he DOES cover a whole lot, and specific workflows. He's also a ProTools user that defected to Reaper by and large, BTW.

However it's still helpful to watch them all, if you have the time. He does break things down nicely.


(Also see the GIF that I added to my previous post - is that the workflow you're used to in PT? Also, see that knob in top left of the item? That's the item gain/clip gain that PT got way way after Reaper got it!)

yes that's it but can i do that over waveform,, exactly that, and have the waveform gain visually adjust? This is what is helpful with 10 minute long single clip waveforms.

[Jim Roseberry]

Also I would suggest not to go with Threadripper's current generations. For low latency audio workflows it has some issues that make it not fully utilize the CPU before you get dropouts. Read on:

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2018/08/24 ... repeating/

Maybe the very latest Ryzen would be better, I hear they managed to work out some of those latency issues.

However, what DJ Warmonger says is true. Having many cores is nice, but for DAW work, you want to have ALL those cores as fast as possible. And for that, Intel's i9-9900K is really great. You get 16 logical cores which you can overclock to an all-core 5 GHz clock with good cooling solution. This is tremendous.

Just wanted to chime in and say I agree with this 100%.
Having more cores is beneficial, but not at the expense of significant clock-speed.

Not every process in a DAW application can be multi-threaded.
ie: Playing thru Helix Native (amp-sim plugin) at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size (1ms round-trip latency)... is not something that lends itself to being heavily multi-threaded.

One other thing to note about adding cores:
Performance increase doesn't scale 1:1
IOW, Doubling the number of cores doesn't double performance.

In a perfect scenario, you want highest clock-speed *and* the most cores available.

Ryzen is particularly strong with video rendering (offline where the process can be heavily multi-threaded).
Where Ryzen is weak is clock-speed... especially maximum turbo ratio across cores.
You can't achieve anywhere close to max turbo frequency across all cores.
This is where Intel (still) has AMD beat.

Even with the Intel i9-9980xe, you most likely won't see 4.5GHz across all 18 cores (completely stable). You can typically achieve rock-solid stability ~4.2GHz across all cores.

The i9-9900k will run 5GHz across all 8 cores (rock-solid)... and will do so running near dead-silent.
It's a fantastic choice for DAW users. Great balance of performance/cost/quiet.
To best the 9900k, you have to go with higher-end socket 2066 i9.
Even then, it won't best the 9900k on everything (due to lower clock-speed).

[EvilDragon]

Single core performance is not the most important thing for my sort of workload. You are mistaken and there's no point going around in circles about it cause we will never agree. I would take a 16 core 4ghz over an 8 core 5ghz any day, without a second thought. But you are welcome to do otherwise! of course I would take a 16 core FIVE ghz lol over an 8 core 5ghz also.

If you see the new mac pro 28 core video that's circulating on you tube with a large-ish project, around 100 tracks, you can see how well a good DAW takes advantage of those cores. Even Kontakt multi threads itself.. You do not need a 5ghz clock speed for a kontakt instance. I am sorry but I just don't agree with you but I DO appreciated you are really genuinely trying to help, so, thank you for that.

I know all about that, Amelia. The thing is: the more cores you have, AND the faster those cores are, the better. Multithreading will rotate DAW tracks throughout your cores, but at some point if ONE core gets oversaturated (due to a heavy plugin, or something), it doesn't matter how many cores you have, you will get dropouts. This is why you want to have the fastest cores possible. Even if you end up having fewer of them.

And there are instruments for Kontakt that definitely want those chunkier faster cores (like Straylight, for example). You don't need 5 GHz for a single Kontakt instance, but you COULD benefit greatly from it when you use more Kontakt instances with a bunch of intensive orchestral sample libraries (which is what you're doing).

[Amelia70]

The other consideration could be those UAD things, they apparently work on windows now.. Maybe that could do all the effects loading or a lot of it and then a cheap 9900K *would* be enough. Not that they are cheap either, but they seem to have some very easy to use and lovely hardware emulations. Never used one though.. anyone here who has let me know! Because 90% of our hardware where digital, is 48K, there is no point recording at anything higher. Of course for real analog recording there is a benefit, but overall not worth the extra cpu usage and disk space to artificially up sample the rest of the sounds coming in.

[EvilDragon]

yes that's it but can i do that over waveform,, exactly that, and have the waveform gain visually adjust? This is what is helpful with 10 minute long single clip waveforms.

YES! I just did this GIF quickly over an empty MIDI item. But waveform visually adjusts, yes, when done over audio items. As you'd expect it to.


This is just to show that getting to know Reaper will take a bit of time. You cannot give it 30 minutes or even 30 days and get to know everything about it. It's a different animal. But it can definitely do a lot of things you're used to from PT, and it has way better MIDI editor to boot.

[EvilDragon]

The other consideration could be those UAD things, they apparently work on windows now.. Maybe that could do all the effects loading or a lot of it and then a cheap 9900K *would* be enough. Not that they are cheap either, but they seem to have some very easy to use and lovely hardware emulations. Never used one though.. anyone here who has let me know! Because 90% of our hardware where digital, is 48K, there is no point recording at anything higher. Of course for real analog recording there is a benefit, but overall not worth the extra cpu usage and disk space to artificially up sample the rest of the sounds coming in.

UAD is just an expensive dongle as far as I'm concerned. But sure if you want to offload some processing it's a choice. It's no different to HDX in practice.

[Amelia70]

Single core performance is not the most important thing for my sort of workload. You are mistaken and there's no point going around in circles about it cause we will never agree. I would take a 16 core 4ghz over an 8 core 5ghz any day, without a second thought. But you are welcome to do otherwise! of course I would take a 16 core FIVE ghz lol over an 8 core 5ghz also.

If you see the new mac pro 28 core video that's circulating on you tube with a large-ish project, around 100 tracks, you can see how well a good DAW takes advantage of those cores. Even Kontakt multi threads itself.. You do not need a 5ghz clock speed for a kontakt instance. I am sorry but I just don't agree with you but I DO appreciated you are really genuinely trying to help, so, thank you for that.

I know all about that, Amelia. The thing is: the more cores you have, AND the faster those cores are, the better. Multithreading will rotate DAW tracks throughout your cores, but at some point if ONE core gets oversaturated (due to a heavy plugin, or something), it doesn't matter how many cores you have, you will get dropouts. This is why you want to have the fastest cores possible. Even if you end up having fewer of them.

And there are instruments for Kontakt that definitely want those chunkier faster cores (like Straylight, for example). You don't need 5 GHz for a single Kontakt instance, but you COULD benefit from it when you use more Kontakt instances with a bunch of intensive orchestral sample libraries (which is what you're doing).

And yet I will still run out of power cause 8 cores isn't enough.. Your argument has a weak point in that the single more powerful core is going to be rotated to and reloaded with another track's worth of plugins much faster than the 32 core system.. I see both points to it but unless you can tell me a 9900K is at LEAST twice as powerful as what we have now, it's a moot point. And 3x would be even better.

[EvilDragon]

It's not that simple of a calculation, Amelia.

32 cores will help and be an improvement over your 2013 MP. But they should be at the VERY LEAST 4.0 GHz, all of them. Sustained at all times. Not boosted in/out of.

However once your FX chain becomes too long/hard to process, you'd have wished you had those 5 GHz cores. But there's no 5 GHz 32-core beast out yet.