Which daw has the best CPU load management?

[Trancer]

Which daw has the best CPU load management?

With a big project of vst tracks / effects and audio plugins?

Example of vst used

Omnisphere / Trilian / Diva / Repro 1 and 5 / Massive X.

I would like to avoid freezing tracks and be able to use the daw without having to resort to DIY to be able to do a complete project.

Thank you in advance for your responses and opinions.

[kidslow]

Can only back this up with anecdata, but I'm going to say Reaper. That is where it shines. I don't think another DAW comes close strictly on that metric, but happy to be proven wrong.

[dikrek]

Also depends on your CPU, OS and mastering chain.

Why:

1. It’s hard to optimize CPU if you have too many heavy plugins on a single channel, let alone the master.
2. Not all DAWs properly deal with newer CPUs that have efficiency cores. Some prefer to use the performance cores only, some don’t know the difference. And sometimes a patch is enough to massively change speeds (cubase has done some silent changes between minor patch revs for example)
3. Some OSes are better optimised for modern CPUs. For instance, MacOS is designed to cater to Apple’s own CPUs, and they know exactly how to optimize it. Many reports of Cubase working better on MacOS than Windows, for example.
4. Your interface can make a difference. If you have something from RME you can run more plugins at the same latency vs most others, for example.

[chk071]

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.

[pdxindy]

Which daw has the best CPU load management?

With a big project of vst tracks / effects and audio plugins?

Example of vst used

Omnisphere / Trilian / Diva / Repro 1 and 5 / Massive X.

I would like to avoid freezing tracks and be able to use the daw without having to resort to DIY to be able to do a complete project.

Thank you in advance for your responses and opinions.

My impression is that Reaper is pretty consistently the most efficient DAW.

[jlgrimes11]

Which daw has the best CPU load management?

With a big project of vst tracks / effects and audio plugins?

Example of vst used

Omnisphere / Trilian / Diva / Repro 1 and 5 / Massive X.

I would like to avoid freezing tracks and be able to use the daw without having to resort to DIY to be able to do a complete project.

Thank you in advance for your responses and opinions.

For general CPU Load management, Reaper is the best for the DAWS I have Ableton, Studio One, Cakewalk, Reason, FL. It's Cpu load is very minimal in general and have plenty of tools for managing and monitoring loads.


Ableton is probably the worse in terms of CPU use (although for uninterrupted low latency playback and control for live performing, it is solid)

Reason is probably the worst for low latency (I get pops and clicks at fairly low buffer settings like 128). That said when using higher buffer settings such as 256 or 512 it might be pretty stable. Historically Reason had some of the best stability but those were the days we're it was a closed system.

FL Studio is probably second behind Reaper (but is probably more stable than Reaper using obscure VSTis, although Reaper is more compatible). FL is less flexible for managing loads probably right behind Reason.

Studio One gives me the lowest latency with its double buffering system (although it tends to produce some tiny clicks so might not be as good as Live for being onstage). Studio One or Ableton probably would be best for Live performances. Reaper might be too but I don't know many people who use Reaper in those setups.

[pekbro]

Yup Reaper most efficient cpu-wise for me. MuLab is also very good.

[eLawnMust]

Hands down OLD Reason 2.5 with honorable mention to Reason 3.0, You could have 60 tracks or more without any fear of having to 'bounce tracks' which wasn't even a feature as they were so efficient. Only when efficiency started a sharp drop was 'track bouncing' a necessary feature. This even translates to old tight coded VST-DX friendly DAWs like Massiva/EnergyXT/AeroStudio/MultiTrackStudio/Podium & to a certain extent Project5 & Orion>>>

[gjunk]

Yeah reaper is very lightweight. I have been trying to use it more lately because of this

[Trensharo]

REAPER. Cubase 13 is amazing, these days (esp. if you use Apple Silicon Macs).

[D-Fusion]

Which daw has the best CPU load management?

With a big project of vst tracks / effects and audio plugins?

Example of vst used

Omnisphere / Trilian / Diva / Repro 1 and 5 / Massive X.

I would like to avoid freezing tracks and be able to use the daw without having to resort to DIY to be able to do a complete project.

Thank you in advance for your responses and opinions.

A Daw won't save you after Seeing your examples.

The only way to get around high cpu usage is to use low demanding vst's since It doesn't matter what kind of Daw you are using if the vst's are cpu hungry and your PC or Mac is not fast enough.

So if you have a weak system I would get a more powerfull one instead of doing daw hunting which will end up giving you the same results +- 1 or 2 extra instances of one of those power hungry vst's you mentioned.

[osiris]

Reaper, but I don't like the midi editor.

[Trancer]

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).

[woodsdenis]

viewtopic.php?t=604400 for a Mac

[budweiser]

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