When a Midi item is playing and when I'm editing parameters in a VST or VSTi lagging occurs and occasionally the DAW locks up and crashes. I have been changing settings in the audio section along with the device buffer latency and the buffering sections from watching tutorials and reading on how to prevent it, but none of them helped since there using a different OS or cpu. I also haven't been able to find any information on how to edit the Advanced I/O Disk Options in the buffering section. I'm not using any external audio devices or internal sound cards.

My cpu is a i5-6600K and my OS is Windows 7 64bit. What settings will be the best for my cpu?

 

Err, what? Means you don't use any soundcard at all?

 

Being that Reaper, is a very efficient DAW, it would most likely mean that the way your system is setup & running is the cause of system lag. Just a guess from afar. I can get Reaper to do basic tasks on a 1GB/Dual Core/socket 775 desktop.

Then there is the old Dell N5010 laptop i3 2.4GHz quadcore with 4GB that can run Pro Tools.

An i5-6600K should be a walk in the park (so to speak) for Reaper.

Have done the prerequisite system tuning suggested by Avid & the like?
Is your Anti Virus/Malware prevention software running?
Any background services or programs eating up system resources?

There is plenty of info on Windows optimization here & on developers sites.

 

I know I can use a sound card and then use the ASIO drivers which might fix the latency problem. I figured that I can just use the Realtek Audio Driver but if a sound card takes pressure off the cpu then I'll have to buy one. In the past when I configured the settings it worked but now I'm not seeing any improvement.

I'll have to look more into on what is suggested for other DAWs. I do have background programs and services running, but the cpu usage fluctuates below or about the same as what Reaper uses.

 

I never changed the Advanced Disk I/O options, all on default here.

You're using Direct Sound? What is the latency showing in the top right in the main Reaper window?

 

It displays 226ms of latency.

 

Should be in the 20ms to 26ms range for DirectX 11. 512 buffer setting
Should be in the 10 to 18ms range for WASAPI. 512 buffer setting.

The Realtek is audio is okay if the drivers are up-to-date & you have one of the better on-board setups.

An external audio device could just compound the problem until you resolve the underlying issue.

 

I lowered the latency to 90ms, but it's still lagging on beats two and four.

 

Load your set and press play. Ctrl+Alt+P to bring up the CPU window. Post a screenshot. Do the same with Task Manager and sort by CPU usage while Reaper is running.
Are you using a portable installation of Reaper and have you tried reinstalling (and restarting)?

 

That's pretty cool, I didn't know that reaper has it's own task manager and I'm using the portable version. I only have one track playing with one instrument, some have wav media items on them, but all other tracks and fx chains are disabled.

When I look at reapers task manager it the track that is being played peaks at 0.68% when playing and when idle it fluctuates from 0.34% to 0.45%, the cpu averages to 7.50% overall it peaks to 8.5%. Looking at windows task manager the background program that's running peaks at 18 cpu, Reapers is at 07 and the overall cpu usage peaks at 27% sometimes spikes to 36%.

 

Last edited: Nov 24, 2019

Don't hold down your mouse button for too long while pressing a VST.

 

If you are using an external drive, usb stick or SD card, it should be formatted to NTFS or exFat. windows default is usually FAT32. For best speed & compatibility, always use exFat or NTFS for modern systems. exFat is also natively compatible with Linux & MacOSX.

 

I should of elaborated a little more, I'm using the portable version of Reaper on my sata hd.

 

I tried seeing what would happen if I chose the asio as the primary, since I don't have a internal or external sound card, it made everything lag.

 

Install the retail version from the Cockos site and see if you have the same issues. If you don't, overwrite the installation with the portable files and see if the issues persist. You have to install the same revision of the retail version if you want to overwrite the files. Look here: https://www.reaper.fm/download-old.php

 

Well I figured out one of the problems that is causing the lag, I had all twenty of the fx tracks opened even though I disabled them from loading.

 

Last edited: Nov 24, 2019