Naah, ofcourse Reaper it is.
Both mac and pc version, no difference: outstanding economical use of CPU resources, problaby the best in my DAW experience.
That's why i went for Reaper (on mac) : raw performance is everything to me.
Nowadays "freezing" possibilities in DAW's all well and good, but it's a (extra) step i'd rather won't take in production proces.

Protools has good performance ??!! ehehehe. Jokin' right ?

 

That's why I've written MY champion - cause it works for me. There is nothing better for you to download trials of your potential DAW's and try it yourself

 

To me Reaper is more stable and less CPU intensive than Cubase 8. I can load kontkat 5 up in Cubase and my i4790k starts to show usage but in Reaper it does not even budge. Maybe it's my setup I have no idea but Cubase 8 versus reaper 5 this is what I see. I know Cubase 8 did reduce the CPU usage a lot versus cubase 7, but it's still far behind at least in my experience to reaper.

 

Hmm,did you try to update to 8.5?
Well if Reaper gives you better cpu handling and you get the desired results then its a win/win situation for you.

 

Yes I downloaded the Demo of 8.5 and Its the same performance as Cubase 8 on my machine.
What also piss me off, is that Cubase or should I say Steinberg has dropped support for certain vst instruments like groove agent 2 which still works fine in reaper. My feeling is Steinberg thinks we are all made of money and can just keep upgrading everything with very update they throw at us, for little or minimum performance gains.

 

Yep,they certainly need to listen to their customers a lot more,i think they got too comfortable in the last few years.Thats why i welcome newcomers like S1,competition is healthy.Im comfortable with Steinberg,though they seriously need to work on that aspect.
They could also offer a lot more with Cubase itself,like Sonar Platinum does.Sonar gives you a gazilion of quality tools,plugins and instruments with the DAW itself,while Steinberg doesnt.

 

Yes totally agree with you on that. Cubase has some nice plugins although most are SE version now, but Sonar gives way more for the same price. I am trying S3 right now it's not to bad. I wish they had a better 32 bit vst bridge also I just had a crash with it or I should say that when I set my default keyboard to my new Akai mpk261 is powered off Studio One 3 would not start it crashing instead of just saying it was off line.

 

If it was based on what's in my "mind" rather than the reality of truth, it wouldn't matter what I say. But far as what is the actual truth, Ableton and Reaper are known for being the best in terms of CPU performance.

 

200 Tracks? Too many notes. The ears can only hear so many. LOL.

 

probably ONLY in terms of cpu usage, reaper cuz its such a smaller app. the most? StudioOne by far sucks so bad at cpu usage. the absolute worst

 

One more thread about CPU Rock'n'roll

 

From my experience, for slower machines Reaper is the best (small, fast, efficient, only few mb's).
If you have some type of beast then you can use whatever you want, just what fits your needs.

 

Incase ya'all dont know, aax is d real deal on cpu. Dont get it twisted men

 

As Stevich said:

"DAWs which have less stuff built-in run a lot more smoothly"...

But really folks? Just do yourself a favor and buy the RAM and storage necessary to make it (computers and music) work as its intended or just quit fooling yourself, quit music and find a "day job".

I can run everything in Logic Pro X, 100 instances of 3rd party effects plugins and 50-100 instances of Kontakt across 150 or more tracks without issue (when I'm composing film scores or film trailers), so the 25 to 50 tracks required by EDM or Trap projects I do are seriously easy for my rig...

I don't say that to brag but instead I say so to quell the idiots that want to blame a computer or a DAW for their shortcomings. You need to invest in your resources if you want the shit to work right!
Quit buying cigarettes, fast food and drugs, quit going out to clubs, quit drinking alcohol and you'll soon see the money needed to invest in your craft...

If you don't have that level of commitment in you... do us (and your family) all a favor and just quit music.

I'm sorry for the harshness... but in real life and in person... I don't mince words.

 

Interesting video (watched all three episodes a bit), the producer in it is quite organized. I'm curious if you or anyone else reading this has any info I'd be able to read on his routing techniques within cubase and protools to other computers. He mentioned using several servers on each rig, as well as dedicated computers on his touchscreen and other equipment. What is the method to do this kind of stuff under one centrally located workspace?

 

Hey, would you list your gear? I'm buying a new setup and I'd love to get that kind of performance.

 

Since this was the OP's question, it is easy to answer, because it is only about the technical aspect. In this regard Reaper. It is built on efficiency from the ground up, with a highly optimized audio engine core. It also offers the most options to tweak it to your system's performance, and the frequency of updates to keep it efficient is unrivaled.

There are a lot of other features that one should take into consideration if using a DAW as your everyday workhorse, like reliability, comfort, GUI, workflow, etc. But those are not asked for.

 

Jeez... Reaper only takes 30mo disk space when opened. S13 takes almost 400mo. DP takes 500mo. What in the world, how is this even possible?!

 

funny this , for a long time i thought it was solely based on the DAW on what kind of CPU performance i was getting, until recentlyy I've found it aint just the dAw to consider Case in point, I've been using Cubase for years since Cubase 32 for the majority of this time I've had a Motu Ultralite as my audio interface, some years ago it just dies after almost 3 years of service , so still under warranty i sent it in to be repaired. which left me interface-less. so for the interim i bought a Presonus Audio Box, and it worked really well , more reliable and better CPU performance, when my Motu returned i was torn, I loved the Motu ( lots of features and I/O's and it seemed a more professional unit build wise. and although the performance want what the Audio box was i felt it sounded better and had much better pre's the the audio box so i sold it and went back to my Motu. constantly upgrading my system to get better CPU performance which i did slightly each time but nothing to write home about. fast forward to recently my Motu was now almost 10 years old and although i have a pretty good system I still want getting what others had been getting in the way of track count and reading about people running at as low as 64 samples which would have been impossible with my motu. i was frustrated, could Cubase be that bad? I explored other DAW S1/reaper/Protools/ and even Logic on my Mac all were better on CPU then Cubase it seemed but i ether A. couldn't get my hear round the other DAW (logic/Protool/Reaper) or they just didn't sound as good as Cubase, I liked S1 good performance but seemed a bit thin with the same project in Cubase but better CPU. So more searching everything pointed to it was either Cubase or my audio device, reading a lot about the Motu windows drivers not being that great i decided to try a new audio interface. it was either that or working with S1 and try to warm it up in the mix a little more. 2 weeks ago i Purchased a Steinberg UR242 it was relatively inexpensive considering and it was after all kind of an experiment. not as much I/O's but still would do what i needed and BOOM im now running 5 x more tracks at 96 samples and its dead silent on the CPU. Older songs that i was having to bounce tracks and still almost maxing out CPU at 512 or 1024 sample are now steady at 50/60% all unbounced tracks at 96 samples with sound quality on Paar with the MOTU sound wise.
So you see, DAW CPU performance just aint about the DAW. Hardware plays as well , I haven't tested S1 with my new configuration hardware wise but I like Cubase and im seeing better performance then i ever have with my machine also the DSP integration directly in cubase is pretty nice as well , I love not having to waste time cutting back to get decent latency enough to lay down a vocal track.
CPU performance isn't all about the DAW. different DAW is more about work flow, i think DAW cpu load is more about everything around it Hardware/ system and what plug ins your using cause lets face it some plug ins and just straight up Hogs ( Arturia & some Waves plug ins being the most notorious)

 

Yea.Tom has massive amount of tools available,he has every possible gear at his studios.
To really understand this guy you have to realise he`s been around for a long time.
A DJ in the 90s,had a massive hit song remix in the late 90`s from Elvis Presley and then went to Holywood and learned all there is about composing music for film.
He is now one of the most demanded composers in Holywood.
So yeah,his routing skills are the accumulation of all the gear he tried & tested in all those years and finally this is what his vision of a powerful studio is.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 28, 2016