32-Bit Vs. 64-Bit Versions & The Plugin Bridge

Help, Support & Bugs
1

Should I download the 32-bit or 64-bit version?

The advantage of 64-bit is mainly being able to use more than 4 GB of RAM, and that the 64-bit version runs slightly faster. Whether you are using a 32-bit or 64-bit version, Renoise’s internal audio precision remains !exactly! the same.

  • To run the 64-bit version, your OS must be a 64-bit one. If in doubt, use the 32-bit version. It will always work on any OS.
  • If you rarely or never use plugins, and have a 64-bit OS, go for the 64-bit version of Renoise as well. The 64-bit version can use more than 4 GB of memory and will perform a little better.
  • If you use a lot of plugins, your OS is a 64-bit one, and most of your plugins are available as 64-bit plugins, then you might also want to go for the 64-bit version of Renoise.
  • When ReWire is an important part of your workflow, make sure that both the ReWire host and slave (Renoise and some other application) are both either 32-bit or 64-bit. ReWire does not work across the “bit boundary”.

What about my old 32-bit or new 64-bit plugins?

Renoise 2.8 also comes complete with a native plug-in bridge, allowing seamless usage of 32-bit instrument and effect plug-ins inside the 64-bit Renoise process, and vice versa. The plugin bridge works with all supported platforms and all plugin formats: VSTs on Windows, OSX and Linux, AudioUnits on OSX and LADSPA/DSSIs on Linux.

This means if you are running the 64-bit version of Renoise, you will also be able to load your old 32-bit plugins. When running a 32-bit Renoise !on a 64-bit OS!, you can also make use of installed 64-bit plugins. I.e. on a 64-bit OS you will be able to load 64-bit and 32-bit plugins. On a 32-bit OS, you can only load 32-bit plugins.

Please note that such bridged plugins will run a little slower. Furthermore, external plugin editor windows will grab the keyboard focus away from Renoise on OSX and Linux. Whether that’s relevant to you of course depends on your workflow, so just give both versions a try to decide what’s better for you.

Still confused? Let us know, and we’ll try to help!

2

I just can say, the internal bridge is one of the best and most stable bridges, maybe even the best, i’ve ever used. With all my other DAW’s i’ve often problems with bridged VST’s. But in Renoise i never had one problem with bridged VST’s.

3

I can say that the bridge is quite CPU demanding on OSX, even on my high end CPU. That’s why I usually do not use it. And that’s fine, Renoise is so stable, that that works, too. Although lately some new problematic VSTis appeared, which seem to run properly only in the bridge, for example MUX from mutools (crashes on exit). So I wished I could enable the bridge for plugins individually, too! Simply in the plugin options…

Taktik said that it’s the nature of the bridge that it is so demanding for CPU. I only wonder that Bitwig’s bridge on the other hand seems to work much more performant, even almost like no-bridge…

4

Ok, i forgot to write, i’m using Windows 10, and the bridge of the Win version of Renoise works fine here. About the CPU: yes, all bridged VST’s use a bit more CPU than unbridged. But for me this isn’t really a problem. My 8 core CPU is running fast enough to run a whole bunch of bridged VST’s.