I’m planning to upgrade and go for a new pc in a few months, and that computer main and primary use will be for renoise. I’m using a panorama p6 for midi controlling and an icon 8s as audio interface.
I’m currently using a i7-3770 / 16GB ram and on the move it’s a i5-8350u / 8GB.
My typical renoise song carries between 10 to 40 tracks with massive use of real-time VSTs for orchestral songs. On the move I usually convert vst to instruments or render tracks to wave because of the lack of power.
I’m thinking workstation, second hand xeon (maybe a bi cpu motherboard as a possible future upgrade), with 32GB with at least 10 cores / 20 threads as I’d like to keep it to a measured budget (around 500€/$). I’m not going to game on this setup.
How will it compare in renoise to a recent i5 / ryzen with 4/6 cores but higher frequency ?
Are there renoise users with vsts out there with some recent xeon experiences that could be shared ?
Yeah either 7700x or 9700x. 8 core, dual thread, high clocks and IPC. Lower end TDP, so a midrange air cooler is more than enough. Beware with Ryzen and DDR5, stick to two DIMMs as the memory controller limits memory clocks to 3600MTs if you go for more than 2 DIMMs.
I’m using a ryzen 5 5600 with 64gb of 3600mhz ddr4, and renoise is flawless with it, so I’d say you dont need to go mental on the specs. A decent low latency audio interface is equally as useful (I have a Behringer umc 1820, does the job, although I still miss the old Delta 1010 LT I had!). Best of luck!
My audio interface goes 24 bits 192khz, but I usually produce I. 24 bits 48khz, and I have a latency of 2.8 Ms if I remember correctly.
Some of my tracks go up to 60 tracks.
I was told that renoise handles one track a core, plugins can be executed in a separate process (with core affinity).
I’m using lots of vsts from korg, arturia and others cpu generated plugins.
As xeons goes these days as low as 25€ for 16 cores in 2.4 GHz I was wondering if it could be worth a shot. Maybe i5 13500 as it’s not concerned by the recent Intel voltage stability issues. I’ll keep digging, thanks again for your replies guys. Additional feedback will be welcome!
I would avoid intel as their architecture of performance and efficiency cores produces some scheduling issues still. Its not that Renoise uses one track per core/thread, its more that audio isnt easily multi-threaded and audio tends to be single thread bound. I was tempted by Intel but the architectural issues put me off, i preferred Ryzen for all cores being equal and being fast in their own right. Obviously i dont know your budget but i think Ryzen might be a better call for audio.
You don’t need a crazy high end expensive CPU either, a modern mid range CPU is more than enough for music production. Put any money saved towards decent headphones, speakers or monitor.
Also, save CPU by increasing buffer size/latency. No reason to stress your CPU with 2MS latency when it offers no benefits over 20MS.
And to repeat, a Xeon is a bad choice. It does not have good IPC per clock. They are designed for servers, not real time audio.
What motherboard do you have? Perhaps see what the very faster CPU and memory you can support is and max out what you have for now. Then only when you hit limits, do a more substantial platform upgrade - or slowly save towards that day?
Not worth it on such an old platform, it doesn’t even support DDR4 and won’t run Windows 11, which means you will just end up having compatibility issues.