Yeah I honestly have close to zero feature requests for Renoise. It serves me well for what it is.
My only complaint is the VST performance for “newer stuff”. Nothing else, really (because VST can fill the gaps for any features the DAW doesn’t have - e.g. granular synthesis, spectral processing, etc).
I’ve been using Renoise less and less because of the problems I’m having.
I’ll now try a workflow with Redux within Reaper and see how it goes (at least until new updates). I can’t work with piano rolls, my brain works better with trackers.
@untilde Would it be possible to compile a somewhat similar project in Renoise and Reaper to show and test the CPU differences, so we can test this here and look for problems? Reaper is pretty good with CPU scheduling, but “terrible performance in Renoise” vs. “barely touching 40% CPU in Reaper” sounds like there’s a bug or something else.
Ideally, only free plugins should be used for such a project, so that everyone can test it without buying a bunch of plugin licenses.
did a quick test, looping random note events across random vital presets in 5 instances of vital at the same time and the cpu meter in Renoise doesn’t go beyond 8.9% (AMD Ryzen 7 7700 8-Core Processor 3.80 GHz, ram = 32 gb). Perhaps it is a combo with other plugins that is causing problems on your end?
Also have you ever tinkered around with the settings here for plugins?
It’s hard to compare CPU displays accross DAWs. Renoise shows the overall percentage of the audio real-time thread only, where 100% means that audio definitely starts to crackle. Also it does not take CPU throttling into account.
So either compare the CPU values reported by task manager after minimizing all GUIs or, even more reliably, don’t look at the meter at all and compare when audio starts to crackle, which is basically the only thing that matters.
Also when comparing CPU loads, make sure you are using the same audio driver with the same audio sample rate and buffer settings. Buffer sizes and sample rates make a big difference here.
Here’s a test using 16 Vital instances with the “A happy ending of the world” preset (sorry, it was the first one :))
On my working machine, a 12th Gen Intel i5-1240P with 16 CPU threads Renoise and Reaper can both play that. Starting the Song in Renoise crackles, because Renoise doen’t know yet where the plugins are played. On Reaper it sometimes crackles when looping.
When not looping and not starting playback, just playing through, reaper can handle a few more tracks, Renoise barely can. But there’s no drastic difference.
So the CPU baseline is similar, but it also would be weird if it isn’t, as this is just one VST playing on one core. Apart from scheduling the VSTis to some CPU the host’s don’t do much here.
I guess it gets really interesting when using send & groups tracks and also Track DSP FX. There surely will be differences.
I don’t have reaper to compare it with, but indeed on first playback run there are stutters in the beginning in Renoise, then after looping or subsequent playback the cpu usage stabelizes around 19 - 20 % (around the same cpu usage for renoise in the windows 11 taskbar). This is on 48000hz, 512 samples Asio buffer settings.
I think AMD have released several BIOS updates to their new CPUs as of late and probably more to come I suspect. If you need some assistance updating just ask, usually it’s just download the new bios and place in on a USB thumb drive, then go into your BIOS and find the update button somewhere
For Windows it should be important to get the latest chipset drivers directly from AMD, not your motherboard vendor, so I think you might have to be a little patient with the Linux drivers?
I’m also getting a new 9000 series CPU soon
Interesting test for my old i5-9600k with 6 cores, no hyperthreading.
Reaper can run all 16 instances without any issues but in Renoise the audio engine stops a few times before being able to run with massive stuttering both DAWs at 70% CPU usage. To remove all the stuttering Renoise can only run 8 instances and even then still give occasional stutter. Both Reaper and Renoise should run at at 44k, 512 samples on a Volt ASIO.
Maybe some setting is wrong here or could it be hyperthreading is important to Renoise and/or Vital? If hyperthreading is important then it’s gonna be interesting to test the upcoming Intel CPUs.
1. Intel i5 8400 (6/6) + 1x8gb RAM (pretty weak office PC in which I sometimes use Renoise)
Reaper:
Idle CPU usage is 20%.
Average CPU usage playing the whole loop from start to finish is 45%. Some slight crackling during the first couple seconds (when it peaks at 100%), but it gets stable after that.
Weird, isn’t it? CPU peaks at about 85%. There’s some slight crackling, but nothing compared to what it sounds like when hitting PLAY immediately after loading the project. Lots of questions.
After hitting stop again (once), it idles at 20%!
In dumb-proof wording, what happens internally when we double click STOP?
How does Renoise behave when loading plugins at startup versus after double clicking STOP?
I’m very curious.
AMD Ryzen 3600 (6/12) + 2x8gb RAM (I’ll test this later this evening at home)
As mentioned above, let’s please ignore the CPU display in Renoise and Reaper. It’s hard to compare this:
@untilde Also, how many realtime audio CPUs have you enabled in Renoise’s Audio preferences? What is the audio buffer size for WASAPI in Renoise and Reaper?
Double stop does a panic. Flushes all audio buffers and stops all plugins.
I’ll fix the CPU overload when starting the song after loading it. So let’s ignore that for now too because that demo song isn’t really a realistic example. This does happen, because in Renoise plugin instrument can move freely from any track to another one. So in order to find out where a plugin plays, it needs to play. This can be avoided by setting the Audio Routing for the plugin in Renoise from “Current Track” to some dedicated track.
Also note Reaper’s “Anticipative FX Rendering” option.
This basically “freezes” tracks and preloads them automatically. It’s a great feature. Renoise doesn’t have anything like that. I think no other DAW has a similar feature.
That alone might be the reason why Reaper works so much better for you - CPU performance wise.
