Reaper 6.21 MacOS ARM = great

[sguyader]

I'm just reporting a success here on my new entry level Mac mini (8 GB RAM).

Since a couple week I've used Reaper MacOS for Catalina, Intel version, with most of my VST plugins still in their Intel version (I guess) and it worked pretty good, the main issue being a slow reaction to solo/mute, as well as play/pause sometimes.

Today I thought I'd try the beta 6.21 version compiled for ARM. And to my surprise, it works like a charm, even better (the previously slow responses are back to normal speed, and even the RAM use is down by around 2 GB - maybe the high RAM use was responsible for the slow responses).

On a 86-track project with 61 FX (48 KHz, 24 bits, 512 samples block size, 13 ms latency), performance meter shows 21% CPU use (17% for just the effects) and 5,6 GB RAM used. Rendering the mix @ 48 kHz / 24 bits is done at 2,5x realtime.

Almost of my VST plugins work fine (Waves, Plugin Alliance, Tokyo Dawn Labs, Sonarworks Reference, Native Instruments Kontakt Player... and many more, paid or free) The only plugins that don't work yet are the Arturia instruments (B3 v2) and effects (Rev Plate-140) but they didn't work in the Intel-compiled version either.

Kudos to the Reaper devs.

EDIT: I don't know what did wrong the first time, but the second time I ran Reaper beta 6.21 for ARM, I couldn't load VST3 plugins, only VST2's. So, what I wrote is to be taken with a pinch of salt.

[spinal]

Do you mean that reaper for M1 is able to run intel plugins?
I thought it was not possible!

[Justin]

reaper/arm can only bridge intel VST2 plug-ins -- VST3 bridging is not yet supported. So it sounds like the OP was maybe using the intel build unless they have updated all of their plug-ins to ARM native ones?

[sguyader]

Justin is right. It looks like when I installed the M1 version of Reaper, it didn't remove the Intel version, and I ran the Intel version instead of the M1 version.
And Justin is also right that when I finally ran the M1 version, I could only load VST2 plugins (which sucks if you intend to side chain a compressor, I think sidechaining only works with VST3, or I don't know how to do it with VST2).

[mschnell]

Of course you can uise any VST2 compressor that features a sidechain input (e.g. ReaComp) in the "normal" way with Reaper's pin routing.
-Michael

[sguyader]

Originally Posted by mschnell

Of course you can uise any VST2 compressor that features a sidechain input (e.g. ReaComp) in the "normal" way with Reaper's pin routing.
-Michael

Well, when I tried using one of my third party plugins that feature side chaining (Waves Scheps Omni Channel) I was able to see the extra sidechain inputs only in the vst3, not in the vst2.

[mschnell]

Do try ReaComp

-Michael

[sguyader]

Originally Posted by mschnell

Do try ReaComp

-Michael

In fact I'm using a sidechain not for compression, but for "de-booming" the bass when the kick hits: it's ducking only the frequency I set , not the whole frequency range. And I do that within a channel strip with other modules. ReaComp is great, but I still prefer using other tools.

By the way, the current "Catalina" builds work well enough for me, even with VST3 plugins running through Rosetta2 translation layer.