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.