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Old 08-11-2014, 10:27 AM   #1
JonSlaughter
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Join Date: Oct 2013
Posts: 22
Default Reaper Optimization Guide?!

Is there an optimization guide for reaper? Specifically how to minimize pops and clicks during mixing/playback while maximizing response time.


1. Higher buffers in the audio device settings generally reduces pops and clicks but increases latency.

a. There is a limit to which this does good. I've tried setting extremely large buffers(10+ seconds worth) and no sound. With one second, I still get pops and clicks similar to around a 200ms buffer setting. There is no perfect setting here as far as I can tell.

b. # of buffers vs sample size of buffers? 10 x 1024 or 1 x 10240? Does it matter?

2. Disk buffer helps reduce load on hard drives. With SSD, possibly not an issue, but higher settings don't seem to help either.

3. I have 8gig of memory. 100% of my projects are audio, yet reaper only uses 1.1gig and still accesses the HD. Why can't reaper store most if not all the audio in memory to avoid disk access?

I know it is accessing the disk because the performance meter shows it start at around 300kB/s then jumps to around 10MB/s.

4. Media buffer size. I have it set to 1600ms. Helped a little but larger values cause more problems than it solves and reaper does not seem to use more memory with higher settings.

5. Anticipative FX processing - Higher values than 200ms don't seem to help much. I've even tried to turn it off in my project and it was way worse.

6. Stem rendering - Great to reduce load but messy in that you have to keep track of the stems and the track they come from. Would be nice to be able to "freeze" a track but still have the ability to edit it as normal. Reaper's freeze hides the tracks. Reapers "stems" makes two tracks. I'd rather be able to toggle between the last frozen state and the non-frozen state with a dirty flag telling me if the last freeze is not up to date.

e.g., When I freeze a track and need to modify it, I have to unfreeze it. It it takes 10 mins to freeze a track, then it is a total of 20 mins to sometimes fix a simple problem. Very time consuming. If I use stems, I can keep the old stem around, but still make unessential changes. I might not be able to hear them but it's not a big deal. If it is, I can just render the updated part of the song(usually going to be very short, seconds) and add that to the old stem.

I can do this already with stems but because reaper tracks them as a separate track, it can become a little messy keeping track of them. Also, reaper keeps all these frozen media items and stem files around... even if they will never be used again. (e.g., freeze then unfreeze a track and you have a 50MB file taking up space that will never be used again).


One day I will be able to upgrade to a better computer but until then any one know anything to increase reapers performance?

(The #1 thing I would like to have is for reaper to actually take advantage of as much free memory(80% say) as it can. It should be a pretty easy thing to do, right?)
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