Propellerhead Reason 10 Not Optimized For AMD 1950x Threadripper?

[jamesbenchia]

So, I built a new PC specifically for a heavy workload of audio/ recording/ mixing/ mastering with songs that consist of 50-100 tracks with long effects chains and multiple, multiple VSTs. I started with the Enermax Liqtech 240 AIO Liquid Cooling System - as the guys at Micro Center advised and that was their best AIO solution. Well - it keeps my system nice and cool while idle and during stress tests - even while overclocked. I overclocked to 4000 GHZ and the temps did rise quite a bit to around 50+ degrees while idle.

However - even at stock settings - the moment I open Reason 10 my temps jump 10 to 20 degrees. Then, they just keep climbing - slowly - from there. They don't really stop. Even when not playing through a song. Even when I play a song - and THEN press "stop."

When I do ANY bit of overclocking - it gets even worse. OC'd to just 3600 or 3800 - my temps slowly rise until my PC just crashes.

I reached out to Propellerhead Support TWICE about this over the last TWO WEEKS - and I haven't receive ANY response from them - when every other time I've had a problem they have responded within a couple days.

I'm ALSO an Ableton Live 10 user - and Ableton runs nice and cool at 34 degrees on stock settings. Thus - I am forced to assume that Reason 10 is simply NOT optimized for the 1950x Threadripper and all of it's manifest glory - and the folks at Propellerhead do not want to admit it which is why they have not responded to my inquiries.

Any ideas, thoughts, solutions?

Running Reason 10 on 44k at 512 buffer.

 

[jamesbenchia]

*Update*

Moments AFTER my second support email was sent - they sent a reply.

"Hi Jamie,

We have not specifically tested the new generation of AMD CPUs with Reason, although it is planned.
However, they are similar to dual CPU systems and should perform at least as good as those.

Reason can make use of any number of CPU cores for multi-core rendering.

Thanks for your feedback!"

I had previously asked them if Reason 10 would make full use of ALL it's cores.

 

[mdd1963]

If you'd monitor HWMonitor, you'd see what the various cores are ramping up to...all cores ramping up would imply the cores are being utilized.

Why not test it first adequately at stock speeds? And then with modest but better memory timings/speeds? Then increase multiplier upward slowly, while monitoring temps?

(In fact, the crashing implies overheating, likely caused by all cores being utilized in a heavy workload, but, you won't be able to necessarily hit your desired OC strictly by selecting a higher multiplier multiplier....)

 

[jamesbenchia]

Sorry - First of all, I should note that I'm not much of a PC tech guy. Just a musician/ producer with an amateur interest in tech. After thinking about it - yeah - it seems obvious that all cores were being utilized.

As for stock speeds - I tested that first - and it CAN stabilize at stock. It just depends on what song I load up, whether or not it continues to climb. However, it jumps up 20 degrees just by loading Reason 10, whereas Ableton Live 10 does NOT.

I'm wondering why I can OC for Ableton 10 and stabilize and not Reason 10. Seems to me that Reason 10 is simply not optimized for 1950x TR - as the support email said they have not even tested for it yet.

 

[genz]

Then please understand that it's not a matter of 'all your cores'. Cores unfortunately are a 'pipe in a series of tubes'. Hence the term 'bottleneck' which they love here. I come from an audio background so I may be able to help.

A thread ripper CPU offer much more cores of power, but via a 4xMCM, which essentially means your chip is 4 separate pieces connected by data pipes. The connections between these pieces incurs time just like your buffer which means any CPU has less time to process work. This is key to understanding how to use a TR audio workstation. You must minimise communication between cores or your system simply doesn't have the time to use it's power, else you must give it more latency so that all cores can be filled up with data and not process faster than they receive, and thus wait in between receiving information. Try and bear with me as I am trying to make something rather complex into simplistic terms. Simply put Reason is not optimal for this platform, because a set of modular interfaces are naturally serialised (like a small set of tracks with lots of plugins, one HAS to be before the other to send it's audio/gate to the other, in Ableton, most tracks can run completely independently leading to lots of short disconnected jobs rather than a few long jobs. TR is best at disconnected jobs).

Reason is different because connecting two separate tracks is a much easier affair, plug the out or a CV/gate line from one to the other. This is a inter-core affair if the two tracks were running on two different processors, which is where the Threadripper is slower than even a normal 4 core some of the time (when one thread is on one MCM and the one it communicates with is on another, the 'pipe' makes things slower)

You have 32 logical cores, so 50 tracks is 2 per logical core. You will tear through many benchmarks. You need to set up a range of new things. Firstly your BIOS setting should be UMA mode to make sure that your chip is set to treat these 4 MCMs as 1 chip and not a 4 socket server chip. NUMA mode is for newer applications that can basically manage the pipes themselves, but we can set this inside windows and not set the reverse, because NUMA came from dual socket computers and they are very universal.

When you have this, download the app Ryzen master from AMD. It's 'game/legacy' mode will turn on NUMA and disable HT.
Don't worry about HT, because more logical cores add latency and throughput like a conveyor belt allows you to scan items faster but takes longer for one item to get in and out again, and two makes you have to guess which one the cashier is gonna pick from if you wanna estimate how long a pipe takes, so don't worry about seeing less cores, they all still work and now their latency is easier to approximate which is good for calculating the correct sized recording buffers in programming.

I believe NUMA will work better for Reason 10, because it is 'all always active' by design, so that CVs and sequencers can always sound consistent. Ableton turns off all the channels that aren't armed but Reason would have to do it differently because it's so modular. Anyway, NUMA should try to move most of the idle work to one MCM module, and because less are being sent between the pipes (needing two cores actively powered during that time) that will incur less active CPU time which should translate to less heat. It should also make low latency work easier, but have a much lower absolute limit on tracks with the counts raised because suddenly as the pipes must be used, your latency will unexpectedly jump and Reason isn't optimised to expect this.

As a result using Ryzen Master whilst recording and idling, then knocking down the latency and turning game mode off for huge projects will give you a system that runs a lot faster and cooler.

I don't actually have a Ryzen/Reason system myself, but I have a few dual socket systems and a good working knowledge of the subject. I know how to really optimise DAWs.