I’d like to use VCV Rack Pro as a plugin for Reason 12, but no matter how I configure VCV Rack or Reason, I do not get more than 8-9fps, which is disappointing, with nothing added to my VCV patch.
In an effort to investigate further, I’ve tried other DAWs and I notice that wildly different framerates depending on DAW, so I am assuming this may be Reason’s fault.
Reason 12: 9 fps max
Reaper 6.43: 21 fps max
Ableton Live 11: 60 fps max
Does anyone know why performance within Reason is so bad? Or how to improve it?
The problem with Reason is the codebase is ancient. They’ve done their best to update it, but I think that they left it way too long to address the problem, and that it’s a bit of a dead end. R12 has been fraught with bugs, some of them pretty significant. Reason used to be defined by it’s stability, but that’s a thing of the past.
I used Reason for many, many years, but I’ve completely moved away from it in favour of VCV and Reaper, which is a vastly more powerful and enjoyable combination than using Reason. If you are attached to any of your Rack Extensions, you can always run Reason within Reaper. I just picked up a R12 Lite license instead of an upgrade as it’s only a handful of synths that I ended up missing.
Probably not what you want to hear, but believe me, I wish I’d switched away from Reason years ago.
I tried using Reason 12 standalone and a number of times it crashed my PC so badly I had to do a hardware shutdown. Not good. Much better behaved as a plugin, thankfully.
Yeah. I think they’ve pretty much abandoned the sequencer-aspect and have concentrated on the VST. It’s been pretty stable for me, but I’m only using an RE or two at a time. I think they’ll probably kill the sequencer in a couple of releases time, right around the time they go subscription only.
That is unfortunate because while it’s maybe not technically as capable as other sequencers/piano rolls, I do find it easy to use. Were it not for all the performance issues, I would really enjoy using Reason as a sequencer with Rack and other VSTs as plugins.
Honestly. Switch to Reaper. You won’t miss it. You’ll pick it up really quickly and the sequencer is so much nicer to use. Watch Reaper Mania’s ‘Getting started with to Reaper 6’. It will get you up to speed very quickly.
I’ve got both Reason 10 and 12 installed. Version 10 has got the same fps issue, so I can’t blame it on the new graphics in version 12. If I were starting out fresh, I would go with Reaper (of course, people complain about Reaper too).
Personally, I’ll probably stick with Reason (but, I’ve been using it since version 1.0 and I’m used to janky, frustrating workarounds for everything).