so i started toying with reason again, it was what i started with back in the day when it was at v1. and maaaaaaan, i forgot how much fun it was. i don't know, maybe the closed environment lets you get more in touch with the music...

anyway, the problem i'm having is with the cpu. i'm somewhere around 20% and every now and then the whole damn thing freezes and the cpu climbs to a ridiculous 80% and then i get a message saying my computer is too slow to play the song. after i hit ok and re-enable audio by hitting stop/play everything's fine. cpu is back to 20% and the works. just for it to happen again randomly. i tried increasing the latencly to even 150ms but it still happens.

i've used reason exclusively for about 2 years and it's never done that even on projects with 20-30 tracks.

help me out here because it's wrecking an otherwise splendid time i'm having with reason.

Well I would suggest the latency solution but you've already tried with no success. Here's one thing to consider instead of indentifying reason as the problem it could very well be your PC and some process or program could be taking up huge amounts of cpu usage at random times which then inflicts with reason. Viruses or trojans can do that, try defragmenting your pc, free up some space, exit out of unused programs etc. Hope that helps in some way.

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Does your song have any reverb units with a long delay's or DDL's with allot of feedback, set heavily on the wet side. If so your CPU might not be able to cope with multiple notes, as it trys to execute the process over and over again the reverb/DDL layers could become very complicated. Doesn't sound like this would be the problem.

Is this happening on every song? even the simple one's or old ones that used to work. If so I suggest that it's a PC problem. Try turning of all background applications and simple things like your desktop pictures. I put a photo taken with a 10 Mp camera and set it as my background only for it to cause problems. Make sure you have only got one song open and that your samples are still in the same location as when you first wrote the song (if it's an old one). Then try a disk clean up and defrag as per SG's comments. Start-programs-accessories-system tools. Lastly you could check for loose RAM, cables,CPU fan etc, if you know what your doing.

SG, what is a good latency to have Reason set at, and at what point does the latency start to have a real effect on how the song sounds. ta.

Well this might sound dumb or obvious but latency has an real effect when you're pc is biting more than it can handle, when you have a real good processor and sound card you probably will never see Reason freeze up. But I've saw reason freeze up on pcs with weak processor power when there's ton of processes going on and just wasting the cpu usage. Personally I have my Latency Settings on it's default, and I usually don't run into many problems, the default is out latency at 185 and compensation latency at 185. Remember guys, when you're using reason and tons of effects and devices close all unnecessary programs, especially the ones that tend to hide on that system tray. Lastly, I would say get an at least decent machine to run reason on. Mines is 2.4 GHz and 258mb of ram(Yes, I plan to upgrade the ram) and it runs pretty damn good. OH and one more thing, GET GOOD ANTIVIRUS AND FIREWALL, I recommend NOD32 and OUTPOST Firewall, they help keep your pc in good shape, also defrag your drives every weekend. Okay that's all.


_SG_

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thanks for your replies. it might be worth mentioning the following.

- my daw pc is not connected to the net, thus i have no antivirus or firewall installed
- reason was the only program running
- i had no unusual long dselya/reverb tails in that project
- no desktop wallpaper
- i'm running tiny xp

a dude at the kvr forums mentioned i should get the latest update since the cpu spikes are a bug caused by nn-xt. and indeed after getting v 3.0.4 (i was running v 3.0 buid 514) and everythings fine now.

cheers. no let's make some beats


edit: btw sg i checked out your space and you got some nice tunes there. bravo

Those are pretty old, I should update it, but thanks alot man. I'm also glad you got your reason working, nobody should be stopped from making music. Enjoy it!

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oh, how i'm enjoying it!

Good man, hey when you get some finished pieces of work be sure to share it with us.

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haha, don't worry. i'll spam this forum like a spambot on crack. i started a track a few days ago and i think i'll have it ready by tomorrow. rather fast eh? when you think it used to take me up to 4 month with ableton live/cubase.

i am now officially a reason fanboy.

Well I use ableton live sometimes in rewire with reason and I tried cubase but failed miserably. I started out with sony acid which i've abandoned because for me its just a program that you use premade loops for. It used to take me a while to make a track back then too. Now maybe the most is a week and that's when i don't have much time in the day to do it. I look foward to your spamming of tracks! By the way what in what kind of genre do you produce, mines is mostly hip hop if you produce that that's cool because I'm looking for someone to colab with.

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