Question Anybody have experience with Ryzen and Presonus Studio One performance?

[Hulk]

I'm looking to replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory in the rig in my signature specifically for increasing performance in my preferred DAW, which is Presonus Studio One (V4). I'm considering the 10850k or the 3900x. I've never had/built and AMD system before but the pricing/performance ratio is too much for me to ignore. I've found some information on DAWbench regarding Ryzen DAW performance and it's very good but I'd love to substantiate those results with someone who actually uses Studio One with a Ryzen processor. If you have such a system please let me know how it's working out for you.

My biggest issue is that when mixing I'd like to have more compute so I don't have to worry about glitches and dropouts when I'm running lots of tracks with processor intensive plug-ins.

 

[Markfw]

Question, i this application highly threaded ? If so, then Ryzen will be faster. If you are looking at the current prices on a 3900x, then price/performance is great. If the budget and time allows, the 5900x will be $550 but 20% faster than 3900x..

 

[moinmoin]

DAWs are more comparable with games than usual compute workloads since they require real time computation i.e. low latency. All the powerful threads are of no help if they take too long to deliver results latency wise. For such Intel has been better so far, but the Ryzen 5000 series may be about to change that. If I were you I'd suggest to wait for the launch of the Ryzen 5000 series on November 5th so that you can look for and/or request benchmarks for your use case.

Edit: Good video on this topic:

 

[damian101]

For best real-time performance I would go with an Intel CPU (Sandy Bridge or newer), or with an AMD Ryzen CPU that has a single CCX, like the Ryzen 3300X or the new Ryzen 5000 CPUs with up to 8 cores.
However, even systems with these CPUs who have really low cache and core-to-core latencies can have really bad real-time performance, normally when a drivers DPC routines are executed for too long. I can recommend LatencyMon to test the real-time compute capability of your system.

 

[misuspita]

AMD Ryzen 3000 series - Gearspace

Hello, Not very long ago the new AMD's Ryzen platform has been upgraded. The 3000 series is the newest among the AMD upgraded Ryzen iterations. From 6 core to the 12 core behemoth, it is all there. The 12 core part features a whopping 70mb of total cache.

www.gearslutz.com

PreSonus Studio One - Gearspace

PreSonus Studio One -

www.gearslutz.com

I think your question might be better answered on a more dedicated daw forum, and this is the place to go. If linking to it is forbidden please delete.

As a personal note, I use Studio One and I think the new 5xxx series will be over their Intel equivalent but it's better to wait for tests done. In those threads you will find dedicated audio professionals who do just that

 

[Hulk]

Thanks for the advice, I do appreciate you taking the time to respond.

@misuspita,
I do frequent those forums. Unfortunately while those forums have a lot of members with a lot of DAW experience unfortunately most of them don't have the acumen when it comes to analyzing CPU performance that most of the people around here do.

 

[KompuKare]

I do frequent those forums. Unfortunately while those forums have a lot of members with a lot of DAW experience unfortunately most of them don't have the acumen when it comes to analyzing CPU performance that most of the people around here do.

Well, any software with extensive plugins - like Photoshop - is pretty hard to benchmark accurately.
Imagine Adobe make their program very multi-threaded and only ship with plugins which are equally multi-threaded: well at it would take to have a poor user experience is for one often used third-part plugin to be single-threaded or compiled so it has performs badly on Ryzen. That's a main reason why as the smaller vendor, AMD, cannot afford to do things too differently to Intel.

 

[Thibsie]

Well Adobe has been (still are?) very bad at threading their softwares correctly.

In theory those kind of softwares are prime candidates for threading but do not care a damn.

 

[LikeLinus]

Well Adobe has been (still are?) very bad at threading their softwares correctly.

In theory those kind of softwares are prime candidates for threading but do not care a damn.

This is the primary reason why I would recommend Intel over Ryzen in this instance. I use Creative Cloud daily and my 9900K has been great. For DAW, I use Cubase Pro, but I use a PreSonus Studio interface and love it.

PreSonus recommends an i7 w/ quad core or higher for Studio Pro One.

 

[Markfw]

This is the primary reason why I would recommend Intel over Ryzen in this instance. I use Creative Cloud daily and my 9900K has been great. For DAW, I use Cubase Pro, but I use a PreSonus Studio interface and love it.

PreSonus recommends an i7 w/ quad core or higher for Studio Pro One.

Ryzen 5000 series is better at single thread (according to the benchmarks), so it would be the choice over Intel. If you want to wait for independent benchmarks, they come in the next 2-3 weeks. The 5800x or the 5900x will be better choices than even a 10900k. They go on sale Nov 5th.

 

[TheGiant]

Don't forget latency
Single threaded performance of the cores is not enough here
We will see what Ryzen 5k can deliver soon

 

[Markfw]

Don't forget latency
Single threaded performance of the cores is not enough here
We will see what Ryzen 5k can deliver soon

I won't argue that, but latency is supposed to be much better. Thats why gaming is supposed to be so much better. I believe the benchmarks, but nobody can argue that the best is independent reviews.

 

[scannall]

Ryzen 5000 arrives in a couple weeks. On a large investment then a few weeks to be sure you are getting the best would be prudent. While I tend to think the Ryzen 5000 series will likely be the better choice, lets see what the 3rd party benches say here soon.

 

[LikeLinus]

Ryzen 5000 series is better at single thread (according to the benchmarks), so it would be the choice over Intel. If you want to wait for independent benchmarks, they come in the next 2-3 weeks. The 5800x or the 5900x will be better choices than even a 10900k. They go on sale Nov 5th.

That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. Intel is the recommended CPU to be used by the manufacture and it is best to use recommended hardware in such systems.

Seems a bit silly to be actively telling people to wait for hardware that isn't even released for another month that has not been verified or certified by the developer. Availability could be an issue, pricing/overall cost and many other things. Go with what is tried and true.

 

[misuspita]

That is generally true, but right now one of the 2 x86 duopol is launching a possible disruptive CPU line. Disruptive as in changing the top performer in a number of traditional Intel fields. That being games and evidently audio and video production suites, like Studio One, or Adobe software.
If the OP is in a hurry and cannot wait 2 weeks to see the independent reviews, then he should go with what is tried and true, even if I showed a rather large gearslutz topic where they discuss the merits of Amd 3xxx series. With latencies and number of vst's.

If I were to choose right now, I'd wait those 2 weeks and see if they are better or not than the latest Intel line. My hunch is that they are.

 

[LikeLinus]

I know that ProTools recommends Intel and one of the designers of Fractal Audio had a post in March around building a new Intel CPU due to incompatibilities and stability issues that burned him with Ryzen CPUs.

I use Fractal Audio (AXE-FX III and FC-6) and that's how I became aware of it.

Gearslutz is back and forth. I've read people having low latency/realtime performance issues with certain VSTs / DAW. You'll see others that do not have this issue. That's why compatibility is key with DAW and hardware. Plus, Thunderbolt is another thing to think about.

Not saying the 5900x won't be fast, but the OP didn't ask about it and it's obviously more expensive and untested. This is part of my profession, so I work with known tried-and-true hardware as much as possible.

I think the point is, if the developers set the recommended hardware based upon what they designed the software on/for, it's best to follow the guidelines if this is your livelihood. If not, more power to you and use whatever you want.

 

[sdifox]

Wait for Zen 3 then decide. Coming first week of Nov

 

[Markfw]

I know that ProTools recommends Intel and one of the designers of Fractal Audio had a post in March around building a new Intel CPU due to incompatibilities and stability issues that burned him with Ryzen CPUs.

I use Fractal Audio (AXE-FX III and FC-6) and that's how I became aware of it.

Gearslutz is back and forth. I've read people having low latency/realtime performance issues with certain VSTs / DAW. You'll see others that do not have this issue. That's why compatibility is key with DAW and hardware. Plus, Thunderbolt is another thing to think about.

Not saying the 5900x won't be fast, but the OP didn't ask about it and it's obviously more expensive and untested. This is part of my profession, so I work with known tried-and-true hardware as much as possible.

I think the point is, if the developers set the recommended hardware based upon what they designed the software on/for, it's best to follow the guidelines if this is your livelihood. If not, more power to you and use whatever you want.

The developers set the recommended hardware a while ago, they never had a chance to benchmark or use Ryzen 5000 series. Up until this new series, even the 3000 series lagged into in single thread and latency. The argument of untested just doesn't cut it IMO. Ryzen has been well tested, this series just makes a few tweaks for speed.

 

[LikeLinus]

"The argument of untested just doesn't cut it "

Yet your argument is a non-independently tested and unreleased CPU is automatically better and should be selected based on...assumptions?

FYI, how much do you actually work with and use DAW software?

DAWbench, which is the simulated benchmarking software that the OP mentioned, has good things to say about the 3950X. The 3950X wins the DSP testing, but loses in the VI testing. In their review a few months ago, they also said

"The earlier concerns about a limited number of incompatibilities have so far not grown and we’re aware that AMD have been working hard to help smooth these out. With the platform not so much “on the map” at this point, as stomping all over it in size 12 boots, we would hope that that developers are now sitting up, paying attention and baking in full compatibility from the ground upwards on future product releases."

"I’ve also retested the common Intel mid-range selection, including the ever popular 9900K. These were amongst the last chips that I took a look a proper look at and throughout 2019 remained popular options, still offering a strong solution where the utmost compatibility is concerned."

"First off the big omission is the new Threadripper chips and model dependent I saw two different problems that tripped me up here.

In testing on the 64 thread 3970X I saw it refuse to run cleanly on the DB VI test at a 64 buffer, where it simply crackled constantly with little to no load applied. It did run better on a 128 buffer, but the score still placed it behind a number of far weaker chips, so it didn’t look to handle itself well. The 256 buffer and upwards seemed to slowly creep towards the sort of performance levels I would hope to see, pretty much repeating the sort of issue’s we saw in previous generations with the low latency performance hole.

So, we thought there might be a few usable scenarios to be had, but then we ran the DSP test and hit another snag. The projects in that SGA DSP test would always overload at around 60 %- 65% load and I didn’t see a way around this in the time I spent with it. I’ve tried different memory types and speeds, but no matter what it seemed to cap out there.


That's all I really have to say on the subject. You feel free to provide your far superior advice on DAW software and hardware.

 

[Markfw]

"The argument of untested just doesn't cut it "

Yet your argument is a non-independently tested and unreleased CPU is automatically better and should be selected based on...assumptions?

FYI, how much do you actually work with and use DAW software?

DAWbench, which is the simulated benchmarking software that the OP mentioned, has good things to say about the 3950X. The 3950X wins the DSP testing, but loses in the VI testing. In their review a few months ago, they also said

"The earlier concerns about a limited number of incompatibilities have so far not grown and we’re aware that AMD have been working hard to help smooth these out. With the platform not so much “on the map” at this point, as stomping all over it in size 12 boots, we would hope that that developers are now sitting up, paying attention and baking in full compatibility from the ground upwards on future product releases."

"I’ve also retested the common Intel mid-range selection, including the ever popular 9900K. These were amongst the last chips that I took a look a proper look at and throughout 2019 remained popular options, still offering a strong solution where the utmost compatibility is concerned."

"First off the big omission is the new Threadripper chips and model dependent I saw two different problems that tripped me up here.

In testing on the 64 thread 3970X I saw it refuse to run cleanly on the DB VI test at a 64 buffer, where it simply crackled constantly with little to no load applied. It did run better on a 128 buffer, but the score still placed it behind a number of far weaker chips, so it didn’t look to handle itself well. The 256 buffer and upwards seemed to slowly creep towards the sort of performance levels I would hope to see, pretty much repeating the sort of issue’s we saw in previous generations with the low latency performance hole.

So, we thought there might be a few usable scenarios to be had, but then we ran the DSP test and hit another snag. The projects in that SGA DSP test would always overload at around 60 %- 65% load and I didn’t see a way around this in the time I spent with it. I’ve tried different memory types and speeds, but no matter what it seemed to cap out there.


That's all I really have to say on the subject. You feel free to provide your far superior advice on DAW software and hardware.

All I can say since you want more proof, is wait until Nov 5th, then talk to me.But the argument of "tried and true" is just too old these days.Conroe is tried and true, but do you see anybody running it ? I don't know what with the threadripper problems mentioned, but its also possible the software was created non-standard, and for Intel.

But regardless, talk to me on release date, by which time we will have PLENTY of benchmarks.

And your comment about "You feel free to provide your far superior advice on DAW software and hardware." is a real callout and not productive. There are plenty of people here that think that 5000 series will probably be the bext choice, not just me.

 

[cellarnoise]

Sorry Hulk for your thread getting messy. As you know Intel has been best / better at DAW / low latency software loads for many years.

I have been branching out from pure DAW the past few years, though using cheaper or free-ishware versions more and more as I like to experiment and keep learning new software. Have moved onto audio heavy that does video also as that and a few of my friends do as side gigs every now and then.

My one contact that still focuses on bands and radio commercial recording still exclusively uses protools and as that is most of his living uses Intel, though for pure audio you don't really need the latest and greatest anymore.

I also try to explore the open source / freeware world when I get a chance. Now using Tracktion (Waveform - got sucked into liking the interface) and Reaper some and playing around with Openshot. Though Open Shot has been crashing lately on my AMD 1950x system, but not on my AMD 1700x cpu. Both run on my old 4700mq 4 core laptop fine, but windows 10 caused a complete rebuild last update on that (8 hours of rebuild).... I have used Cubase and Audacity and spent thousands sadly on old computer DAWS going back to Amigas and contributed to a fancy Atari Falcon shared build back in the day (the added dsp was so cool back in the day!). Spent way to much on hobby stuff. I have an old 20 bit ADAT sitting close by with a bunch of old tapes from my own and other's bands that I need to continue to copy over, syncing old 8 tracks at a time 24 and 32 track multi-tape recordings even with the digital time stamp does not always go as planned. The old ADAT still seems to works great - knock on something.

For pure DAW use I would wait for the reviews on the new AMD line for your specific software. Though all new CPUs would likely be better than what you have in your sig.

I also believe that DAW software (paid for or other) is getting better at being multi-threaded the past few years from what I have read after several years being behind the trend. I love the new tools coming out that use multiple threads to work on noise and effects. Cool!

For Video plus Audio fun, AMD has been very good as most video paid or freeish ware is multi-threaded.

 

[LikeLinus]

All I can say since you want more proof, is wait until Nov 5th, then talk to me.But the argument of "tried and true" is just too old these days.Conroe is tried and true, but do you see anybody running it ? I don't know what with the threadripper problems mentioned, but its also possible the software was created non-standard, and for Intel.

But regardless, talk to me on release date, by which time we will have PLENTY of benchmarks.

And your comment about "You feel free to provide your far superior advice on DAW software and hardware." is a real callout and not productive. There are plenty of people here that think that 5000 series will probably be the bext choice, not just me.

There is no correlation between raw performance and compatibility. You wait all you want for benchmarks. The people who wrote the DAWbench benchmark software is who I was quoting concerning AMD compatibility issues, not performance issues. I'm just telling him, from an industry standard at this point, Intel is the go-to platform. Period. It doesn't have to do with which brand is faster.

Plus, we're not talking about old technology vs. new? No clue why you brought up Conroe. You're waiting on a chip to be released that may beat the current leader for DAW. That comment makes absolutely NO sense. Should we also advice him to wait for Intel to release their next CPU 4-6 months from now because it may be faster?

Anything he buys now will be a huge upgrade over what he currently uses. Those are the facts.

 

[LikeLinus]

Sorry Hulk for your thread getting messy. As you know Intel has been best / better at DAW / low latency software loads for many years.

I have been branching out from pure DAW the past few years, though using cheaper or free-ishware versions more and more as I like to experiment and keep learning new software. Have moved onto audio heavy that does video also as that and a few of my friends do as side gigs every now and then.

My one contact that still focuses on bands and radio commercial recording still exclusively uses protools and as that is most of his living uses Intel, though for pure audio you don't really need the latest and greatest anymore.

I also try to explore the open source / freeware world when I get a chance. Now using Tracktion (Waveform - got sucked into liking the interface) and Reaper some and playing around with Openshot. Though Open Shot has been crashing lately on my AMD 1950x system, but not on my AMD 1700x cpu. Both run on my old 4700mq 4 core laptop fine, but windows 10 caused a complete rebuild last update on that (8 hours of rebuild).... I have used Cubase and Audacity and spent thousands sadly on old computer DAWS going back to Amigas and contributed to a fancy Atari Falcon shared build back in the day (the added dsp was so cool back in the day!). Spent way to much on hobby stuff. I have an old 20 bit ADAT sitting close by with a bunch of old tapes from my own and other's bands that I need to continue to copy over, syncing old 8 tracks at a time 24 and 32 track multi-tape recordings even with the digital time stamp does not always go as planned. The old ADAT still seems to works great - knock on something.

For pure DAW use I would wait for the reviews on the new AMD line for your specific software. Though all new CPUs would likely be better than what you have in your sig.

I also believe that DAW software (paid for or other) is getting better at being multi-threaded the past few years from what I have read after several years being behind the trend. I love the new tools coming out that use multiple threads to work on noise and effects. Cool!

For Video plus Audio fun, AMD has been very good as most video paid or freeish ware is multi-threaded.

Adobe and most of the DAW developers really need to stop their crap and write the programs correctly for multi-threading. The same DAWBench developer also said:

"This is the first time that I’ve put a 18 core chip through the Reaper based DAWBench VI test and it became clear in testing that once we passed 32 threads in this build, some internal dependencies caused by the way that Kontakt was being mapped were limiting its ability to balance across more than 16 cores/32 threads successfully. "

I actually use Kontakt but with Cubase, not Reaper. So I'm not sure if there is the same limitation/issue with the # of threads. I'm not running 16 cores on that machine though.

Hopefully AMD and the devs do work out the kinks and the compatibility issues will be resolved. I plan on picking up a 5900X, but It won't be for on Adobe/DAW machine. I'll have to give it a try and see how it runs though.

 

[cellarnoise]

I guess that for pure DAW the CPUs can crank through anything that can be offered up anymore? Maybe 64+ tracks at whatever 192 ish bits? I don't know, and even from reviews, all the cpus seem to do well. Please let me know if 32 tracks+ with just about crazy effects / add-ons causes problems anymore? Also, please let me know what causes problems anymore as I, getting older, just don't know. Where is my meat smoker?

I love Cubase! I think I have the manuals and 3 and 1/2 inch discs still sadly stored in the basement.. with my .... Manuals are about 3 and 1/2 inch thick... maybe thicker ! Probably Cubase 3.

For pure audio, I would love to know what current tech software of hardware of a few years ago can't do? I only keep in touch with one 27 year old / young semi-pop artist doing whatever and one sound / commercial local band producer... and they don't need even current cpu hardware from what I know. I bring up current hardware and they all look at me like what?.

Even current laptop stuff and they make me jealous with their beats or whatever they are called now