What's the general status of Reaktor?

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  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    @colB

    Hopefully we'll see PC manufacturers moving over to high end ARM based platforms too.

    Why should they do it? x86 platform has stronger CPUs than ARMs. And it has also comparable CPU power/energy ratio like ARMs (if they are made on the same process).

    Apple did good job on ARM platform, but still far behind top x86 CPUs. And x86 is developing fast past five years. And is going to develop fast for at least four, five years.

    We will see what M2 brings, but it looks like just a small step adding 15-20% CPU power and no more cores.... AMD adds 25-30% and adds cores. So the difference between ARM and x86 becomes bigger and not lower...

    Time will tell if AS will be competetive to x86 or will be lagging behind. ARM is going to fire 15% of people...

  • colB
    colB Member Posts: 761 Guru



    That's strange - I just checked out a comparison between apple M1 and Ryzen 9 5900

    The complete apple system is a similar price to the AMD cpu... and yet, for single core tasks - like Reaktor - the M1 beats the Ryzen on some benchmarks. It's only in benchmarks that stress multi-core processing where the AMD clearly wins.

    It's an interesting assessment anyway, comparing the 1st generation entry level AS with high end extremely mature tech that only wins on some benchmarks and costs way more, and calling it 'far behind'?

    To me the fact that a 1st gen low end entry level AS soc can outperform a top of the range AMD monster in single core processing demonstrates how far ahead Apple are, not how far behind. And I'm no Apple lover - can't stand their 'ecosystem', their shady customer support, bad styling, forced obsolescence, unrepairables, fanboy army... just doesn't work for me, but I'm not a fantasist, they have got this right - if the PC industry doesn't do something quick, they will lose a lot of market share. Particularly at a time when a lot of middle income customers throughout the world are getting poorer not richer. The idea of a system where the cpu is north of $500, and graphics card likely more, before you've even considered mobo, RAM, etc. is out of reach to many folk.

    Can you buy an off the shelf PC for the same price as Apple M1 system that has similar performance?

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert
    edited March 2022

    Reaktor runs on M1? ;-)

    If you compare in singlecore, you may compare the bottom level CPU by AMD and not the top one.... They have more or less comparable singlecore....

    M1 core has double or triple more elements than Zen3 core, so no wonder it is a bit faster. On contrary, it is sort of embarasing it is not much faster.... But because of that M1 may not have so many cores... So it looses in multithread.... The tradeoff between strong, but big core, and less strong, but smaller has to be weighted. Apple has strategy few strong ones and some weak ones. AMD uses the same pretty strong cores, but not so big.

    And Ryzen 9 is not top level AMD CPU, it is top level Ryzen. There are also Threadrippers and Epycs....

    Can you buy an off the shelf PC for the same price as Apple M1 system that has similar performance?

    You may buy way better PC for that price. I have ASRock Deskmini X300, with Ryzen 7 5700G, 2x1 TB SSD, 64 GB RAM. And it cost me around 1 000 EUR. It would cost less now. I built it myself, but one may buy it assembled of shelf.

    Also, I have suspicion that basic M1 models are sold with zerro margin or even negative. Just to attract new users and sell people the story about great processor. Soon they find, they need more memory and so on, and next time will pay double, triple for not so downsized models......

    M1 is OK CPU. I admit it is sort of success ARM may compete with x86. But M1 is not miracle that beats everything, like Apple sells it. Apple mostly compares M1 with Intels, or even several years old Intels.... So tells very biased story, almost lie. It is fact manipulation par excellence....

    M1 is weaker (in multicore) than more or less 'toy' AMD APU 5700G. So, no miraculous threadripper.... Just another medium performance CPU.

    Zen 4 will hit the road in four months, or so. It might be faster than comming M2 even in single thread. Or at least comparable. Not speaking about multithread....

    And x86 platform now also more focuses on energy efficiency. It is good AS is here. The more competition, the better. But as I see it Apple will have hard times to be competetive to x86. Do not be fooled by the several years period when AMD was on the edge of bancrupcy and Intel had his "4 cores must do" and x86 progress was rather slow. There was no real competition....

  • Calagan
    Calagan Member Posts: 148 Advisor
    edited March 2022

    Sorry to interrupt the technical discussion, but is Reaktor working ok on a M1 chip using Rosetta ? And on Monterey ?

    Is any of you using it regulary with Rosetta and could share some real life infos ? I did read the whole thread but couldn't find any evidence Reaktor is at least running on M1 with Rosetta... I hope it is...

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    Reaktor is not running on M1 natively or under Rosetta. And it will probably take time. Maybe long time. Maybe even longer time....

  • nanotable
    nanotable Member Posts: 93 Advisor

    @Calagan It's working fine on my MBP 13“ on Monterey. While the performance isn’t bad at all, I hope a native port can squeeze additional 15 to 20 % out of it. It’s not really hard to max out a core with a complex Blocks patch.

  • willieraylewis
    willieraylewis Member Posts: 12 Member

    I have Reaktor 6 running fine on a new M1 Mac Mini (Monterey) both in standalone and as a plugin in Logic, both under Rosetta. Way better performance than my 2015 iMac i7 Quad Core. The single core is being pushed as I can see in Activity Monitor, for example in HQ and multi-voice patches in Razor- I can run a bunch of them in Logic on different tracks, but the darn machine is dead silent, when before my iMac's fan would kick in and loud!

  • Calagan
    Calagan Member Posts: 148 Advisor
    edited March 2022

    Hi all. Thanks a lot for the answers/testimonies. I'm relieved because I use Reakor quite a lot on stage, and I just bought an M1pro to replace my old mid-2012 i7 macbook pro. Then I just thought about NI plugins and while reading this thread I was a bit scared that Reaktor was not very stable on the new ARM macs under Rosetta/Monterey.

    I understand the native version will come in a long time, but I guess even under Rosetta my new machine will be like day & night compared to my good old macbook (pretty nice machine actually, specially when I read the issues people have with more recent ones, but the 16gb RAM limit and the CPU start to show their age when using a Live set on stage with 20 songs, many virtual synths and some kontakt instruments. Form is the worst offender for my present machine and my set uses more than 20gb of RAM so I get a lot of instability).

    Anyway, thanks for the answers...

  • nanotable
    nanotable Member Posts: 93 Advisor

    Yeah, you’ll most certainly be ok. I made the jump from a 2013 i5 MBP, and the difference is like night and day indeed. I’ve yet to come across a Reaktor instrument or ensemble which didn’t run, and it’s not even close (bar some wild Blocks racks I’ve made). Form barely leaves a dent in this machine — I’m just realizing I’ve gotten used to this kind of performance 😁 Form used to be a problem in the past. Also, no problems with stability here. Long live Reaktor!

  • Jojo123
    Jojo123 Member Posts: 231 Advisor

    @colB

    And I'm no Apple lover - can't stand their 'ecosystem', their shady customer support, bad styling, forced obsolescence, unrepairables, fanboy army... just doesn't work for me, but I'm not a fantasist,

    Can I add Im not a fanatisist (if thats a word)? - and yet here I am a Mac user because way back when I migrated from the Atari it made sense to move in the Apple/Logic direction and there's too much water gone under the bridge to "wean" off Apple now. I would if I could for the above reasons and more. It would be nice if people here could see there are actually some Mac users who see's their Macs as a tool, not a religion. I also cant stand their marketing mystery hype that has people on the edge of their seat. So much I despise about Apple. As for M$ I could argue they're anything but squeaky clean. In the end you just have to say it is what it is.

    This time last year NI was just a name Id heard of many years ago like many others. Id only used stock Logic stuff. Long story short, I went totally out and got K13 UCE. I haven't even really scratched the surface of whats possible. When I came to Reaktor I didn't even know how to get around the interface. As Ive poked around I've found there's some stuff I really love in this thing. I really hope Reaktor lives on, even if I never get into the depths, theres sounds ready made that are great just as they are or with a little tweaking. I hope some noob questions are OK on this Forum.

    Its really encouraging to hear others say Reaktors working on Monterey, but I don't want to update until Reaktors officially supported. Im not on AS and can afford to wait as I find my 8core 2019 iMac 40GB RAM pretty capable at this point for what Im doing.

  • Jon Watte
    Jon Watte Member Posts: 77 Advisor

    My Mac host is Cubase, which has an M1 version, but that can't load Rosetta plugins, only native plugins (which is understandable.)

    I could run Cubase entirely under Rosetta, but then there's no point -- I have Windows for that, and despite Apple cherry-picking benchmarks, even their $5k ultra package doesn't quite match the latest from AMD and NVIDIA in blended workloads, especially when you also do GPU stuff.

    Anyway -- no announcement regarding potential ARM version of Reaktor, means they send the "we don't know if this has a future" message, which is apparently exactly what they intend. (On another note, I was also sad that the Maschine+ hardware, which I also have, used an Atom chip, not an ARM of some sort, but this now makes more sense.)

  • Laureano Lopez
    Laureano Lopez Member Posts: 102 Advisor

    My short couple of cents:

    x86 is an ugly, legacy architecture. I think ARM is way better, but ARM processors are still behind, not only x86, even ARM itself. For example, no mainstream ARM processor implements SVE, which means porting from AVX is a performance disgrace.

    This is a slowly, peacefully sinking ship. Sometimes I feel like complaining, but there's no point. It is what it is...

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert
    edited March 2022

    x86 has survived 45 years, or so. And it is backward compatible with x80, which will celebrate 50 in few years.

    Platform that has survived so long in IT will most probably live as long as silicon will be used. No real need for change.

    I keep finger crossed for Apple to be able to produce strong ARM chips, but I strongly doubt they will be able to keep pace with AMD and Intel.

  • colB
    colB Member Posts: 761 Guru

    x86 has survived 45 years, or so.

    And that makes it good for us, now in 2022, because... ?

    And it is backward compatible with x80, which will celebrate 50 in few years.

    Which is useful for us, now in 2022 because... ?

    x86 is a significant part of IT history, and like the dinosaur it is, belongs in a history museum!

    Unfortunately, it's very difficult to replace a dominant technology, because change is painful and expensive. Old habits die hard and all that... That's where Apple's own dominance is for once a benefit - maybe they are big enough to be able to force the change through.

    It is a worry though, it's really important that PCs don't die out and instead change with the times! Maybe needs one of the big Chip makers (or a new one?) to embrace ARM (or some new ARM competitor that is not x86...). Imagine what Apple would be like if they had a monopoly on desktop/laptop computing!

    It's also really important that old software companies don't die, and instead embrace change and put resources into research and development to keep their great products relevant and successful!

  • Jon Watte
    Jon Watte Member Posts: 77 Advisor

    I'll ask again for examples of LLVM being used as part of the compiler toolchain for Dataflow languages.

    It's the back-end for Rustc, and Rust is very much a data flow language (with the whole ownership/borrow checker paradigm.) It might not have boxes-and-arrows, but that's more of an interface choice.

    Also: I weaned myself off of Apple a long time ago; my main workstation is a Threadripper, but my laptop is an M1 for "it's good to test everything everywhere" reasons. And it's handier on the couch than the Maschine+ (which has no battery) and the Threadripper (which ... really ... doesn't move at all!)

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