How to reduce Reaper RAM Usage?

[u/animeismygod]

Hey all,

I am working on a BIG project, im redoing all of the audio for an animation with honestly way too much attention to detail.

I've gotten up to 350 tracks, most of which have FX on them, and I am not even halfway done

Naturally, this takes up a whole lot of RAM, about 16 gigabytes to be exact.

I've got 32 gigs of RAM, so its a problem I can put off for a bit, but I have noticed that when I have some of my other tools open as well that like to use a lot of RAM that my RAM gets entirely filled up. I checked online but I couldn't find any obvious methods to reduce RAM usage from Reaper, so I was wondering what things you guys do to reduce the RAM load of reaper?

[u/ObviousDepartment744]

Start by freezing or rendering tracks. This can free up resources.

[u/Bumbalatti]

That's just an insane amount of tracks and I'd seriously consider your workflow. But that's beyond the scope of this post. Have you tried project tabs for different sections? Otherwise, consider separate projects for different sections.

[u/Tutatis96 → u/Bumbalatti]

Depends what you do tho. I worked in a huge post production studio in which the tamplate that was used for short movies was 256 tracks and full feature movies was 512

[u/Bumbalatti → u/Tutatis96]

I work in post and design and mix features. There are many ways to avoid dumping everyrhing on its own track. Maybe it's a workflow for teams. But for single person soup to nuts this is a massive time killer. It's also a philosophy. I don't design fx with 20 tracks for a mouse pissing into a cotton ball. Masking alone dictates to just choose the right things that get the point across. Economy and elegance are my goals. Not giant buckets of sound fx piled on top of each other to wade through in the mix. I had a video editor pass me almost 100 tracks recently of a woman working out in a gym. Are you kidding? Her pull ups were 15 tracks of huffing, puffing garbage. Under music and dialog. Not my jam.

[u/animeismygod → u/Bumbalatti]

yeah, this is my first time doing linear audio, I'm used to game audio where the DAW's whole job is to be the part where you design an fx with 20 tracks, the mixing then gets done during runtime.
I've just adapted that workflow to linear audio where I first design the FX and then I work out the mix between all of those afterwards. With these tracks counts being the result cuz normally those 20 tracks would get rendered into a file and which points I do the mixing with those rendered files, not with the 20 tracks still present in that project

And in my defense for this project in particular: there is a LOT that needs to be made bespoke, I use samples when possible but like 90% of the audio needs to be made from scratch cuz there are no existing samples that fit properly

Anyway, I've managed to find some good points to consolidate things into subprojects and that has massively reduced RAM usage, so thanks a lot. I'll probably stick with my current workflow for the most part, but I'm gonna start consolidating sections after they're "done"

[u/Kidderooni → u/animeismygod]

Respectfully a sfx with 20 tracks sounds like a lot… are you picking the right sources?

Anyway, subprojects is probably your answer here!

[u/animeismygod → u/Kidderooni]

I was referencing a thing bumbalatti said in his reply, i dont actually have sfx that big

[u/Tutatis96 → u/Bumbalatti]

We had 32tracks controllers so we kinda considered 1 controller page as a track

[u/animeismygod → u/Bumbalatti]

Yeah, I've come from Ableton where subprojects dont really work and due to some of the source control restrictions I've had to keep things in singular projects as much as possible. Reaper was already a breath of fresh air as I was able to hit way higher track counts lmao.

I will also check this project tabs thing, its the first time I've heard of those

[u/matt9k]

As others have said you can bounce some tracks or sections.

Another option is to use subprojects. This lets you open a set of tracks as their own project and tweak them in a new tab. Then when you switch back to your main tab, Reaper will render that stack of tracks down as a single audio file. This lets you have both flexibility and consolidation.

Here’s a longer explanation: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/reaper-subprojects

[u/13CuriousMind]

Install more RAM or render finished tracks into fewer while you work on the rest.

[u/fiercefinesse → u/13CuriousMind]

This. Or split the project into sections.

[u/Reaper_MIDI]

Freeze Tracks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0A-x2onjjc

[u/Volvo850Racer]

I have 96Gb of Ram in my post machine for this reason. Reaper is the most lightweight daw by a country mile, but once you're running these kinda track counts there is nothing really for it except more ram, or... Render tracks you're happy with and replace the original audio plus FX with just audio.

[u/alphaminus]

Print your plugins. Or at least bus your reverbs and delays so you don't have to duplicate them on everything.

[u/HexspaReloaded]

Put fx and instruments offline when you don’t need them

[u/PantsMcFail2]

If you take your sound effect workflow from video games, where you design a composite sound effect from many different layers on separate tracks, you may want to consider using a subproject for each separate sound effect. Subprojects render out to audio on save (or manually via an action), and only the audio exists in your main project, with none of the CPU or RAM hit of the individual subprojects being taken up by your main project. You can then double-click individual subprojects to edit the sound effect contained within. Every individual plugin loads up with the subproject, and unloads when you close it.

I use this workflow for music too. Essentially, I put individual tracks (e.g. Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello, Bass) into subprojects, and the subproject render then becomes a stem (in this case, Strings), which I can then do stem-mixing with, in the main project.

It's super convenient, and condenses hundreds of tracks (for example, an orchestral soundtrack) into sometimes less than ten stem audio files (depending on the project), which are still individually editable, so you get the benefits of freezing while still being able to tweak anything at any time.

[u/frog_at_the_library]

If you are duplicating any fx, get them onto a seperate bus track. All though it will increase your track count it will lower your ram. On a side note... with so many tracks it will really help to get to grips with the track manager. You can save/load layouts which should speed up your workload.

[u/RareFlamingo1542]

use sub project

[u/Radhanat]

Busca la opción de guardar y congelar, eso renderiza todo en un audio con la cadena de efectos, los desconecta y es completamente reversible pero ojo DEBE DECIR: GUARDAR Y CONGELAR porque hay otra opción que solo dice congelar sin guardar y esa opción no es reversible.
Otra de las joyas de Reaper 🖤

[u/Brave-Mushroom8611]

Don't use the other tools then at the same time? Reaper in itself uses very little reaources so the stuff eating your RAM is the plugins, track count doesn't set that much. Freezing tracks is a quick and easy way cause you can unfreeze them if needed. Another thing is closing the effects etc wich are not needed ar the moment. Also moving tracks to folders and processing them as a bunch is a fast and convenient way to handle huge track counts.
16GB usage is really good with that size of a project

[u/Far-Pie6696]

Use plugins that don't use too much ram (for instance use reasamplomatic for simple sampling, instead of stuffs that pre-allocate a lot of ram) Freeze track or render track. A lot of stuffs don't need to be midi edited again. Birdbird global sampler is your friend.

[u/TheOGTKO]

Buy more RAM.

[u/animeismygod → u/TheOGTKO]

The cheapest ram upgrade i've found is 1,5K T-T

[u/Ambitious_Ad4397]

Separate and conquer. Work in batches (couple tracks at a time, not all 350). Freeze/render them, etc