Originally Posted By: drutgat
Originally Posted By: DeaconBlues09


To add on to what Jim said, there is really no downside to installing both 32 and 64 bit versions at the same time. There's really nothing to worry about IMO w/ respect to clutter as they get placed in separate folders anyway, they take up a negligible amount of HD space, and then you can use the 64 bit versions in Reaper (or your DAW of choice).


The only difference I have occasionally noticed using 32bit vs 64 bit VST's in a 64 bit DAW is that the 64 bit VST's interfaces are sometimes more extensive; do either of you notice any sonic differences?


So I'm not really not a computer guy, but from what I understand (and I could be very wrong) 32 bit architecture can only utilize 2 CPU cores, and 64 bit can take advantage of any number of them.

When it comes to BiaB the issue is twofold: First, as generating and regenerating RTs is CPU intensive, with multiple cores this would be exponentially faster. That is a quad core vs a dual core would not cut a regen time from, say 20 seconds to 10, but more like 20 seconds to 5 or even less.

The second has to do with VSTs, which, in itself has two components. First is the fact that many manufacturers of plugins are releasing their current products without 32 bit support. For instance, there are certain Native Instrument products that will only work in Reaktor 6, and Reaktor 6 only works in 64 bit. Second, if you are just using a simple VST for adding some chorus or distortion, that's no biggie. But say you want to play a MIDI string track through a very advanced orchestral VSTi (VST instrument). These can use gigabytes of samples for every possible articulation requiring tremendous amounts of processing power for which a quad-core CPU is the minimum requirement, let alone the recommended spec. This is why a lot of VSTis will have "purge" features, so that samples not in a particular track will not be loaded. For instance, if your score does not call for staccato strings, it will "purge" the dozens of staccato samples for each instrument in an entire string section instead of loading them up so that they are standing at the ready should your MIDI track need it to play instantly. In short, advanced, sophisticated VSTis pretty much require 64 bit functionality.

Again, I could be wrong about much of this. When the folks from other time-zones (who actually know their stuff) come online I'll probably be corrected on many of these points!

Last edited by DeaconBlues09; 10/14/18 10:10 PM.
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