Anyone here regularly use the RAM mode for their audio?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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moreofmorris
Posts: 176
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:57 am

Anyone here regularly use the RAM mode for their audio?

Post by moreofmorris » Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:29 am

Hello.

I've got a decent enough lappy, a MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz Dual Core jobby. It has 4Gb of RAM in it and a decent 750Gb 7200rpm hard drive. Thing is, Live starts to splutter when I'm reaching around 16 - 24 channels of audio. I do mostly audio work, and sometimes my projects are many small cuts of audio in the track. But Live splutters... Crackles and goes mental when it reaches this sort of limit. My CPU is only 40% - 60% though.

I thought I must need a better computer. I upgraded my hard drive and I think that helped a bit. But Live is still straining...

...I need noticed the RAM mode in the audio properties (next to Hi-Q and Fade buttons). I'm presuming this loads the sample into memory and not read it off the hard drive?

Does anyone here regularly use it? Will this make a decent improvement? Any other tips for getting the most out of Live, performance wise?

Nice :)

creature
Posts: 832
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:03 pm
Location: Derby, UK
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Re: Anyone here regularly use the RAM mode for their audio?

Post by creature » Tue Jul 12, 2011 10:21 am

I have found that this makes a difference. I use this for beats and loops. Larger audio files I tend to leave as disc streaming.

Steve

Khazul
Posts: 3185
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:19 pm
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Anyone here regularly use the RAM mode for their audio?

Post by Khazul » Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:53 pm

Found it only really helps if the HD warning light flashes alot on older computers (pre i5/i7) - not used for ages on newer faster computers and typically Im more concenred about memory use than HD access speed and/or CPU speed these days.

In the end try it - maybe it will help you, maybe not. Just watch out for getting a memory full crash instead (if for eg you also have some huge sample intruments in use).
Nothing to see here - move along!

moreofmorris
Posts: 176
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:57 am

Re: Anyone here regularly use the RAM mode for their audio?

Post by moreofmorris » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:04 pm

Khazul wrote:Found it only really helps if the HD warning light flashes alot on older computers (pre i5/i7) - not used for ages on newer faster computers and typically Im more concenred about memory use than HD access speed and/or CPU speed these days.

In the end try it - maybe it will help you, maybe not. Just watch out for getting a memory full crash instead (if for eg you also have some huge sample intruments in use).
This was more what I was concerned with really and was curious to know... I've heard people use the RAM setting and then get some mad memory error that totally fucks Live. I'm shit scared using it (it's for actually playing out I'm curious with this option too). I put it down to the fact that the RAM button should just be ignored... Too dodgy or something.

I'll just have to give it a go... I wanted to see if there was any particular reason why I shouldn't...

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