Audio pile-up on Mac

[ivaranz]

Hi! I am trying to free up disc space on my Macbook Air to reduce latency in Live. I have moved audio to an external disc, but Finder still insists that I have 60 GB of audio on the machine. My problem is that I cannot find all this audio. There are lots of smaller audiofiles, but they do not seem to amount to more than 8 GB. If anyone here has any advice as to how I can locate all those GBs of audio, an advice is highly welcomed.

Thanks!
Tellef
Oslo

[Stromkraft]

Finder still insists that I have 60 GB of audio on the machine.

How do you know this? Can you do a screen dump and share it via imgur or similar with the Img tag at the top of the answer window?

[fishmonkey]

my fave app for this is Daisy Disk:

https://daisydiskapp.com/

however, whilst cleaning up your disk is a good idea, it won't reduce latency in Live...

[ivaranz]

my fave app for this is Daisy Disk:

https://daisydiskapp.com/

however, whilst cleaning up your disk is a good idea, it won't reduce latency in Live...

Hi and thanks. I have used Ableton for many years, and my distinct experience is that to have at least 10 GB free on the hard drive reduces latency from unbearable to live playable.
Best
Tellef

[ivaranz]

Finder still insists that I have 60 GB of audio on the machine.

How do you know this? Can you do a screen dump and share it via imgur or similar with the Img tag at the top of the answer window?

Thanks! Unfortunately the attached image is from a Norwegian Mac but here is a quick translation of the panes: The black "Lagring" means "Storage" and the orange "Lyd" that reads 59.65GB means "Audio". My daughter's (music student and Live-user) problem is that when she lists absolutely all types of audio after having sorted files in a "All files" Finder window, she gets under 5 GB of audio totally. Thank you for any advice!

Tellef
Oslo

[scheffkoch]

...itunes audio files maybe?...

[Stromkraft]

Finder still insists that I have 60 GB of audio on the machine.

How do you know this? Can you do a screen dump and share it via imgur or similar with the Img tag at the top of the answer window?

Thanks! Unfortunately the attached image is from a Norwegian Mac but here is a quick translation of the panes: The black "Lagring" means "Storage" and the orange "Lyd" that reads 59.65GB means "Audio". My daughter's (music student and Live-user) problem is that when she lists absolutely all types of audio after having sorted files in a "All files" Finder window, she gets under 5 GB of audio totally. Thank you for any advice!

Tellef,


in Finder press Cmd-F. Make sure you select "This Mac" (Denne Mac?) to the right of Search (Søk?). Then select the drop menu below "Search" in the search window and select "Type" (Typen?) and then "music" (musikk?) from the second drop menu.

Wait. Soon you should see all audio files in your computer.

I don't see a way in Finder to sort according to path, which would be most useful, but seeing all is probably a good start. Sorting by the type column perhaps? If you select multiple files you'll see the highest folder in common for these files in the info row at the bottom of the search window.

When you got an idea where files are you can use a tool like OmniDiskSweeper or Daisy Disk as Fishmonkey suggested. Be careful as these apps do delete files. Better be the right ones.

[Stromkraft]

[my distinct experience is that to have at least 10 GB free on the hard drive reduces latency from unbearable to live playable.

I don't think you mean latency per se. What you mean likely is that with a disk in tip top shape you can set a lower buffer setting for your audio interface without audio crackles, which would give you lower latency. Correct?

Because, if latency is actually differing regardless of your settings you have serious issues in your rig.

[Stromkraft]

whilst cleaning up your disk is a good idea, it won't reduce latency in Live...

I think it's experiences like this of mine he means: Re: Stories of Crack, Sizzle and Pop - Solved (It was the SSD)

Note that, what I describe in this other discussion are rather extreme circumstances involving a third party SSD and trim and GC inactive for a long time period. My point bringing this up here is to illustrate the role of the disk in optimising the system and also to point out that free space on disks, also SSDs, are important for top performance. While it depends on make, model and size I've learned that SSDs might need around 25% free space to keep optimised performance (20% for hard disks).