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How much RAM do I need for a smooth operation on Live ?
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 11:06 am
by tvoismo
I just bought myself a Mac Pro 4 Core, but It only comes with 12 gig ram. How much RAM do I actually need for like a 20-30 tracks song ?
Is 16 enough or would you guys go for 32 gig ?
Re: How much RAM do I need for a smooth operation on Live ?
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 11:14 am
by yur2die4
What's in your tracks? Samplers? Synths? Audio clips? Midi clips? Mostly session or arrangement view? Live mixing performance or sit down production/arrangement?
Re: How much RAM do I need for a smooth operation on Live ?
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 11:16 am
by tvoismo
yur2die4 wrote:What's in your tracks? Samplers? Synths? Audio clips? Midi clips? Mostly session or arrangement view? Live mixing performance or sit down production/arrangement?
The easy answer here is "Yes" ..
I use all the things you just said.
Re: How much RAM do I need for a smooth operation on Live ?
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 12:04 pm
by fishmonkey
if you already have the computer, it's pretty easy to figure out, by using the Activity Monitor to track memory usage.
note that it is
not the amount of free memory that is important. the critical measure is the memory pressure. if the memory pressure is high then your Mac will start shuffling the contents of physical RAM to the solid state drive (using swap space as slower virtual RAM).
https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201464
the reason why the amount of free memory is not a useful metric is because under the hood OS X uses free memory as disk cache.
anyway, having more than 12 GB of RAM will only be of benefit to Live if you work a lot with large multisampled libraries...