quandry wrote:I'm not much help, but I too am wondering what advantages RAM offers inside of Live, specifically on OSX. My friend I'm helping has a g3 ibook with a paltry 256 RAM, and I'm trying to help him decide if more RAM will help--anyone got a solid idea as to how RAM can enhance using Live on a MAC? Can you run way more effects if you double the RAM? Can you use more vsti? How about this--do effects and vsti mainly tax the processor, or does RAM play a role in effect and vsti usage? The only thing I know for sure is that more RAM would obviously allow you to put more clips into RAM mode to ease the strain on the harddrive. In my friends case, getting a firewire hardrive to write the audio files to made a huge difference in performance vs. just the internal drive. sorry I'm not much help--hopefully someone can drop some science on us.
Ryan
to a point, more RAM will help. but, this will mostly be in the way of helping the OS to run with less processor overhead - not Live itself. YES, vsti, effects, and clip warping, as well as the number of overall clips affect the CPU usage. having more RAM may help certain VSTi's run better, mainly in the way of samplers, depending on how they use RAM and processor resources.
just running OSX on 256 is a bit of a burden, so upping things with a 512 chip (plus that 128, or whatever is onboard) should smooth OS's needs out, etc. your friend will find certain VSTi's to be near impossible to run, esp those that require huge samples, or complex synths, etc. reverb will also suck your system dry, so use it sparingly. compression can at times do the same.
does this mean that he won't be able to use Live? well, not at all. I've been using Live on iBooks since version 1. yes, you sacrifice being able to do whatever you want, but, the creative restriction can have it's upsides.
things will most likely smooth out when apple shifts to the intel platform. if I were your friend, i'd upgrade the RAM, and be patient for the new machines and new builds of Live to run off those.