Studio One/any DAW -- 64 bit or 32?

[dwozzle]

Just curious, are most folks running Studio One or whatever other DAW in 64 bit mode or 32?

My music laptop is an old Sony, i7 Q740 @ 1.73 gHz, Win 7 Pro 64 bit, only 8G RAM that can't be expanded, which practically speaking is probably the biggest limitation of this machine.

Would I be best off going 32 bit or 64? I've been doing 64, among other reasons because some plugins I have require it, but from a resource management POV would I be best off dropping those (don't want to though), and going 32?

[rlared]

Stay with 64-bit. No reason for you to go to 32-bit and you'd be limiting the DAWs access to RAM by doing so.

[zzz00m]

Developer support is becoming more limited for 32-bit. Many are dropping it from new releases, so I would expect developer priority for fixes and support to be with the mainstream 64-bit platforms today.

I tried a commercial 32-bit plugin a couple years ago (my DAW host was still 32-bit at the time), and it kept crashing. I opened a support ticket, and never heard anything back. It also crashed on a 64-bit host, so I assume they weren't too into testing with 32-bits anymore. Months later I was offered a discount coupon on my next purchase.

I am now mostly 100% 64-bit.

[chk071]

Depends on whether or not you are still using some 32-bit only plugins. If not, then go 64-bit, because there's really no reason to stick with 32-bit.

[Distorted Horizon]

Stick with x64. Pretty much the reason(s) previously mentioned. And if you have a possibility to update your laptop to a bit better model, I'd go for that.

Second hand business laptops can be bought with pretty low price and have some serious bang for buck.

[n2077]

What the others said. You should never consider 32 bit, even with that kind of computer. 32 bit applications are limited to only 4Gb of RAM. I did reorganized DAW and plugins today for efficiency and future productions, and I solely went for x64 for this.

I actually got Studio One yesterday and absolutely loving it, just a bit annoyed I had to pay more for VST support.

[chk071]

What the others said. You should never consider 32 bit, even with that kind of computer. 32 bit programs are limited to only 4Gb of RAM.

On top of that, properly written 64-bit software also WILL be faster, no matter what the heretics claim.

[zzz00m]

What the others said. You should never consider 32 bit, even with that kind of computer. 32 bit applications are limited to only 4Gb of RAM. I did reorganized DAW and plugins today for efficiency and future productions, and I solely went for x64 for this.

I actually got Studio One yesterday and absolutely loving it, just a bit annoyed I had to pay more for VST support.

Actually I believe user applications in Windows are limited to a 2GB max. The OS itself can only use slightly less than 4GB, not the full 4GB. I think I was only able to see about 3.6GB out of the 4GB installed on my old Win 7 32-bit system.

Studio One is a great DAW. Take advantage of the tutorial videos, and you will enjoy learning and using it! In my opinion PreSonus should include VST support in all editions, and then just sell the the extra content.

[tapiodmitriyevich]

Go for 64 bit. I meanwhile ended up deleting all 32 bit copies of vsts, no need for starting s1-32, super rare exceptions. Game over for 32bit.

[dwozzle]

Thanks folks, pretty clear consensus I'd say

I do have some 32 bit plugins, but I *know* I have some 64 bit that I definitely don't want to do without, which almost makes the decision right there.

And of course I'd love a better machine. For work (I'm a web programmer professionally), I have a much newer fairly hotshot laptop, i7 6700K @ 4GHz, 32G RAM and upgradable past that if I think I need it, 500G SSD. But I really need to keep those worlds separate, and I can't afford a second machine like that, esp since I'm not gigging as a musician any more.

Thanks again, onward!

[Distorted Horizon]

My laptop is i5 6200 @ 2.6Ghz, 8Gb ram and 128Gb ssd.

Enough for running Reason or Reaper with Sylenth Some patches require bouncing or sampling but it's ok. Sparks creativity.

[Ingonator]

My two main DAWs at my new Windows 10 64-bit based notebook are Live 10 and Cubase Pro 9.5 which with the latest major versions both are 64-bit only (no 32-bit version available and no built-in bridge).
Anyway if i need to use an old 32-bit plugin i got jBridge as a 3rd party bridge to do that while the 32-bit plugins i still use are only very few compared to the amount of native 64-bit plugins.

Those two DAWs and Pro Tools since v11 are alraedy 3 major ones that are 64-bit only and i am sure more will come in the near future. Logic Pro X should be 64-bit only too while so far i never owned a Mac where i used it myself.

With a computer that has more than 4 GB of RAM using a 32-bit OS and 32-bit DAW would not make much sense as then you could not use the full amount of available RAM.

[zzz00m]

Tracktion Waveform 9 was released as a 64-bit only DAW this year.