KVR Audio

jules99 · Post by **jules99** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 9:42 am

I'm in the market for a new Macbook Pro, 16-inch and I'm torn between a 32 GB / 1 TB model and one with 16 GB / 2 TB. Also, I haven't made the final decision if it is going to be an M1 Pro or M1 Max.

CPU power has been my number one bottleneck, with hard disk space a close second. Many projects go over 70 to 80 tracks and they've become a freezing fest for my MBP 2016. But also, as I change between working from home to a variety of studios and offices, dealing with at least two external hard drives, backup, and samples, is quite annoying, if you're as chaotic as I am.

Does having more RAM at any point make working on bigger projects smoother, when I'm mainly using soft synths and samples, much less Kontakt/Omnisphere or other RAM-heavy plugins?

As for CPU, it's not unlikely that at some point in the next 12 months GPU Audio will be M1 compatible which might make having more GPU cores quite handy. For those who run bigger DAW projects and have both used M1 Pro and M1 Max machines, was there a big difference in terms of performance?

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 10:04 am

Please do this test first:
* Close every app you have running
* Restart the computer.
* Start "Activity Monitor.app" and confirm CPU & memory usage is low (graphs on the bottom of each tab should suffice)
* Run a demanding project in your DAW
* Watch the Activity Monitor again

If memory is not getting maxed out, the 16G/2T model should be fine.

Having said that, while nothing spectacular is done right now on my machine , it already has consumed 12 of the 16Gb. So there's that...

jules99 · Post by **jules99** » Thu Oct 20, 2022 3:04 pm

Thank you! This helps a lot! Will do a couple of tests now.

I also want to see how much the speed goes down once RAM is maxed out and Ableton starts using the swap file (it still works like that, no?). Anyone got experience with that?

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 6:50 am

So I closed all running apps and restarted, mem usage is back to 5 or 6 Gb. That was mainly due to Safari which had not been closed for some months and accumulated abt 4Gb it would not let go. There's 700Mb compressed and 175Mb swapped. If this gets into gigabytes, then having more physical memory is beneficial for you.

FapFilter · Post by **FapFilter** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 8:13 am

in my experience, you can't judge your RAM requirements by just using "idle states", as macOS is pre-allocating a ton of RAM for "just in case" and it doesn't want too much RAM to be completely unused. and the more RAM you have, the more it is allocating to those apps and processes. but when you're actually using RAM heavier applications, the allocated RAM will swap around and you will end up with actually more RAM available for your application, than the "idle state" with no app running would have suggested.
best practice is to simply monitor how much RAM your current projects require and how much is actually left.
or better even yet: because of this behavior, try to completely disregard the RAM usage info and only watch for your memory pressure indication + how much swap is being done to your hard drive.
of course newer OS/DAW/plugin revisions will require slightly more RAM each time too, so just be sure that you don't make a calculation that is too tight.
but of course buying too much RAM is a complete waste of money, especially with Apple's upgrade prices.

Synthdance · Post by **Synthdance** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 12:45 pm

You can add external storage but you can’t expand RAM after purchase. I would go with more RAM.

kidslow · Post by **kidslow** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:15 pm

100% agree. I have always found a way around drive space constraints but often regretted not having more RAM. In my experience there is no thing as too much RAM.

Ask yourself, do you really need 2TB of space? That's a lot of f'ing storage. Manage your drive properly by moving things off to external storage that you don't need on-hand and you will get by with 1TB. I'm getting by with 1/4 of that on my Macbook. The system will always find more use for RAM.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:19 pm

Don't think I max'd out any of my computers in terms of RAM in the last 20 years or something... but then, we all have different use cases. On the other hand, I was short of disk space quite a few times.

BertKoor's suggestion seems reasonable.

kidslow · Post by **kidslow** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:43 pm

Running out of drive space is a lot more apparent than maxing out RAM. If your system is swapping memory to disk, how would you know whether you maxxed out the physical RAM or not? Fapfilter's suggestion of watching the swap & memory pressure is probably the best advice.

Adding main memory is not even possible after purchase. I just know with USB-C, adding external storage is a snap and cheap and fast enough if you are just shuttling less used items off to the side. Does one need their entire sample library on the internal drive of a laptop? I don't. Maybe other people do? I will always spec a system with maximum RAM and claw back savings on the internal drive. Tools that I use like Photoshop are memory hogs. YMMV

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:47 pm

kidslow wrote: Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:43 pm Running out of drive space is a lot more apparent than maxing out RAM. If your system is swapping memory to disk, how would you know whether you maxxed out the physical RAM or not?

Things go in snail speed then. I had that on old computers with very little RAM.

And, in Windows, there is a task manager which shows you the memory utliziation.

kidslow · Post by **kidslow** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:57 pm

Old computers also had slower hard drives which made swapping more apparent. Do you really know how often your current computer swaps from RAM to drive. Maybe you do? I don't, but I know what use cases require more memory.

There is a simple way to manage memory requirements to use less RAM. Only keep the minimum number of applications that you need open and in memory. If, like me, you have dozens of applications open and dozens of tabs open in your browsers, memory requirements are higher. I'm not going to change these habits, so I spec to my needs.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:59 pm

kidslow wrote: Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:57 pm Old computers also had slower hard drives which made swapping more apparent. Do you really know how often your current computer swaps from RAM to drive. Maybe you do? I don't, but I know what use cases require more memory.

There is a simple way to manage memory requirements to use less RAM. Only keep the minimum number of applications that you need open and in memory. If, like me, you have dozens of applications open and dozens of tabs open in your browsers, memory requirements are higher.

I do none of that.

I'm pretty sure I'd notice when I run out of RAM, for example when I'm playing games. I rarely have more than 1 or 2 applications opened (well, apart from the autostart programs), and I never have more than 4 or 5 tabs open in the browser (mostly 1 or 2). I can't handle that kind of multitude.

My last computer first had 8 GB of RAM for a few years, then I stacked up to 16 GB, and my current one has 16 GB. Never noticed any slow ups, and, I frequently take a look at the task manager, which never showed more than 8 or 9 GB, max.

Of course, I can only talk for myself. The way people use their computers are different.

FapFilter · Post by **FapFilter** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:00 pm

And, in Windows, there is a task manager which shows you the memory utliziation.

on Mac, there is too. Called Activity Monitor there, that’s where you’re usually looking for stuff like this, unless you are using third party solutions (or the Terminal)

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:06 pm

FapFilter wrote: Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:00 pm
And, in Windows, there is a task manager which shows you the memory utliziation.
on Mac, there is too. Called Activity Monitor there, that’s where you’re usually looking for stuff like this, unless you are using third party solutions (or the Terminal)

Alright. Would have surprised me if Mac OS didn't have something similar.

kidslow · Post by **kidslow** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:12 pm

chk071 wrote: Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:59 pm I rarely have more than 1 or 2 applications opened (well, apart from the autostart programs), and I never have more than 4 or 5 tabs open in the browser (mostly 1 or 2). I can't handle that kind of multitude.

Well we operate on different ends of that spectrum so it's not surprising we value RAM differently.

It's not uncommon for me to have four browser windows in Safari each with a dozen tabs, plus Chrome with another couple dozen, plus Firefox. And that's on one computer. Then maybe half as many open on my laptop. And then the same amount again on two separate computers in the office. Not to mention my ipad or phone browser tabs. I don't know what it says about how my mind works. I guess I leave a lot of things in a half finished state ... <looks around the office> no guess about it.

Macbook Pro M1: More RAM or more SSD space?