RAM and performance for DAW-music making

[Lucas]

Hey,

 

I've been using my computer for quite a long time now and don't want to completely change it, but truth is it's getting old.

 

When making music, I always had to set my interface latency to higher values when the session starts to use more cpu. Usually when I reach the last steps of the making of a track I have to deal with say ~20ms. Which sometimes suck if I want to make further real-time tweaks, but it also speaks for the general stability of the rig : some delay and glitches when pressing start / stop, plugins bugging more often. The whole thing feels slow and heavy, sometimes I'm really losing time and it disturbs the flow.

 

I was thinking, if I can avoid to change the whole computer, maybe I could start with buying more RAM. Basically I wonder if upgrading my 2GB DDR2 to 4GB DDR3 could bring a significant change in performance. Have any of you an idea about that?

 

You'll probably need some info about my rig :

 

- Motherboard : Gigabyte P35C-DS3R (with 2GB DDR2 SDRAM)

- Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2400 MHz

- GPU : ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

- Audio Interface : Presonus Firebox

 

- My "near to completion" track sessions are like 20-30 Reaper tracks with ~8 from them coming from Renoise (through rewire), plus all the VSTs (synths, FXs, all the mixing stuff ; Reaktor sometimes also run as vst) and some hardware modules receiving MIDI / sending audio.

[Adieu]

Is your motherboard compatible with DDR3 RAM? I've never seen a motherboard capable of taking different classes of RAM.

[Grain Bastard]

You can only use max 3.5gig of RAM (usually more like just 3) with a 32bit OS. You need a 64bit OS to use 4 or more which obviously requires a 64bit Processor.

 

In a nut shell, adding more ram won't really make any difference to your set-up unless its being limited by ram.

 

I would personally mix more efficiently on your system if you need it to be more responsive - by that I mean maybe bouncing the rewire stuff to audio & maybe the VSTi's too.

 

Or build a cheap i5 system - the cost doesn't need to be that high.

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-010-AS&groupid=2833&catid=2836

 

Just an example.

[mcbpete]

You can only use max 3.5gig of RAM (usually more like just 3) with a 32bit OS. You need a 64bit OS to use 4 or more which obviously requires a 64bit Processor.

Yeah - gonna flag the same thing. You running a 32 or 64 bit OS Antape?

[Grain Bastard]

Is your motherboard compatible with DDR3 RAM? I've never seen a motherboard capable of taking different classes of RAM.

 

Oh yes, I just noticed that - I thought he was just adding another 2 gig of the same.

 

Definitely a no-no, it'll be DDR2 only.

[Brisbot]

Yeah I definitely feel your pain. Apparently the CPU usage gets a lot worse the more chain of FX you use since it has to run through all of them to get to the end result. Things with bigger Chain of FX are things I usually bounce to audio so it doesn't take up so much CPU. I've gotten a lot better at that recently, and stick to using the VST's that come with my program since they were optimized for it (FL Studio).

The issue seems to be inefficiency due to chain of FX contingencies and keeping everything in sync. I can be taking up 100% of my cpu meter on FL studio, but only 20% of my CPU. It really sucks. That's very inefficient, so if you're going to upgrade, make sure it's a big one. I haven't really run into this issue lately because I've streamlined how I do my stuff, which is what I recommend above all.

Another thing i've done to streamline my cpu usage is to exit out of my windows when I'm done with them. They literally can take up like 15-20% of the meter in FL since they remain open when you click away, and are just ejected into the background. Just a thought if reaper does something similar for you.

As for RAM, if you have the option, you should run things straight from your hard drive... especially the more unimportant stuff that takes up needless space. I've since gotten the newer 64 bit version of FL (which was WAY overdue) and don't really have Ram issues anymore.

Hope that helps in some way.

[foresense]

If you get a decent newish motherboard with one of the slower class quad core CPUs you will probably be set for a long while.

 

I've had my Intel i5-2500k quad core for years now and it's not showing any signs of letting off.. especially for music making, I'm not really that interested in running tons of analog modeling plugs, and there's really not that much DSP going on that really taxes my system besides that. Reaktor runs great.. Games maybe getting a bit slower now, but that's really just a case of getting a bit more memory and a speedier video card.

[Lucas]

Wow, thanks for all the quick replies. First answer, I recently upgraded to a 64bit OS (Windows 7) so I don't have to bother about this RAM limitation. The limitation seems to be my motherboard : on this page, it says that two of the four RAM sockets can handle up to 4GB DDR3.

 

But it's good to point out that RAM may not be the limitation of my setup ; any way to proceed some tests allowing to identify that?

 

True that I could also solve the problem by bouncing some stuff, but thing is that the point of my whole configuration, or at least the reason why I like it is that everything keeps flexible until the end (bounce of track). I've got used to compose by making loads of back and forth between the tracks and most of the time I really find out what I want a given sound to be in its details when I come deep enough with the other sounds accompanying it. That sounds kind of demanding but that's how I imagine my main music environment being like.

 

So if I can't fix those little problems (it's still pretty stable after all) I guess I'll go for a new motherboard / CPU / RAM. But first I'd like to find out if RAM is actually the problem. I wish I could use my next little investment for something more directly musical than a CPU.

[Adieu]

Man that is so weird. Different memory classes are not compatible with one another so that Mobo must have some weird engineering. The only thing I can think is that it was designed around the time DDR3 came out so they hoping to appeal to the consumer by making both types available to be used.

 

 

Just open task manager and click on the performance tab while you were working. If the Memory or CPU max out or get close to maxing out then you'll know which is the bottleneck. The answer is probably both. Upgrading RAM is one of the cheapest things you can do for a PC, but if your CPU is being maxed as well you probably won't see that big of a performance increase.

[Guest]

Doesn't Reaper compensate for latency delay? It doesn't make much sense to be mixing with some tracks being off by ~20ms.

[mcbpete]

If it's like when I mixed my last album on my old PC through Reaper it's not like traditional i/o latency but more lag - like what you hear and what you see (ie. the screen update) is a little out of sync. Seemed the most troublesome just after hitting play - So I ended up rendering sections and listened offline and noted tweaks at timecodes !

[chim]

I used to make tunes on an eeePC.. bouncing or ableton's freeze/flatten does the trick.. if you can't freeze tracks temporarily in your DAW, try doubling the tracks, bouncing the copy and deactivating the original so that you can activate it later for finetuning..

[peace 7]

Oookay, Mr. Antape... Well, there are some things that can be done. Firstly, a lot can possibly "be saved" through workflow enhancements. I've listened to your tracks before and just listened to some now (sweet btw, mang)-- and I mean this in a non-insulting way with all due respect, but I cannot see how you would need 20~30 tracks for that output. Hwaaat in the world are you using 20~30 tracks for in those tracks? For example (and sorry for prolly repeating known tingz, myaaan), a lot of processing power can be saved by re-using compressors (as opposed to sometimes needlessly having them on every track), re-using EQ for similar mix settings, and definitely using delays and reverbs on sends, as opposed to- again- the inefficient on-every-track method. You could also check processor usage on well-used plugins, because some VSTs are SHIT when it comes to processor efficiency, with no real benefit. You could ditch those CPU hogs and find something better. Cuz seriously, some plugins are badly written, and others have straight up memory leak bugs (which brings me to the next....).

 

The RAM thing- yes, this could help, and in a current-working sense, it might help to shut down every single unnecessary app in the background, so your main DAW and related tingz can use the most RAM. Even Chrome with a few tabs open in a RAM hog.

 

The hard drive-- considering we don't really know where your "latency issues" are coming from, this could very well be the bottleneck. Standard installs of platter hard drives on a desktop setup are 5400 RPM. 7200 RPM hard drives are dirt cheap now, so perhaps buying an external one (and maybe installing a USB 3.0 interface) could fix all your issues. The hard drive bottleneck could definitely be the thing, if you're using tons of sample based synths and samples in general that are 24-bit based (but after initial reading, these can get stored into RAM, so again comes the RAM thing). Back in the dayz o' PowerBook G4, by switching to an external FireWire setup (as opposed to internal 4800 RPM drive), I was able to add a few more tracks to heavily loaded projects and could eeeasily play tons of projects that used to lockout during playback.

 

Good luck~

[Guest]

Oookay, Mr. Antape... Well, there are some things that can be done. Firstly, a lot can possibly "be saved" through workflow enhancements. I've listened to your tracks before and just listened to some now (sweet btw, mang)-- and I mean this in a non-insulting way with all due respect, but I cannot see how you would need 20~30 tracks for that output. Hwaaat in the world are you using 20~30 tracks for in those tracks? For example (and sorry for prolly repeating known tingz, myaaan), a lot of processing power can be saved by re-using compressors (as opposed to sometimes needlessly having them on every track), re-using EQ for similar mix settings, and definitely using delays and reverbs on sends, as opposed to- again- the inefficient on-every-track method. You could also check processor usage on well-used plugins, because some VSTs are SHIT when it comes to processor efficiency, with no real benefit. You could ditch those CPU hogs and find something better. Cuz seriously, some plugins are badly written, and others have straight up memory leak bugs (which brings me to the next....).

 

The RAM thing- yes, this could help, and in a current-working sense, it might help to shut down every single unnecessary app in the background, so your main DAW and related tingz can use the most RAM. Even Chrome with a few tabs open in a RAM hog.

 

The hard drive-- considering we don't really know where your "latency issues" are coming from, this could very well be the bottleneck. Standard installs of platter hard drives on a desktop setup are 5400 RPM. 7200 RPM hard drives are dirt cheap now, so perhaps buying an external one (and maybe installing a USB 3.0 interface) could fix all your issues. The hard drive bottleneck could definitely be the thing, if you're using tons of sample based synths and samples in general that are 24-bit based (but after initial reading, these can get stored into RAM, so again comes the RAM thing). Back in the dayz o' PowerBook G4, by switching to an external FireWire setup (as opposed to internal 4800 RPM drive), I was able to add a few more tracks to heavily loaded projects and could eeeasily play tons of projects that used to lockout during playback.

 

Good luck~

 

A+

 

The bit on resource efficiency is of note. 20 to 30 tracks are a lot of tracks. There should be some bloat you can trim somewhere.

[xox]

@ OP

 

in you case more RAM would help only if you plan to use samplers more heavily. what would help you is to listen to above said advices regarding efficiency or buy better mb&cpu

[Lucas]

paranerd, on 02 Sept 2014 - 3:51 PM, said:

Doesn't Reaper compensate for latency delay? It doesn't make much sense to be mixing with some tracks being off by ~20ms.

when I wrote latency I meant buffer size, it's just the way they named the thing in the Firebox control panel (milliseconds instead of amount of samples). Reaper can indeed automatically compensate individual tracks plugin latency (I guess I wouldn't use it otherwise..).

 

peace 7, on 02 Sept 2014 - 9:32 PM, said:

Oookay, Mr. Antape... Well, there are some things that can be done. Firstly, a lot can possibly "be saved" through workflow enhancements. I've listened to your tracks before and just listened to some now (sweet btw, mang)-- and I mean this in a non-insulting way with all due respect, but I cannot see how you would need 20~30 tracks for that output. Hwaaat in the world are you using 20~30 tracks for in those tracks? For example (and sorry for prolly repeating known tingz, myaaan), a lot of processing power can be saved by re-using compressors (as opposed to sometimes needlessly having them on every track), re-using EQ for similar mix settings, and definitely using delays and reverbs on sends, as opposed to- again- the inefficient on-every-track method. You could also check processor usage on well-used plugins, because some VSTs are SHIT when it comes to processor efficiency, with no real benefit. You could ditch those CPU hogs and find something better. Cuz seriously, some plugins are badly written, and others have straight up memory leak bugs (which brings me to the next....).

 

The RAM thing- yes, this could help, and in a current-working sense, it might help to shut down every single unnecessary app in the background, so your main DAW and related tingz can use the most RAM. Even Chrome with a few tabs open in a RAM hog.

 

The hard drive-- considering we don't really know where your "latency issues" are coming from, this could very well be the bottleneck. Standard installs of platter hard drives on a desktop setup are 5400 RPM. 7200 RPM hard drives are dirt cheap now, so perhaps buying an external one (and maybe installing a USB 3.0 interface) could fix all your issues. The hard drive bottleneck could definitely be the thing, if you're using tons of sample based synths and samples in general that are 24-bit based (but after initial reading, these can get stored into RAM, so again comes the RAM thing). Back in the dayz o' PowerBook G4, by switching to an external FireWire setup (as opposed to internal 4800 RPM drive), I was able to add a few more tracks to heavily loaded projects and could eeeasily play tons of projects that used to lockout during playback.

 

Good luck~

I guess my background explains why I use so much tracks. I more or less started making music when I started studying sound engineering, and I've been taught how to mix tracks by doing such things like using several stages of compression, more than one reverb to have a fuller control of space (of course on send though), group some tracks and treat them together after having treated them individually... So I guess my sessions could look kind of "too expensive" for someone who didn't learn such things at school. For every track I post on soundcloud, I also consider the mix as being not fully developed (I consider that I'll make some further tweaks on a song if it's released at some point, I don't want to overproduce just for soundcloud). Anyway I still have a lot to learn and I'm sure I still can mix a lot more efficiently than I do right now.

 

I see mixing as something really complex which needs a lot of time to be developed and improved. Always testing new plugs or new settings is also part of the deal. But I do like plugins which makes simple things, considering that you can also set up a configuration of several simple tweaks yourself in order to achieve more complex treatments. Actually, apart from this sound engineer approach I'm a pretty "economic" kind of producer.

 

I don't have time yet but I'll look more in-depth all my configuration with a heavy session running. But basically I guess I'll wait for buying a new config, probably just motherboard / CPU / RAM. Good tips on the hard drives also, I'll look at it. And true that I can also freeze tracks I'm not using when I work on other tracks, I think this Reaper function is pretty easy to use.

[awepittance]

adding more excessive ram seems to only really give you an advantage when using massively large sampling libraries or working with really large file sizes in samplers.