I like to get at least 6-7 years out of my Mac and wouldn’t want to be stuck with an underpowered computer in 4 years. Yeah, they’re managed differently but that may also mean that developers are going to start pushing these processors as far as they can going forward and apps will become more resource hungry. still, if you want it (& can afford it) more is still more. but, personally, i think 32gb is overkill.
The new chips manage memory differently from the intel chips, and 16gb should go really far only if i were doing 8k pro work, would i max things out (processor, memory, ram). Throughout the day I have a 1 or 2 audio projects open, a few tabs of Safari, the company Slack, a couple of spreadsheets opened in Excel. I currently have 16gb on my Macbook Pro and I never run out of ram when I'm strictly working on audio and music, BUT if I have to run other apps for my work at the same time I run out of ram quickly. If I were to buy one of these computers I'd go with 32gb of ram. And thanks, fun and enjoyment is definitely the purpose! I’ve been saving up but I’m still waiting until I’m absolutely sure on everything. I’d unfortunately have to get a new computer as the ram can’t be upgraded with the one I have Besides increasing the ram, do you think that any processor upgrades past the base model of the new Macbook pro would make a difference in performance based on my results? I honestly don’t have the knowledge to tell if the different cpu/gpu/neural engine options would help. Yes, you read that correctly, I didn’t even know that was possible… the hard drive is 500gb with 90gb available. if we forget the 'fun' part of all this, why make music at all?. If you enjoy spending hours layering drums, keep at it. & if it were me, i'd bump the ram to 16gb it can only help, and is the cheapest alternative to an entirely-new mac. Reset the nvram, and perhaps the smc, and check again. Wait, am i reading that right? you have 8gb ram, but logic is using 11.51gb? and 353% of the cpu? how big is your hard drive, and how much space is unused? I'm not sure what the CPU reading means though with the percentage used, is that normal? I also had the Disk Monitor running in logic and it barely went up. Here's a screenshot of the results with a medium-size project of mine - I'm quite sure it's gone above both measurements before when I've had larger projects open, but I didn't open one of those as it takes (even longer) to load. Post back here with what you're seeing if you need help deciphering. Monitor your CPU, Disk and RAM usage when you get the beach ball.
The solution? Don't buy anything until you've determined which of the 3 is the weak link, then you'll know what direction to go. So basically if you buy more RAM you stand about 1/3 chances of seeing an improvement and 2/3 of seeing zero improvements. If your weak link is the CPU and you buy more RAM, you will see zero improvement. If your weak link is the Disk and you buy more RAM, you will see zero improvement. I just like to layer drums, I know it's kind of weird but I like to sit and edit drums for hours I'm going to post a photo of the Activity Monitor results soon if you want to lookĪ computer is a balanced equilibrium of basically 3 things: CPU, RAM and Disk. you could run the hardware test to check the drive, or try resetting the nvram and smc before you replace the ram, see if that helps. Only you can decide what to do next you can go for 16 or 32 gb ram, and see how things go. 100 tracks of drum samples? 100? yikes, just curious: why? but it's your right of course to do what you need to do.
If the issue is with the processor, or the hard drive, ram isn't going to fix that, but. If you have any advice on which specs should be maxed out and would make a difference it would help a lot! When I have a heavy project, I often get the beach ball of death for 15-30 seconds when doing something like changing to advanced tools or doing a “save project with audio files and other data”, and it also heats up considerably when exporting/bouncing tracks.
I mainly use actual drum sample files (a lot, usually at least 100 tracks of drum samples and even more bounces of them after editing and processing them) as well as software synths, but I use a lot of plug-ins on every track (hundreds in a large session, and different for each track so I can’t use a bus as a workaround). What mac, what version logic? and how much do you depend on sample-based libraries?Īm running with 16 on my intel mac, and have never had a memory issue (but, see above.)Ģ018 macbook pro with 8gb ram, Intel, and the other basic specs on the lowest model.