How much computer RAM for music production?

[StevenK]

Hello TAXI Members,
I have a question: How much computer RAM for music production? I'm on a iMAC desktop computer 4.2 GHz Core i7

I can add RAM and get it up to 64GB of RAM. How much RAM do I need to run everything smoothly?

Appreciate responses from music producers, home recording studio owners, engineers.

Thanks in advance!

Steven
Artist : SONGS FROM A HEADBAND
www.aheadband.com

[MBantle]

Hello TAXI Members,
I have a question: How much computer RAM for music production? I'm on a iMAC desktop computer 4.2 GHz Core i7

I can add RAM and get it up to 64GB of RAM. How much RAM do I need to run everything smoothly?

Appreciate responses from music producers, home recording studio owners, engineers.

Thanks in advance!

Steven
Artist : SONGS FROM A HEADBAND
www.aheadband.com

I'm working on a Macbook Pro with 16 GB RAM and I only have issues with larger sessions in the final stages of bigger productions where I am too lazy to bounce stuff in place and run a lot of virtual instruments in midi (plus a lot of plugins). But even then with a 1024 buffer in Logic it still works (almost most of the time). If it's just audio tracks I could probably handle much (!) larger sessions without any issues.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Matt

[hummingbird]

I had 16 and bumped it up to 32GB last year. Working on a score recently it started to falter at a certain point as I had many tracks in there but I could have dealt with it by running the midi off to audio and mixing it in a new project. I'd say 32GB at least, especially to manage orchestra, synths and effects.

H

[gitanosoy]

Hello TAXI Members,
I have a question: How much computer RAM for music production? I'm on a iMAC desktop computer 4.2 GHz Core i7

I can add RAM and get it up to 64GB of RAM. How much RAM do I need to run everything smoothly?

Appreciate responses from music producers, home recording studio owners, engineers.

Thanks in advance!

Steven
Artist : SONGS FROM A HEADBAND
www.aheadband.com

Hi Steven,
You have more than enough power there to do a lot of track and use multiple plugins..as the others said if you are doing audio track and not a lot of virtual instruments then for sure you are okay. I use 2016 iMac with 8GB icore 5 but my compositions are mostly guitar and maybe 6 to 10 tracks plus I use UAD Apollo twin audio interface which with logic so the CPU is not drawn from the computer.. I am sure with your set up you are not getting the beach ball rotating for 15 minutes....lol..by all means my next computer will have minimum 16GB or 32 GB... so in conclusion I think you are okay unless you are doing 640 tracks like Jacob Collier which then you need NASA to build you a special computer.

Unfortunately you can not add RAM to 2016 iMac, I guess the 2017 has an open door at the back to add more RAM

Good Luck

[kitbenz51]

I have been using an 8Gb machine for a couple years. As my experience and my VST library grows, it just wasn’t cutting it. I recently made an investment into a 64 Gb machine and it is incredible. I think I saved myself a lot of gray hairs.
I would say it depends on what you’re doing. The more virtual instruments you have the more power you will need. Same goes for plugins I guess.

-Kit

[Kolstad]

How much RAM you need depends also with whatbyou are using. If you record mostly audio, use vi’s for drums, piano and a pad, and some mixing with plugins - then 32ram would mostly suffice. If you plan to run bigger projects with a lot of orchestral instruments, Omnisphere ect, then you would need more - 64 and up. The better the virtual instruments and plugins get, the more ram they use. So, it depends on whatbyou use now and plan to use a year or two ahead. I wouldnt get less than 32ram in a new computer today. I plan on getting a new 64rammer later this year, myself.

[cosmicdolphin]

Short answer:-

16gb you can get away with but you might end up purging larger Kontakt instruments and wind up with the computer using it's swap file more than needed

32gb is pretty workable for the average DAW user

64gb for power users running some big templates

Whatever you pick make sure you can easily upgrade it to double what you buy. LTT ran some benchmarks on systems with different ram sizes a couple of days ago which is a good watch, they didn't test DAW users but they did show the differences for video editing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUFWalEf31w

[TheElement]

I'm running 32GB. and that works for me. but why not go to 64GB one time. I plan on upgrading.

[RobertElse]

I have a PC with 64GB of RAM, running Pro Tools and I've never had a problem, but I'm glad I don't have any less than that. I've had up to 15 or so instances of Kontakt and EW instruments fully loaded and the memory usage (according to Task Manager) is about 1/3 of available RAM. So if I only had 32MB I would be nearly maxed out. Buy the most you can afford - more is better and it will increase the useful life of your machine.
Robert

[StevenK]

I had 16 and bumped it up to 32GB last year. Working on a score recently it started to falter at a certain point as I had many tracks in there but I could have dealt with it by running the midi off to audio and mixing it in a new project. I'd say 32GB at least, especially to manage orchestra, synths and effects.

H

Thank you, appreciate it.