Recently one of my 4gb Ram cards went un usable so i'm stuck with just 4gb ram. My question is, Would upgrading to 16gb of ram help me get better performance out of Studio One/VSTs ?

Thanks for reading

 

Yes... install as much RAM as your computer can handle or you can afford... I have 32 GB in one computer and 16 in the other (2 computer set-up). The 32 GB can go as high as 64 in my Mac Pro but I just couldn't afford it at the time...

 

Don't forget about your processor as well. If you record a lot of audio tracks and want reverb or another effect on each track, you need more RAM (and a faster processor). If you record mainly MIDI tracks with instruments that already have the effects that you want, you can get by with less RAM (and a slower processor). Personally, I max out the memory of all of my computers that I use for audio production.

 

Thanks for the quick answers!

 

Yes but it's not the main thing I think, you won't notice it faster unless you have a fine processor and hard drive (SSD) but the more RAM you have the more instruments you're going to be able to add in your project.

 

Actually the answers are not really correct when considering the exact question.
RAM does not affect the performance of a plugin. It can either be loaded to RAM, then it works like it should. Or it can't, because there isn't enough RAM left. Then you can't use it at all. Regarding this, the correct answer would be "no".

But of course the answers still make sense, since more RAM allows using more of everything, audio and midi tracks, plugins, bigger samples in samplers, and so on.

 

only until a few weeks ago I met the limit of my 16 Gb, where there is 11 gb for fl studio.
purged a few samples in kontakt instances and I was good to go.

What might be interesting to know if diffrent cl timings or higher frequency memory has an influence on Round-trip-latency's

 

With 4GB ram your system is surely swapping (either mac or windows), so in this case:
More ram would speed up your whole system (and therefore daw/plugins also), because it doesn't need to write ("swap") data between ram and hdd/ssd.

With 16gb ram, you should consider to turn off pagefile (windows). That will fasten up things too, but don't expect too much overall.

 

Is studio one a 64 bit daw? If so you want more ram.

 

@tulamide: The answers were right, at least when you take the post's title. But he question should read correctly "Does the amount of RAM affect VST/DAW performance".
Assuming this, my answer is:
Of course the amount of RAM matters. If you have'nt enough, the OS will start to swap memory from RAM to harddisk and vice versa to maintain a sufficient amout of memory for all running tasks.
And swapping is a serious performance killer.
For a 64 bit OS, 4 Gigybyte would lead to swapping, so it will be good to add the 4 GB RAM again.

 

No. That's only up to your CPU and ASIO/audio driver. Lower CL timings can make stuff in your RAM load/move/unload *marginally* faster. You don't have to worry about that unless your RAM is extremely slow. What's more important is RAM stability!

Which brings us to the OP Q. DAW/VST performance can be affected by lack of RAM if you use huge sample libraries like this Kwissbeats guy. Only Kontakt with a dozen of massive sample libraries loaded can consume this much RAM to my knowledge, nothing else comes close. Many of my clients get nicely by with 4GB/8GB of RAM. Don't let the megalomaniacs in this thread sway you.

So the Q is, "do I need this?" It depends on your habits, and what you use. It also takes ages to load such a project with Kontakt taking 10GB of RAM. Personally, my projects are pretty optimised and I watch RAM like a hawk because I like my projects to load as fast as possible. I also use Kontakt just here and there, but that's ME. You have to decide for yourself how much RAM you need, because you know what you use and how you use your VSTs best. Load your most complex project, look into the "Task Manager" and see how much RAM your DAW uses. If it's more than 4GB you need 8GB of RAM. If it's more than 8GB you need 12 or 16GB of RAM, and so on.

Don't waste money on crap you don't need. Rather save for a better mic, audio interface, or whatever rocks your boat more than computer RAM. Buy that freakin' guitar pedal you've always wanted!

What affects VST/DAW performance when you have enough RAM the most is your CPU. Quality of the ASIO driver and quality of the DAW programming in question, too. That's pretty much it.

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Jul 11, 2016

There won't be any swapping until you start to use up those 4GB of RAM, no matter how many bits the OS is. Depending on what and how you use your DAW and plugins you could be perfectly fine with 4GB of RAM. It also depends on who installed and what version of Windows you use. If I installed my "lite" W7, it would consume about 300MB when you boot it, so there are less background processes and more RAM for your DAW and plugins.

 

Holy crap. That's sensational

 

So your Audio interface, mine is a 2nd gen Scarlett 2i2, doesn't effect the playback performance, as in, multiple tracks, multiple plugins, high quality

I use Reaper and when I have 10+ tracks 4 with amp sims and all with multiple plugins and sometimes on playback it will lag and skip REALLY bad. I have a 2.4 7th gen i7, 12 gb ram, but I always assumed it was the I interface that handled all that processing.

 

Just have a look how much RAM is actually used and how much is paged.

Here a snapshot of my system right now:




See ? Just in basic operation it use over 10 GB RAM and that without doing any special

 

perhaps you give the rest us some ideas for optimising their projects ?

I would appreciate it ..
thanks

 

No, not afaik. Only plugins that load samples into RAM will benefit (Kontakt, Omnisphere, etc). For real-time processing it's more about CPU power. You generally want a nice mix between the two, so nothing gets bottlenecked.

 

The driver and buffer size for sure will.

 

Yep, that's the way to find out if your system would benefit from more RAM.

 

That's a second life for a three years old thread. Hope the OP is still alive (last seen Jul 8th 2016)