How much ram is really needed whe you have an ssd?

[Echoes in the Attic]

I suppose it depends on whether your sampled instruments load into ram or direct from disk. I don’t really check these things anymore, but I guess I have a couple questions.
Do DAWs still load all their audio and sampler files to ram even if you have an ssd?
Does an ssd provide comparable performance when accessing samples as ram does?
I think most big kontakt instruments these days still are saved to load from ram, but I know there is also a setting to load from hard drive. Do people with an ssd tend to switch their instruments over to this method who use an ssd to use less ram?

In general I guess I’m wondering if it’s worth getting the most ram that you can these days in a laptop that comes with a big ssd drive. Or if it doesn’t matter so much anymore.

[Kaine]

Most programs let you adjust the pre-load but I can't recall any off the top of my head that allows you to 100% stream, it's more like 50% or less although I may not have been paying attention I guess.

Check for packages you use, but I wouldn't skimp on the physical RAM myself.

[chk071]

I always was under the impression that it's always better to load from Ram than from the HDD/SSD, performance wise. Isn't it a whole lot faster, even if you happen to use a SSD?

Still remember the times when Ram was running out, and it swapped to HDD. Ouch... was that slow...

[legendCNCD]

"I wouldn't skimp on the physical RAM myself" - This.

Now I'd start from 16GB anyway, next machine will have at least 32GB.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Actually I was deciding whether to hold out for 32gb ram. The current laptop that I want (dell xps 15 2-in-1) only goes up to 16gb ram until probably early 2019. Sample libraries of course get bigger and use more and more ram, as does the OS, so I’m on the fence about getting it with 16gb, though really that should be fine.

[pljones]

I've been running 32GB RAM and two SSDs for my last two PC builds. I really should have stretched to 64GB for this latest one but I upped the speed and skimped on quantity to balance out the cost... Tsk. (I load a lot of samples and I'd load more if I had more RAM - I'm swapping already. At least it now doesn't take 15 minutes to load up.)

[DJ Warmonger]

Open Task Manager and see how much RAM is actually used in different scenarios.
-software engineer

[Pictus]

Is 32GB of ram ok for a full orchestral template?
https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... ate.60743/

[Kaine]

I always was under the impression that it's always better to load from Ram than from the HDD/SSD, performance wise. Isn't it a whole lot faster, even if you happen to use a SSD?

Having better access and read speeds does help speed up the searching for and changing of sound banks, but otherwise, It's just about bandwidth where you either have enough so that it doesn't drop out or you don't and it does.

Software like Kontakt works by half pre-loading and half streaming or letting you optimize one way or another. Too much pre-load and you run the risk of brick walling when you run out of RAM, too little pre-load and your total track count drops when you run out of drive bandwidth.

When you have a bucket load of RAM and some nippy drives you're simply allowing for more tracks to be used before the wall is hit and you have fewer concerns with optimizing one way or another.

Now I'd start from 16GB anyway, next machine will have at least 32GB.

Yeah, agreed. I don't particularly go in heavy with the sound banks and I hit 16 GB fairly regularly without trying. I view it as a minimum these days, although I suspect my own next system will start with 32GB onboard.

[dellboy]

Forgive me for being dense,but why is there a need to load up all the orchestra instruments at the same time ?

After all,its only possible to play one at a time.

Mozart could only write one line, with with one hand, and one quill at a time.

[Kaine]

Well, you can bounce and freeze each track as you go if you wish... and plenty of people do, but it's still handy to be able to go back and group edit, and of course you can purge layers you're not using too.

[jancivil]

After all,its only possible to play one at a time.

Mozart could only write one line, with with one hand, and one quill at a time.

There's a thing in a DAW called playback.
It's like when you hear the whole orchestra at one time. Dealing with one part at a time (and Mozart dealt conceptually in sections frequently enough anyway) has little to do with the matter.

In VE Pro you can freeze channels and in their instrument you can disable cells with a simple double-click (command E and dbl-click are toggles).

But if one wants to hear it all on_playback one may want to have it all up in realtime and here one wants realtime performance. Or we can render but then one may need to re-render* based in other realities which may arise. So it's a balance of decision-making.
With my new machine, my first project, fairly dense but not 'full orchestra', I kept it all up and my final 2-file render was with all MIDI up, except for one thing which wouldn't render all the way through for some reason. And that's how I did it for years with the 8-core. I did max out my 24GB a couple of times.

So, someone doing this for a living that needs a big orchestration actually needs the RAM as well as a machine to provide realtime performance with latency they can tolerate. If only because of *time constraints. People have 128GB setups today.