#10

Sounds all fine - though you should really review if you need 40GB RAM. Unlike CPU - where Ableton can just “run more!” if you have more, RAM is only useful if Ableton has something to put in it. Sure, it’ll help with buffering off disk… but at some point the diminishing returns set in. I don’t have exact numbers, but 40GB struck me as high. How much RAM does your current machine have… and how much does Ableton use? (Activity Monitor app will tell you.)

I have the Fusion drive on my 2017 iMac 27" - and it has been transparent. It is nice having 2TB of space, but SSD speed for what I’m using - all without thinking about it, or shuffling things on and off external drives.

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#11

I believe you’ve got to order/install the RAM in matched pairs, and there are four slots total. So you’d be looking at multiples of 8 or 16 most likely. Though, for what it’s worth, I only have 16gb in my iMac- which I intend to upgrade- and it handles Ableton superbly.

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#12

Thanks all. I have 8GB at the moment in my MacBook Pro. Basic iMac spec is 8, but in 4x2, with 2 empty slots. So most efficient/future proof is to get 2 lots of 16 - which get you to 32 in matched pairs plus original 8 = 40GB.

Getting the additional RAM from third parties is cheap, like £110 for the extra 32, so seems sensible.

Edit: Clearly, in the real world, £110 is not cheap for many people, I meant compared with Apple’s own prices.

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#13

For some reason, I thought they needed to be like pairs. But a quick googling has shown me otherwise. Best of luck, and congrats on the upcoming purchase!

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#14

Well, I’m running nothing particularly interesting at the moment on Mac OS Catalina, and between the OS, this service or that, and a smattering of applications, I’m at 23.55GB RAM used out of 32GB, so I’d say that 32GB is your baseline in 2020. During any kind of real work, the only acceptable amount of active swap is zero. If you’re investing in a new computer you expect to last you several years, then spend a little extra and make sure you’ve RAM to spare.

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#15

It’s about speed. If they’re all matched, you get theoretically 4x the bandwidth across the entire memory. If they aren’t matched, you only get the speed boost for the portion that overlap, and in many cases the system might just default to 2x across the whole thing - I’m not sure what the iMacs do in hardware, but you definitely won’t get the max performance from the memory.

32GB is plenty for me to be editing 4K video, I don’t anticipate for audio you’ll ever need more than that and that’s 4x8GB which is usually pretty affordable relatively speaking. I have a 2014 retina iMac (max specs) and it’s still fast fast fast.

That said, my 2014 13" (also loaded - 16GB RAM) is absolutely no slouch and I suspect the “display drivers” are not what’s causing any sort of audio related problems whatsoever unless your plugins are dodgy. I run Ableton 10 on it all the time and it’s rock solid and performs very well. I have zero plans to upgrade it for quite a while.

You could try a brand new, from scratch OS reload on your existing hardware (deauthorize all your plugins/apps first, and take a FULL system backup, then reinstall things one at a time as if it were a new computer, don’t restore from your backup other than to directly copy your data itself - not programs or configuration - over). I do that every few years – it’s not necessary, but I do seem to have fewer technical problems than folks I know who don’t do that, knock on wood!

#16

On all modern UNIX-based systems, the filesystem and other OS caches will actively use nearly 100% of all available RAM as you access files from disk. It’s normal and does not mean the system needs or is really actively using that RAM. This is not really an appropriate way to determine actual RAM pressure, as the RAM is instantly released when a program demonstrates an actual need for it. I run a development, film, and music production environment on Catalina on 16GB and it’s just fine too. I rarely have any active swapping unless I deliberately start doing some heavy video editing. And with SSDs, light swapping is much less of a problem, as long as you’re not into thrashing.

3 Likes
#17

That’s because this issue has been a moving target. At some points, RAM cards have had to be installed in matched pairs or even matching sets to work at all. At other points, they haven’t required matched pairs or sets, but the best performance has only been available with matched pairs or sets. The current DDR4 RAM seems to be mix-and-match.

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#18

Well, I’ve taken the plunge and ordered the specifications I mentioned. No doubt the new one gets announced tomorrow/next month.

I’ll report back with my findings.

#19

My studio machine is a late 2012 top spec iMac 27” with SSD and it handles anything music related I throw at it. It runs Catalina and I’ve had zero problems. Live 10, some plugins, Babyface Pro, Elektron and Expert Sleepers gear.

So unless you need something that’s not supported by Catalina, I can’t think of any/many limitations.

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#20

Same here! Got it last week because my work was going to throw it away! In the trash! Can you believe that? Swapped in an SSD and rebuilt the fusion drive, and it runs like a champ.

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#21

I bought a 2019 iMac from the Apple Store and 32gb of RAM (OWC) from a third party thinking in having 40 gb. The thing is that I had A LOT of crashes of the OS, so I removed the 8 gb modules that came pre-installed. Everything is working perfect now with the 32 gb.

#22

OK, I’ll watch out for that. Thanks.

#23

Just a note but in case it was missed above 4x8GB modules will give better memory performance than 2x16gb and are worth the cost difference.

#24

OK, thanks, I’ve ordered 16x2 anyway and will add these to the existing 8x2.

So the suggestion is that actually another 8x2 might be better in this circumstance? Or 8x4 of the exact same RAM?

The general view I can glean from elsewhere is that the 16x2 to 40 MB upgrade option is typically pretty successful, but then these people are probably just as inexpert as me…

#25

I purchased the 2019 27in model last year to serve as my dedicated DAW computer. I maxed out most specs via Apple and the RAM via Crucial (in order to save money). I absolutely love it! I was a bit concerned about the display size and possibly needing an additional display, but so far the single display has sufficed quite nicely!

That said, I do see that we should expect a new model this year.

#26

As I wrote a few posts earlier, unmatched RAM works (sometimes, some users have issues) but its slower than fully matched RAM. Whether you will notice this is highly workload dependent but if your workload is affected by RAM performance it can be noticeable. As a result, given the small cost differential its far better to match.

#27

I promised to report back on my new iMac as a DAW; several unavoidable issues prevented me doing this promptly, but I can do so now.

My machine is the iMac 27in, 9th Gen 6 core processor, 512 GB SSD, 8GB ram upgraded to 40GB. Previously I had a 13in MacBook Pro from 2014.

This might be the first proper spec machine I’ve had (though I used to build my own audio PCs in the past) but it is astonishingly powerful so far. Running Ableton, with Pro Q3 and a reverb on every track (not loads, but say 20) it gets to maybe 10% usage. This would have broken my previous machine; it feels much more than 10x better. It is hard to see what it could not do for my purposes.

The one real negative - and it’s a serious one - is that when I installed the MOTU drivers, it would not reboot, and just hung. This was pretty scary given the price I’d paid for the iMac. I had to do an OS reinstall to get it up and running. But after that, it was perfect.

Hope this is useful for anyone else considering this option, thanks for everyone’s advice. Time to make some music.

4 Likes
#28

anyone have any thoughts on the new imac 2020 for daw use? aggravating that you can’t add more storage. but otherwise i feel like if i bump it to 32GB it’ll work well for me

#29

Should generally be an outstanding computer. Obviously, buy third party RAM—OWC’s ram kits have never let me down. The external storage problem is a pain. If you can afford it, I recommend OWC’s Thunderbolt 3 SSD options, such as the ThunderBlade—that offers pretty transparent storage. Avoid external spinners: they will drive you batty waiting for them to spin up (as far as I can tell, there’s no way to prevent external hard drives from spinning down, despite the setting in System Preferences). The shortage of ports can also be a pain. I use a Thunderbolt dock, but I can’t say it makes me much happier—it’s another goddamn thing lying around.