Pushing "maschine" to its limits, in a performing context

6xes · 2025-01-20T09:35:29+00:00

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considering each of us likely enjoy doing a random performance of sorts while utilising our computers with the maschine software running in the mix somewhere in the chain…

i am finally reaching a brickwall again with respects to the amount of processing required to continually output a quality audio(no audio glitching)

i personally have transitioned from a windowsPC 16gb to a 8gb m1macmini to now a 16gb m1macmini, and with each leap i have pushed the wall of processing back each time

recently i have noticed the brickwall creeping up on me again, as i have introduced more software into my audio chain, which eventually contributes to the brickwall scenario

for clarification on reaching the scenario of a brickwall on a m1macmini as seen in this old video….

it is when your Mac starts using your ssd as swap memory, becos the physical memory is saturated, with everything it needs in order to process without delay

note the swap memory in the 8gb m1macmini in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9tHYBoM5nE

a 16gb m1macmini upgrade and im near on hitting the wall again, but with the added use of VirtualDJfree & remixlive sync'd up added to the above scenario (quality vdjstems adds to memory consumption)

in your performance type scenarios, what are you using, that brings the brickwall forward?

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HugoClubs

I am not a technical person, but I think the answer to your question is RAM - as much as you can afford 🤷‍♂️

D-One

If each time you get a better computer you introduce more and more applications (or more RAM-intensive things generally) then you're stuck on a loop where nothing will ever be good enought. I mean no offense but you gotta question yourself and ask if you might not be over-complicating things for the sake of it… Music listeners usually dont care if you have 5 plugins or 500.

IMHO Live performance is all about optimization and practicality while production might have other priorities such as complexity, flexibility, etc, so personally I separate the two stages, meaning for example: bouncing VSTi's to Audio/Samplers, bouncing static insert FX, etc… If something doesn't 100% need to be processed in real-time then it shouldn't, ex: if you not going to tweak an EQ in a performance then bake it into the Audio.

It's hard to say what is eating your RAM based on that video… I guess you gotta find that out before you can try solutions, put the activity monitor ordered by ram consumption so you can actually see in order what's taking it the most.

a 16gb m1macmini upgrade and im near on hitting the wall again, but with the added use of VirtualDJfree & remixlive sync'd up added to the above scenario (quality vdjstems adds to memory consumption)

If VDJ Stems is the culprit then the Activity Monitor app should point to it, if it is then consider another solution like pre-rendering the stems into 4 .wavs (or however many you need) beforehand.

You're using a bunch of Maschine-Plug instances? If so, open each in standalone app and take note of how much RAM each one is using. If one is taking too much then proceed to think on how it could be optimized.

it is when your Mac starts using your ssd as swap memory, becos the physical memory is saturated, with everything it needs in order to process without delay

RAM is not used specifically for audio to be processed without delay — Often software that could very well stream from disk actually loads things into RAM without any actual advantage from a user standpoint, often it just depends on what the devs prioritize. This is why diskstreaming is a big topic on standalone's where RAM is very limited.

6xes

all good points @D-One

granted i have set my sights set on a multi-faceted performance workflow, i will likely continually move toward a upgrade path, as the need arises

one other alternative i have at my disposal, is to use the 8gb m1 in dual sync with the 16gb m1….

but the m4macmini is very tempting, i'll keep a watchful eye on the 2nd hand market for one

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/205313#Comment_205313

Yeah, I forgot to say that. Sync the two is an option.

I have the M2 Pro with 16GB, I'm kind of mad that M4 base model + 24GB is the same price but that's life… Bad timing on my part. You can also try to establish what is more forgiving in terms of issues when things go into Swap memory, maybe load things in a different order or something? Stems being in swap shouldn be an issue, RAM is still faster then SSD's but with todays nvme speeds it's not a gigantic difference anymore.

Unified Ram has lots of advantages but price is certainly not one of them, i feel like for an ever-growing need for specs Windows is way more feasible, that or… you get rich.

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