Flushing RAM...

Brad Yost
Brad Yost Member Posts: 350 Pro
in Tech Talks

I have a tech tip for more advanced users;

(and NO... I'm not dissing New York, the rest of you... get your mind out of the loo... 🤣)

When I get done for the day on a large session (or moving to another large session) of my standard 100+ instrument scoring template, I will flush the RAM using two commands in RamMap:

  • Empty Standby List
  • Empty Working Sets
  • F5 Refresh

[I have written a batch file that does both of these in succession by CMD prompt and saved a shortcut to a corner of my desktop, but it can easily be done from the menu in the RamMap executable.]

Over the years I've found that some Komplete Kontrol, Kontakt, and UVI loaded instruments will not self flush when closing the project session and/or the DAW, leaving up to 7Gb of ram still filled with sample data/Instrument instances (files are easily visible in the File Summary of the RM app.)

This assures that when I put the machine to sleep for the night, or just change to a different project/app/function, that I'm not leaving anything floating in RAM that can interfere or get hashed.

Happy flushing... 😁

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Comments

  • zenluiz
    zenluiz Member Posts: 11 Member

    Important to mention that this is Windows only.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap

    Also, important to mention that by flushing RAM you are also flushing important caches the operating system uses to make everything run smooth for you.

    ps.: I really love SysInternals tools :)

  • Brad Yost
    Brad Yost Member Posts: 350 Pro

    @zenluiz

    The Working Sets and the Standby List don't touch the system OS cache at all, just Standby Zero and System Working sets do, and, yes, flushing them does cause some ugly hickups.

    I've just found that certain instruments, like The Gentleman [for example] (on my System at least) don't release the sample cache consistently after closing my DAW.

    I've been doing this for years and never had a single problem with changing projects and ram cache.

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