M1 Mac thread

[daverich]

with mac you need to look at the memory pressure not the amount of used RAM.

[mschnell]

How is that defined ? (It supposedly is a sensible concept as Mac OS is based on BSD Unix)

[daverich]

you can see it in the activity monitor

[mike1127]

Originally Posted by mschnell

How is that defined ? (It supposedly is a sensible concept as Mac OS is based on BSD Unix)

I'm still hoping someone can explain why Reaper uses 1.6 GB for a small project, but in the meantime I'll answer your question here.

I don't know for sure, but I can explain some of my observations with my M2 Mac. With the integrated chip containing the memory and the SSD on a chip, it's possible for more integration between memory and SSD use. For a long time operating systems have had the concept of swap space, which is disk used to hold things that don't fit in memory. M1/M2 Macs use that of course, but it might be particularly fast and less of a distinction between memory and SSD given they are so integrated. M1/M2 Macs also use memory to cache disk files (the other way - memory holding stuff off the SSD).

I've noticed my 16 GB are almost always in full use. Running more programs means some things have to moved back to the SSD to make room, or some memory has to be compressed more.

As I run more programs, eventually there are many programs competing to use the 16 GB, the cached files have to be reduced, and so on, so the computer slows down.

The activity monitor displays a graph of memory pressure but it has no units on it and I don't know what a "good" or "bad" reading is. I just know when it gets above about halfway up, my Mac slows down.

The most significant problem I have is that I can't run Voice Control without the Mac slowing down too much to use. On an M1/M2 mac Voice control runs on your Mac rather than in the cloud.

[mschnell]

If you see Reaper is using 10% (in that measurement terms) of the "memory", which does not seem to be huge, what percentage does the Voice Control use ?

[mike1127]

Originally Posted by mschnell

If you see Reaper is using 10% (in that measurement terms) of the "memory", which does not seem to be huge, what percentage does the Voice Control use ?

You can't really state the percentage of memory used due to the existence of the swap file, compression of some memory, and use of memory to cache disk files. Also Voice Control consists of many processes.

The Activity Monitor allows me to see the total memory used by each process, but for programs that consist of many processes, and for which memory usage fluctuates, I can only give an estimate.

The browser (Firefox) seems to use about 3 GB. My best guess for Voice Control is 4 to 5 GB.

I also have to run software-development-related programs at the same time as Reaper because I'm doing some algorithm-based music making. I estimate that takes 2 to 3 GB.

There are many other apps. My best guess is that I need to get about 3 GB back due to closing apps or reducing their memory usage. That means I need "all hands on board" when it comes to reducing memory usage (all apps must be investigated).

When Reaper is using 1.6 GB for a *very small project* (with no audio, no samples, and no IRs... just modeled instruments with a small memory footprint judging by the download size), and when Windows seems to use less than 200 MB for most projects, I could really use that 1.4 GB back as part of the overall attempt to free up 3 GB for Voice Control.

Of course this depends on changing some setting or finding something wrong with current settings. If Reaper just uses that much memory on M1/M2 Macs, correct behavior, then there's nothing I can do about it.

[mschnell]

Hmmm.

It does not make sense that Reaper would need seven times more memory on M1/2 vs on Windows. So I believe the OS calculates such very differently.

BTW for sample based instruments, Kontakt only loads a small part (begin) of the samples in memory and streams the rest from disk in realtime. Hence there would be no huge memory overhead per se.