reset or clear ram

mark skinner

mark skinner

Active member
A friend I file share with uses a Less than steller pc for recording. After 10 or 12 undone takes , it starts acting funky and slow down some. I thought it might be low ram . I was wondering if the ram clears when you close out the current project , with the main daw stiil loaded ?? MS
 
You can open Task Manager (assuming Windows PC), make sure to click the button to show all processes from all users, and sort by memory utilization top to bottom and see whether closing a project changes the app's memory allocation. I'd guess it would some, but it's going to be very dependent on the individual app.
 
I always assumed ram to be volatile, it clears when you shut down and the hard drive loads up the programs you need at next boot?

How much ram does the "less than stellar" PC have? 4G is about the minimum for Win7 and a DAW. 8G and you should be comfortable for most things. I think only serious projects, high deff' vid say would need more?

The PC or Speccy should tell you what the ram is then you can run a mnfctrs test prog.

Dave.
 
The operating system frees up the memory used by an application when you close the application, but what happens inside an application is completely application-specific. For example, when you close the project, obviously the DAW doesn't need your data in memory anymore but it doesn't necessarily free the used memory to the OS, it's not uncommon for applications to maintain their own memory pool for faster allocations. And sometimes applications have memory leaks which only become more noticeable on low-spec hardware, and those typically only clear up by closing the entire application.

Try it out. If closing the project helps, then it helps. If getting more memory is not an option, there are usually ways to tune things a bit - make sure nothing unnecessary runs on that computer, that there are no memory-hungry themes and such in use etc. The DAW itself might also have options to limit the amount of caching, undo levels and so on.
 
Thanks for the reply's so far . He's running Sonar LE 8.5 on an old XP Dell with doubled ram. It probably had 612mb originally. Iv'e been surprised it runs as well as it does .. MS
 
You're likely running out of memory so it switches to virtual memory - might be a setting for that in XP, I really don't remember that far back. Old, slow, fragmented disks are going take their toll if VM is involved. Minimize VM alloc if possible, defrag, then max it out so it's all in contiguous sectors might help, but that things about ready for life support, and if you keep pushing it, something's gonna blow ;)
 
mark skinner said:
Thanks for the reply's so far . He's running Sonar LE 8.5 on an old XP Dell with doubled ram. It probably had 612mb originally. Iv'e been surprised it runs as well as it does .. MS
Click to expand...

'kinell! When I left XP (with some tears!) I think I had 2 500M sticks and son was running Camtasia and that kept telling him he was low on memory.

Ooo! Is he anywhere near NN5 5P* UK? I am looking for a very cheap XP machine!

Dave.
 
Thanks for all the great information , I think I've got a better understanding now. We'll go thru his pc with your suggestions asap. Thanks .... Mark
 
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