Hey all,

I'm running Pro Tools 8 and Propellerheads Reason 4 on a 2.4 gHz macbook with 2 GB of RAM. The other day I had about 10 tracks going (including Reason rewired) with about 18 plugins. The cursor began to move slowly and there was some harsh distortion as well. I haven't been using a FW external drive, just the 5400 rpm internal drive (I know this is kind of a cardinal sin, but I never ran into many issues before).

Anyhow, something needs to be upgraded. I'm just wondering which would be more helpful - a bump to 4 GB, or a 7200 rpm external firewire drive? Any help with this would be much appreciated. Thanks.

search your feelings... you know you've got to do both, right?





This post has been edited by houstonmusic: Fri 18 Sep 2009, 16:44

The RAM will give a break to the OS and the computer.
The drive will care of the crackling. <= priority in your case

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I was pretty sure I would have to do both, but can only do one this month. I'll wait til next month to do the external drive. The extra RAM has made a nice difference though. That should do for the meantime.

This post has been edited by j_grim14: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 14:54

Save money and roll your own drive. just got a 1.5TB seagate for 89$ @ Fry's. Other World Computing (among others) has great enclosures to suit your particular needs. I have a triple interface (FW400 & 800 w/ USB2) and that thing is sturdy and built well. I also have 2 x 2 drive enclosures raided into 1 'big' drive each. I didn't do this but was handed down both drives. Was thinking of doing 2 x 1.5TB drives for time capsule... Anyway, what they said up there. Drive then RAM and you can find less expensive fully buffered ram 'mac certified' (Corsair and Kingston i believe) if you look around. Good luck.

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