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?

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.

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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