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I just posted this on the Gig Performer Community site, but I thought I'd ask this forum as well.

I"ve been experiencing some odd behavior with my MacBook Pro today. With GP the only app open and with three plugins open, I"ve been getting this warning popup that"s saying"Your computer is low on memory. To free up some memory, please close a few applications". This warning is accompanied by the spinning color wheel of death and a crash of GP. I"ve got 39 GB available on a 250 GB SSD. I"m running Mojave and have 8 GB of memory. Any suggestions or comments for me?

Thx

Mark

�Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!�

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

 

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Hmmmm

 

A few thoughts. Mac OSX requires a lot of disk space to function properly. What can you delete or back up to another hard drive or computer that you don"t need to have on there? See if you can reclaim 100gb of space.

 

Which plugins are you running? Is one of them something major like Omnisphere? And have you gone through their recommended steps to get it to perform well in live playing?

 

8gb of RAM is starting to be what 4gb was some years back. It"s adequate but things would run more smoothly with more. Are you sure you have all other apps quit when running GP?

 

In your utilities folder is an app called Activity Monitor. You can see what is all running on your Mac that you may not be aware of.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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I just posted this on the Gig Performer Community site, but I thought I'd ask this forum as well.

I"ve been experiencing some odd behavior with my MacBook Pro today. With GP the only app open and with three plugins open, I"ve been getting this warning popup that"s saying"Your computer is low on memory. To free up some memory, please close a few applications". This warning is accompanied by the spinning color wheel of death and a crash of GP. I"ve got 39 GB available on a 250 GB SSD. I"m running Mojave and have 8 GB of memory. Any suggestions or comments for me?

Thx

Mark

 

 

You are low on RAM memory and running low on disk storage while using app and plugins that are memory intensive. My guess is with only 8GB of RAM memory your MBP is having to swap memory like crazy which besides slowing your system down the computer could of swapped itself to death. Being a Mac you probably can't add more RAM and that is what you need most. You can probably free up space on your SSD, but that only help a little.

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It"s not convenient. But you can definitely get inside a Mac Book Pro to swap two 4s for two 8s. We can send you to the right tutorial if you let us know which MacBook Pro it is.

 

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/index-macbookpro.html

Its Late 2013 2GHz Intel Core i7

�Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!�

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

 

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Yep, Omnisphere is one of my plugins. I just got it and have have barely any hands on experience with it yet.

Hmmmm

 

A few thoughts. Mac OSX requires a lot of disk space to function properly. What can you delete or back up to another hard drive or computer that you don"t need to have on there? See if you can reclaim 100gb of space.

 

Which plugins are you running? Is one of them something major like Omnisphere? And have you gone through their recommended steps to get it to perform well in live playing?

 

8gb of RAM is starting to be what 4gb was some years back. It"s adequate but things would run more smoothly with more. Are you sure you have all other apps quit when running GP?

 

In your utilities folder is an app called Activity Monitor. You can see what is all running on your Mac that you may not be aware of.

�Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!�

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

 

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First thing to try is to get a fast and large external drive and dedicate it to your recording projects. You could intialize it and install a system, Apple still offers an installation of High Sierra in App Store but I wouldn't wait too long. With a system installed you could install all of your recording software including plugins. That will take stress off your internal drive. SSDs are much faster at read speeds than write speeds so it's sucking up your RAM.

 

Next, if possible contact Elmer Fudd and see about doubling your RAM to 16 gigs. I've got a 2014 MacBook Pro with 16 gigs of RAM and a 512k hard drive. Using Thunderbolt 2 and I've not had any problems with latency, shortage of RAM or really, anything. It's probably just enough and not much more. As stated previously, 8 gigs is no longer an abundance.

 

Omnisphere likes lots of RAM from all reports. I don't have so I can't tell you how it runs. I had enough space on the internal that I didn't install a system on my recordiing drive. I'm running a 1tb TB2 drive off the second socket of a Presonus Quantum. It's a fast drive, a spinner.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Omnisphere is a #%* beast and it needs to be tweaked down to be useable for live playing on your current system.

 

Here is the advice from Spectrasonics on how to get it to play nice for your purposes. I would suggest doing everything they recommend.

 

https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Omnisphere2/25/en/topic/concepts-page02

 

 

But this doesn"t negate needing to free up hard drive space, having more RAM, and if you have a spinning drive - you should consider a 1TB SSD (much more affordable than they were a year or three ago).

 

Here are kits to upgrade the internal drive.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-pro-retina-display/2013-2014-2015

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Oh man, I don't want to be the one to have to tell you this...

 

I have used a Mid-2015 iMac 21.5" with 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, an i5 and Mojave as my main computer for years. Almost two years ago, it started having crashing and startup issues. It was on High Sierra at the time. It was fixed for a while by a service center by wiping the hard drive and reinstalling from a USB, as a corrupted OS was suspected. Last July I started having complete freezes on the entire system. Even the clock would stop. The only to end the freeze was to force a power-off by holding down the power button on the back. Now, this wasn't my first go-around with a Mac acting up. I have an extensive checklist of diagnostics and whatnot from reviving an older 2011 iMac and diagnosing this computer the first time around. Unfortunately, none of it made any difference. I couldn't even get a backup because the computer would freeze while backing up (it always froze within ten minutes of being on). I have a good friend who owns a computer repair shop and works on Macs a lot. He ended up reseating the memory boards and cleaning them and the hard drive. It worked great...for two weeks. After I did a total reinstall and started installing everything from scratch instead of from a backup, it died. BUT it started giving me the same warning as you, only it would even happen with just Firefox and nothing else open (or any other single application). It's a memory problem, and I had to decide between spending half the cost of a new computer on repairs that likely wouldn't stick, or buy a new computer for not a whole lot more. My friend and I decided it wasn't worth spending all that money on parts, because it's now a five-year-old computer, and that's Apple's stated lifespan for desktops now. Plus he had already reseated the memory and that had temporarily fixed it. And all this was happening on a blank install of Mojave with nothing else even. Apple had recommended I install every app I use one by one to make sure it wasn't being caused by one of them. They also recommended at least 100GB free space on the hard disk. Unfortunately, neither worked, as this continued to happen with a wiped hard disk. Unfortunately I can't afford a new computer for now, so I'm stuck with an older Windows laptop and the computer I'm typing on right now.

 

If it does it any other time besides with that music setup, I have 90% confidence that it's a memory failure problem. IF it's only happening with the music setup, then probably not. But make sure you have a good backup! I cannot emphasize that enough! ALSO beware if you start getting continuous white noise/pink noise that suddenly takes over all outputs and doesn't stop. That's connected to the memory failing.

 

 

Posting this from an ANCIENT iBook G4 1.07 gHz with 1.25GB memory and running OSX 10.4.11 Tiger, using TenFourFox. :laugh::crazy:

Yamaha: Motif XF8, MODX7, YS200, CVP-305, CLP-130, YPG-235, PSR-295, PSS-470 | Roland: Fantom 7, JV-1000

Kurzweil: PC3-76, PC4 (88) | Hammond: SK Pro 73 | Korg: Triton LE 76, N1R, X5DR | Emu: Proteus/1 | Casio: CT-370 | Novation: Launchkey 37 MK3 | Technics: WSA1R

Former: Emu Proformance Plus & Mo'Phatt, Korg Krome 61, Roland Fantom XR & JV-1010, Yamaha MX61, Behringer CAT

Assorted electric & acoustic guitars and electric basses | Roland TD-17 KVX | Alesis SamplePad Pro | Assorted organs, accordions, other instruments

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I think you need to be sympathetic to the era of MacBook your running, in terms of what software specs were within a few years of that machines release.

 

You then have to work with that expectation I"m running a Mid 2010 17' MBP with 8GB and 500Gb SSD. It"s on the last compatible OS at 10.12, and I tend to look for older plugins in my setup. It runs happily Ableton Live Suite with Maschine VST Inside, and then running plugins both within Machine and in Ableton. But I can"t run latest Kontakt, Omnisphere etc because they are just too rich for my MBP.

 

I"m not of the opinion that newer necessarily means better.

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It"s not convenient. But you can definitely get inside a Mac Book Pro to swap two 4s for two 8s. We can send you to the right tutorial if you let us know which MacBook Pro it is.

 

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/index-macbookpro.html

The mid-2012 model was the last MacBook Pro with replaceable RAM. Every Apple laptop released since then has been soldered down, and that includes every retina machine ever built.

"The Angels of Libra are in the European vanguard of the [retro soul] movement" (Bill Buckley, Soul and Jazz and Funk)

The Drawbars | off jazz organ trio

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Omnisphere has high demands on CPU, RAM and SSD. To debug try running Omnisphere with the selected patch or instrument. If that runs OK then the addirional overhead of Gig Perfomer is step too far. If not then apply the load reduction recommendations avaliable on the Omnisphere web site.

A misguided plumber attempting to entertain | MainStage 3 | Axiom 61 2nd Gen | Pianoteq | B5 | XK3c | EV ZLX 12P

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It"s not convenient. But you can definitely get inside a Mac Book Pro to swap two 4s for two 8s. We can send you to the right tutorial if you let us know which MacBook Pro it is.

 

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/index-macbookpro.html

The mid-2012 model was the last MacBook Pro with replaceable RAM. Every Apple laptop released since then has been soldered down, and that includes every retina machine ever built.

 

I see, so the Retina design was a decision by Apple to solder RAM. That's unfortunate. So, he'll have to deal with his 8gb, tweak down Omnisphere as they advise, increase free space on his HD and consider getting a large SSD. Alternatively he sells it and invests in a newer model - preferably with max RAM.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Also remember software minimum required RAM and other spec's a BS. I worked for for software publishers for many years in and they always want to have their minimum requirements as low as possible to help sales. So basically minimum means with just the OS and no other apps X amount of RAM the you can run the app' it will load slow and be stable enough sit there and not crash. Once you start working well that's another story. Sadly that the way the industry works big and little companies its a Marketing game.
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