2 gigs may or may not make a difference. It depends on your computer.
It appears that your computer doesn't need that much ram.
I'm going to assume, because you don't have much else running.

Obviously if your trying to do more in SSL or outside of SSL you will need more ram.

We recommend 2 gigs of ram to avoid any issues as most people aren't keen on stripping down their processes to get SSL running at its optimal settings.

(hmm, when you view a topic, then click login, you don't go back to the subject you were viewing? that's a pain.)

in theory ones computer shouldn't make a difference. if we are running XP (vista uses more of everything, W7 apparently is better/less worse than W6 on that front), then we are all on the same page.

as regards to ones own computer, it depends on what you are running. i thought it rather sensible to quit everything that i am not using, when playing out, to avoid potential screw ups, like something 'auto updating' in the middle of a set (pesky AV and things like real player, which i hate)..i would have thought that would be an almost base level sensible setup (i.e. exit whatever you can, before using serato.

'doing more' in ssl is cpu cound, not memory bound, i would have thought?

well, you'd have to have some pretty greedy apps, to take up 1gb of ram!..9 times out of 10 it's simply a question of going to the taskbar and right-clicking and taking the exit option. obviously on a deeper level we can stop things starting up in the first place (like disabling the windows auto update service is usually the first one to go!)

so does anyone actually know how serato uses ram?

this is my question?

forget the computer itself and other processes for a second..

? i have 4 gbs on my macbook pro, now when i use VSL are u telling me that the extra 2 gb of ram don't help?

that's the inference, yes m8.

unless someone with some genuine experience can contradict me or explain?!

zach please respond that would be so interesting to know and understand how it works...

Basically
Deck 1 takes up xxxgb
deck 2 takes up xxxgb
search function takes up xxxgb
video deck 1 takes up xxxgb
2 takes up

trans takes up xxx each

etc...

wtbollos and chris,

This is out of my league.

If your wanting a general understanding of how the insides of the program works you going to have to talk directly to a developer.

Try emailing support@serato.com.

er, ok dokey..i'll email them and report back..

I have 512MB on my laptop and Serato runs fine %^)

yah zach man would there be any way you could have the developers post in this discussion?

Yes, and No. Remember that not everybody's computer is the same, regardless of specs on paper. You are clearly an experienced Windows user, and your computer reflects that, stripped down and able to run SSL fine with 1 GB. While we wish everyone's computer was like this, the opposite is often true - many of our users computers are bogged down with all sorted of antivirus, background processes/ programs etc etc. These users will definitely benefit from having more than 1 GB of RAM.

Chris Chip - VSL on a Mac is a different story. If you only have VSL running and are running reasonable size videos (i.e. not HD content), 2 gig should be sufficient. If you want to run the buffer slider in VSL right up, and are spinning HD content, VSL will certainly benefit from having more RAM.

- Forgot to add, the larger your Scratch LIVE library, the more RAM you will need.

The bigger question is does Serato have memory leaks over a 6 hour period. If it does then the addition of more ram would be beneficial.

Also I could see more ram being in use if the previews were stored there on a first in / first out kind of senerio.

In either case more memoey would work I believe.

in this case i propose an experiment that I had thought of a while back... Get a fully juiced mac pro (the tower) with all the bells and whistles and see how big of a library one can have and how "efficiently" we can make VSL and SSL work so to speak.

now thats what i need to see

i did noticed that having a 2TB ext Hd with close to 1tb files
searching is slow, clicking on browse worse!
i do currently have 2gb ram
time to get a newer laptop

or update to vista and max out your ram on your laptop.

its already maxed to 2gb
Pentium M 1.86 GHz

and no vista :P

mmmmmmmmmm







yeah...



coudl you come into work on sunday?

mm!

kinda would seem the sensible thing to do!

i appreciate all that, with respect this is common sense.

my question was "what does serato actually use ram for?" and "so what's going on?!"

how does serato use the ram, does anyone know?

lol..i'm shouting at the wind!

this is closer to the crux of the matter...

how and why?

if you have a bigger library HOW does serato use more ram?

what is going on???

An analogy for you: Think of RAM as desk space. The more RAM, the bigger the desk, so you can have more papers spread and be able to read them at the same time from the same point of view.

The more RAM memory, the more tasks the computer can handle at the same time without having to prioritize.

The bigger the music library, the more queries needed to the database (Scratch LIVE needs to know what's inside its library, so it can access its contents when needed). The more RAM, the faster the queries are done.

If you want to learn more about RAM, I recommend reading what-is-what.com

hi jose,

thx for the feedback, tho it's not what i was after!

handling tasks "at the same time" are processor considerations..multi-threading etc...ram is just storage, albeit faster than hd. i know all this!

the sub-text of this thread is is more than 1gb *really* beneficial. the main thrust is the question about what serato ACTUALLY uses ram for..

how does it use ram, what gets put in there on load up and during run-time?

does each track loaded and playing get streamed off the hd or does it get loaded into ram first of all?

if so, then you only need enough ram to load serato and the two tracks, which, if they are 5m wav's, is about 50-70mb for each file?

i just loaded up two 63mb tracks and set them both playing and checked taskmanager and serato was using 140mb.

1,024 - 140 = 884mb left out of 1gb.

so what's all the memory needed for?


my serato is running fine, mostly without any hiccups, so its not important, just wanted to find out, that's all..

cheers,
bill

p.s. stuff and nonsense: www.eupeople.net