Memory Pressure – MacOs Sonoma (Ventura as well) – Audio Drop Outs

[tgfoyl1472_1]

Hi,

I have lately had constant audio drop outs with kits around 7GB or more in size. I have looked at the Memory Pressure on the Activity Monitor and the pressure is about 85% and up from maxing out.

This is happening on a MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM. Should I assume my kits are just too “big” to be ran in SD3 Standalone or a plug in in Logic with the amount of RAM I have? This is happening with Hitmaker SDX, Rooms of Hansa, and also with the Core library on kits from 6.8GB and higher.

I’m entreating trading my Mac and getting either a Mac Studio with 38 or 64GB of RAM of another MBP with 36GB of RAM so I can run and play my kits with my TD-50 without audio drops.

Unless there is something I am missing…

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.6
Operating system: macOS Sonoma (14)

Topic

[John]

Hi,

your OS and other apps will easily use up those last free GB’s so I would suggest either you slim down your kits or get more RAM.
I run an M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB RAM and I have never had any memory issues, even with big kits will all Bleed Enabled.

Removing unused Bleed, using Cached mode and/or 16bit will ease the memory pressure.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[pumpkinking]

I am using a Mac Mini M1 with 16GB of RAM and I’ve managed to use some of the larger presets in SD3 with Logic without issue (one of the biggest in use is a Legacy just over 10GB).  I make sure there are no other applications running other than Logic, and also my track count is small.  I’m not doing song production, only drum kit recording, so the memory usage of Logic is pretty much all SD3.

I’d say look at what other processes are taking up memory, and if they are applications you started, then stop them.  There will be some system processes that you cannot stop, but they’re normally small in terms of active memory usage.  Also restarting to Mac can help clean up memory usage if the system has been running for a while.

A Mac Studio with 32GB or a mini M2 pro with 32 GB would I’m sure solve your problem, and while they are great machines at a good price point, they are not free.  I’ve been on the fence about an upgrade…

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.6
Operating system: macOS Sonoma (14)

[Bear-Faced Cow]

85% is not abnormal as Logic is also reserving memory for the plugins that you are using. I get high memory reserves on my 64GB unit. If you are running SD3 from a stereo track, have tried putting the MIDI on the instrument track And freezing the track? Also, audio dropouts in Logic are not just a sign of memory.  Are you running everything from a single drive?

jord

---

Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[tgfoyl1472_1]

Hi Jord,

I am running SD3 and the SDXs of an external SSD 2TB drive. Logic of the main internal drive (2TB SSD). I am mainly running SD3 on a record enable track and playing SD3 using my ekit a Roland TD-50X.

i thought maybe Logic was the culprit but I am also getting sound drop outs, albeit less so, when running SD3 in standalone mode as well. The buffer setting is currently at 128, I did up it from 64 although I thought my MacBook Pro was powerful enough to run lower. I am using an Apollo X8 Thunderbolt interface for the audio.

I also tried using EZD3 in both Logic and standalone and did not have any issues so it is centric to SD3.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.6
Operating system: macOS Sonoma (14)

[John]

Hi,

another thing to check is the number of CPU cores assigned in the Settings > Performance in SD3. Set it to ‘1’ if it isn’t already.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Bear-Faced Cow]

If it’s happening in standalone, it may not be memory in this case. Aside from John’s suggestion, you might want to set your buffer to 256. Also as mentioned above, you may have other processes stealing resources such as spotlight indexing.

jord

---

Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[Author]

Replies