r/composer • u/Certain-Highway-1618 • Jun 28 '26
Discussion Does anyone successfully compose or produce with 16gb ram?
I need a new MacBook and what with apples recent crazy hikes, that 16gb M5 at Costco Is looking pretty appealing
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u/65TwinReverbRI Jun 28 '26
You (and others) may not have liked u/Still_Level4068’s response but it does in fact answer the question exactly.
Yes, people successfully compose and/or produce with 16gb of ram. And far less.
In fact, that’s considered the STANDARD. People will say 8g is not enough, and you should have AT LEAST 16.
What’s more important is cores, and processing speed, but I digress.
You haven’t said what kind of composing and what kind of producing you’re doing. Are these 200 track pieces with multiple plug ins on every track?
Or is this a solo piano composition and a basic beat with bass, drums, pads, and melody? Are they VST synths, or Sample Libraries.
I just got a MacBook Neo and I was a bit concerned about the 8g, but I don’t do massive stuff or use sample libraries, etc.
I’ve composed 2 pieces on it since getting it a week ago.
So the 8g was plenty FOR WHAT I’M DOING.
But what you’re doing, may or may not require more.
16 is considered enough. 8 MAY BE, especially with today’s processors and efficient handling of data.
And you can look at the price difference between a MacBook Neo, an Air, and a MBP and decide.
My Neo is more powerful than the 2018 MacBook Pro I have, even though that was the top end tricked out model at the time and cost 3x as much then, and is even higher to replace now.
But I don’t need all that horsepower.
If you can afford it, get the most you can get - as it’s always better to have more and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Apple will be happy to take your money even if you never actually use more than 4g of RAM at any given time :-)
But in order to determine if you NEED it, then you need to talk about exactly what it is you’re doing.
But again, 16 is considered standard.
And people do compose successfully with less, or without a computer, even today.
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u/mvanvrancken Jun 29 '26
I’m really really comfortable working in Reason because I love their workflow so much, and they have a ridiculously capable DAW hidden under the surface. I’ve been using v11 since around 2020 and while my desktop is fairly beefy for a pre-2020 machine (6700k with 32gb of DDR4) my laptop kind of struggled with some of the tracks having only 12gb even with a pretty decent cpu in it. So a couple months ago I decided I was going to grab the last model of Intel MacBook Pro seeing as how they were only a few hundred bucks (13” with 4 thunderbolts and 16gb of RAM) and honestly? This is a super capable machine for running what really isn’t a very outdated version of Reason. At this point I’ve probably got a few thousand bucks invested in rack extensions and vst’s so… well I guess I’m saying that if you’re willing to be a little behind on your tech you can get quite a lot out of 16gb of RAM.
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u/aksnitd Jun 28 '26
I used to compose on an XP machine with 2 gb of RAM. I always giggle when people ask if they need to upgrade their systems to compose. If you want to compose, you'll make it work on whatever system you have. Even if you need to produce modern trailer style music with loads of libraries, you can do that on a leaner system. You'd just need to go section by section, or find other similar workarounds.
That said, more generally, if you can afford it, 16 gigs RAM definitely won't hurt. But it's an endless cycle. You could very well start cramming loads of tracks into every project, and then wonder if you should have paid for 32 gigs instead. Which brings me back to my first point; if you really want to compose, you'll do it, regardless of your system.
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u/r3art Jun 28 '26
I write and produce orchestral music with lot of different high end libraries on 16 gb of RAM.
Sometimes I need to close some other apps, but it mostly works fine.
Tons of tracks.
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u/Effective-Advisor108 Jun 28 '26
A template with lots of high end libraries will not load on 16gb ram, even with lower preload sizes, even with VEP.
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u/Certain-Highway-1618 Jun 28 '26
How many is tons? Thanks so much for your help.
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u/r3art Jun 28 '26
Rarely less than 15 tracks, sometimes up to 50. Depends on the piece. But I always go very light on plugins and stuff like that (modern expensive sample libraries don’t need that much from my experience or I’ll do it with the bounced stems later).
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u/Certain-Highway-1618 Jun 28 '26
I might go with the 16 gb then and call it a day! Thank you for this!
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u/r3art Jun 28 '26
btw you might want to check out different specs for your specific libraries. Some are much more resource intense than others.
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u/Da_Biz Jun 28 '26
15-50 tracks is not even close to tons of tracks.
My "everything" scoring template is over 700. I'm regularly using at least 64 for an orchestra once you factor in percussion, layering, and Kontakt's unfortunate sample maximum that requires developers to separate instruments into multiple patches to include all articulations.
Modern expensive sample libraries absolutely gobble RAM, unless you are using modeling/hybrid libraries. AudioBro ModernScoring Brass for example is over a gig of RAM per instrument. I still need to freeze tracks sometimes, and I have 128GB of RAM.
You don't need full divisi brass and woodwinds to be composing cinematic stuff, but without it you don't even have a fascimile of the same freedom you would have with a real ensemble.
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u/r3art Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Hahaha, no front (really), but you're exactly the kind of composer I really despise.
It's certainly nothing against you personally since I don't know you, but the "I layer three different high end libraries and load up 500 instruments with all articulations before I even start touching my 30.000 dollars Mac Studio"-guys music usually sounds like dogshit.
I very much prefer someone writing with a lot of experience for three acoustic instruments and a broken microphone recording into voice recorder on a cheap Asus notebook who cares more about the music than the tech. Very different mindsets.
If I had that much money to spend, I'd rather hire a real orchestra and compose the music on a piece of paper. It starts at 500 dollars a minute or something like that.
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u/Da_Biz Jun 28 '26
Wow. A whole lot of B.S. assumptions going on here. Generally the only layering I do is in the strings, which is a necessity to escape the telltale signs of sampled strings. Real string sections don't follow the same CC curves.
Also, I bought a <$600 refurb PC and put 128GB of RAM in a half decade ago. All in with an extra SSD was under $1000. I would never, ever in a million years suggest someone shell out for 128GB in a Mac. Huge ripoff. If you must be on a Mac and use high-RAM libraries, use VEPro and host your VSTs on a PC.
Being a techie doesn't have to be at the expense of the music. Everything I do is to emulate the feeling of a real orchestra. Accusing someone with two music degrees of not caring about the music is wild lol.
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u/r3art Jun 28 '26
There is no piece on earth that needs 700 tracks. That’s just nonsense. Even 100 tracks is way over the top. And I am not convinced of “layering” either (although I heard that one a lot). At some point, you just put too much tech in there.
Modern sample libraries (at least the good ones) are all very capable of sounding real enough when you know how to use them well. Proof? All of your favourite games, movies and TV shows use them all the time and absolutely no one does notice.
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u/Da_Biz Jun 28 '26
You seem to misunderstand the concept of an "everything" template. You don't have all of these tracks active at one time. They are hidden and their FX disabled so no resources are used, but they are always available so you can easily pull in a duduk, or recorder, or whatever into your project. If you have a slave machine with VEPro, you can leave this open and loaded all the time even as you switch between projects.
This is how pretty much all the working pros do it. I am not one to be clear, but have had ample opportunity to study with them and have plenty of friends and colleagues from school who went on to do the "LA thing."
You can certainly make do with less, and for all we know OP is just going to be using NotePerformer anyway. But to pretend like 15 tracks is a lot is just silly.
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u/r3art Jun 28 '26
“Just load up everything you own” is certainly one way, but I don’t think that’s very professional.
For me it’s “I have a perfectly fine-tuned and slim starter template for every mood or style that I want to write music in”. I know my libraries very well and I know exactly what I need to add in which cases. That’s way more effective than deleting 650 instruments each time (still astounded by the 700).
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u/Da_Biz Jun 28 '26
Again, you seem to not be grasping the fact these are very specifically unloaded. It's a one-time chore to set up a template that will pay dividends when you have deadlines later on.
Those deadlines are what separate the pros from you and me. I don't even use that template or my slave rig most of the time when I'm composing for fun, and as of late I've been working on musical theater projects which use a much smaller template (probably still around 50 tracks because of woodwind doubling though, I'd have to check). During my master's (week one was literally setting up these templates, btw) and when I do occasionally get a gig with a tight deadline though, having that workflow down is a huge boon.
My first scoring gig was a full-length animated film and all I had was an old ass i5/8GB Lenovo laptop and Albion I, plus a few IK Sampletank instruments I got for free with my crappy MIDI keyboard. Still love that score but I spent an ungodly amount of time massaging those instruments into a cohesive mix.
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u/Bred_Slippy Jun 28 '26
Plenty of pro composers using high quality orchestral libraries are running templates with several hundred tracks (sometimes over 1000), and have setups with a huge amount of RAM. I agree with Da_Biz on this as I've witnessed it firsthand. There's other approaches that use far fewer but the large template/memory approach is pretty common
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u/sandman72986 Jun 28 '26
Depends on what libraries you're using. It's kind of a pain but you can freeze tracks when you're not writing for them. That being said, it would probably make your life much easier to get at least 32gb. You can get really good deals on Apple's refurbished site and they are usually like new and come with a warranty
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u/verysaxophone Jun 28 '26
Uh yeah my laptop is 8GB and producing has been perfectly fine for years now
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u/Crylysis Jun 28 '26
I got my first soundtrack award on an orchestral soundtrack made on a 16gb computer. So yes
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u/RufussSewell Jun 28 '26
I did up until about 4 years ago.
64gb now and life is much better. Really looking forward to 512gb someday. I think we’ll get over the current ram drought in a couple years.
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u/Certain-Highway-1618 Jun 28 '26
What exactly is better? Would I be able to score a short film with 16GB you think? And high quality samples?
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u/RufussSewell Jun 28 '26
I like to think of each instrument needing roughly 1gb. Some more, some less.
A Superior SDX kit might need 3gb. Some pianos are huge etc.
So, 16gb equals roughly 16 tracks before you have to bounce to audio or freeze etc.
With 64gb I don’t even think about it.
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u/Still_Level4068 Jun 28 '26
It's called a pencil and paper.
0 gb
I only use 6gb right now on my old machine as my laptop pooped. Released a new album this year on vinyl with it through a label.
If 16gb is holding you back something is wrong.
You only need to composer the notes and record it live.
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u/davethecomposer Cage, computer & experimental music Jun 28 '26
It should be clear from the original post that the OP is not talking about creating sheet music. The word "produce" being in the subject line gives it away.
It is very clear that they are talking about what is needed to compose using a DAW and the memory requirements of samples.
But to reply to your comment anyway, having been composing for over 30 years now, I hate my younger self for only composing with pen and paper as many of those copies have gotten lost or ruined over the years. But I have not lost a single digital copy of my sheet music ever. Now I would completely refuse to write music except to my notation program.
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u/Certain-Highway-1618 Jun 28 '26
This is not what I asked, but thank you for your snide input anyway ;)
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u/Lost-Discount4860 Jun 28 '26
Pro tip: you can always bounce tracks and resample libraries to reduce memory and CPU load.
What I like to do: start with 4-5 tracks with nothing but a piano sample. Compose just using that and make it sound great. Then slowly load instruments/sections and copy/paste from the piano tracks, adjust until sounds great.
For resampling, let’s say you want some nice woodwind (clarinets, flutes, piccolo) ear candy ripping it up in octaves up in stratosphere. I would group those together as a single instrument and autosample from C4 up. Or maybe big, epic, unison brass combined with low strings. Same thing. Before long you have a derivative sample library that cuts on RAM/CPU and does everything you need.
Then the trick is to remember HOW you got your samples to sound that way if you ever need to make a written score. If it’s just for games or indie film, or any kind of low budget work, you just make your life tons easier.
This way, you reduce the number of samples in memory, especially if you have a lot of round robins and velocity splits. You can choose to “bake in” reverb and delay if it helps.
But if that’s too complicated for you, just bounce a track at a time, shift everything to audio tracks, and make versions of your composition without virtual instruments at all. That way you can focus on the mixing/producing side and get amazing virtual performances.
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u/Gss_1056 Jun 28 '26
Depends on what you're composing.
Doing big orchestral tracks requires more RAM. I struggle with my 16GB Mac a lot of the time because it starts freezing up when the piece gets to 2 mins or more. Go for 64GB Ram if you have the budget.
For ANYTHING else (save for some hybrid tracks) 16GB is perfectly fine.
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u/gogolox123 Jun 28 '26
I got trailer placements with a 16 GB ram MacBook pro from 12 years ago. Hybrid orchestral. It's possible. However, that's only if your instruments aren't ram hogs
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u/zenroch Jun 28 '26
Thr nice thing about using a computer to render your music, is that really you can get away with very little RAM if you are willing to trade off for longer bounce times.
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u/aotus_trivirgatus Jun 29 '26
This may blow your mind, but... I've composed with zero GB of RAM, a pencil, staff paper, and a piano.
Sometimes I didn't even have a piano.
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u/TrailerScores Jun 29 '26
I don't like using keyswitching in my orchestral templates. I tried to see if I could maybe warm-up to it. I didn't. For some reason I prefer the old school way of loading each separate articulation onto it's own midi track and sample instance.
I do use VEP7, and that makes all the difference in the world.
But for now I'm running an older intel i7 Win11 w/32gb ram. My processor is about 4 years older than the first M series Silicon ARM chips.
Running back a full orchestral arr. doesn't seem to be a problem with the several shorts I've scored on my DDR4 DAW desktop.
Plus, the way memory is handled on the new Silicon Macs is a little different and way more efficient than traditional memory.
If you can get 24gb, that might be a great compromise short of 32gb but better than 16gb for a Silicon Mac.
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u/Omniverse333 Jun 29 '26
I recently went from an M1 with 8gb to an M3 with 24gb and the difference is night and day. But, I only use around 20-30 heavy orchestral and hybrid instances, and it handles those well. Only hits 30-70% of ram. I’d say if you’re not doing 50-100 heavy instances you’ll be fine but if you’re doing those massive sessions then go more, like at least 32gb.
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u/StudioComposer Jun 29 '26
Reality check: With AI hogging the chip market as evidenced this week with Apple’s announced price increases, your decision on what RAM to buy has just gotten more expensive.
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Jun 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/Certain-Highway-1618 Jun 29 '26
Thank you for this! I ended up going with a refurbished m3 max with 32 GB ram. I’m thinking that’s going to be more than sufficient for me for now, anyway.
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u/Luke7978 Jun 30 '26
Hi! You can run about 30-50 typical tracks in logic pro with 16gb ram, that would be fairly enough for typical songs , you'll need more only if you use heavy samples like Spitfire or BBC ,
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u/NumberSelect8186 Jun 30 '26
16 gigs works as long as you aren’t loading massive instrument libraries or VSTs that eat memory. Better to have a fast processor and lots of external memory. Most laptops max out at 16 gigs of RAM. Since I use several symphonic libraries I have 24 gigs on my main (home) computer and 36 gigs on my slave Mac Pro where all my libraries live. The computers are connected via a gigabit LAN connection.
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u/Secure-Researcher892 Jul 02 '26
The amount of ram is far less limiting than the amount of SSD storage. I know people are bitching back and forth about not being able to use as many sample... and even if you reach a limit on the samples you can easily work around it by exporting the audio from a stem and then pulling it back in as a wav so that your computer doesn't have to deal with that sample. You can find work around for lots of things that pop up... but if you plan on using some pro level samples for orchestra you'll want a large SSD or you'll need a fast external drive because the samples are often huge and will eat up your SSD very quickly.
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u/LKB6 Jul 03 '26
If you are using large sample libraries I wouldn’t buy it, I’d wait for ram prices to go down and get 32gb
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u/mvanvrancken Jun 28 '26
I use 16 on my Mac, and 32 on my PC. No issues at all. FWIW I use Reason 11 Suite as a DAW
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u/Certain-Highway-1618 Jun 28 '26
Are you using high quality sample libraries?
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u/mvanvrancken Jun 28 '26
I’m using a combination of high-quality samples and physical modeling
Oh also, some live, recorded audio, which I guess counts as samples
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u/Firake Jun 28 '26
You dont need ram in the slightest unless you are using high quality sample libraries. Even 8GB would be fine but 16 would be ideal. This is where most music production and notation software likely lives.
if you are using high quality sample libraries, you’re going to want probably north of 64gb but at least 32gb. This is for power users who are already professionals and can bring in money.