Does it matter to switch to 64 Bit

[tropicaledit]

Hey all, I'm trying to understand how switching to 64 bit is going to be worth the switch, because it will change the performance on my computer. Can the average person hear the difference. Is it totally necassary

I'm using LP9. Mac OSX (10.6.4) (Dual/Quad 2.26) (6 Gig RAM).

Any tips or comments appreciated.

 

[Markdvc]

Hey all, I'm trying to understand how switching to 64 bit is going to be worth the switch, because it will change the performance on my computer.

In what way do you think it will it change the performance?

Can the average person hear the difference.

There is absolutely no difference in sound quality between running Logic in 32 bit or 64 bit. This has nothing to do with the bit depth of the audio files or processing ( in Logic, 24 bit audio files, 32 bit float processing, 64 where necessary) rather, allows the Operating system and Applications to address very large amounts of memory, as opposed to the 32 bit limitation of less than 4 GB pro App.

Is it totally necassary

I'm using LP9. Mac OSX (10.6.4) (Dual/Quad 2.26) (6 Gig RAM).

Why not just try it and see for yourself? If you do a lot of work using large sample libraries, and have run up against memory warnings, then 64 bit is of potentially great benefit.

kind regards

Mark

 

[tropicaledit]

Thanks Mark, yeah, I'm still learning this thing. I thought that it would be more taxing on the processing side. I'll check that out, test it.

Appreciate your time.

 

[Orren Merton]

Thanks Mark, yeah, I'm still learning this thing. I thought that it would be more taxing on the processing side. I'll check that out, test it.

It is a bit more taxing in the sense that Logic Pro will take up more of your system's memory. But I don't think all that much.

To be honest, I doubt you'll see any benefit from running Logic in 64-bit. I'm guessing that if you're in a learning phase, you're not using a ton of plug-ins, and you don't have any very large sample libraries. Also, with 6GB of RAM, you really don't have that much "headroom" to take advantage of.

For example, lets say you were a professional soundtrack composer with a Mac Pro loaded with 16GB of RAM and a number of huge ($1000+) orchestral libraries. Figure that Mac OS X will utilize about 1GB of RAM.

If you were using the 32-bit version of Logic Pro 9.1.1, Logic could only access 4GB of memory. So a total of 11GB of memory in your Mac Pro could not be accessed by Logic. This extra ram will be available to other applications running simultaneously, such as Safari, Mail, and so on, but not Logic.

If you were using the 64-bit version of Logic Pro 9.1.1, Logic could access 15GB of RAM, which is a huge bonus.

However, with your current 6GB system, even with the 64-bit version, you could only access 5GB of RAM vs. 4GB. That's a little bit of an advantage, but not that much.

So give 64-bit a try to see how you like it, and I'm guessing you'll find it nearly identical.

Orren

 

[tropicaledit]

Yeah, I'm at an intermediate level with LP9. I switched over from PTLE7. I'm finding this application much more easy to write and compose. Still have alot to try and test out.

Thanks to you as well Orren,