How do I optimize my mac's performance for gigs?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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How do I optimize my mac’s performance for gigs?

Hellooo DJTT, I was wondering what I could do to maximize my MacBooks performance. Im working with a band where they need a dj/engineer for their gigs. Im running on OS X Yosemite 10.10.4. on my white mid 2010 macbook 13 inch unibody(Core 2 Duo" 2.4 with 5GB of ram). For gigs I use TSP with control vinyl with Ableton running on the background. I use Ableton to mix 4 live sources from the band(2 vox mics, bass and guitar). As is, everything runs okay, but not smooth. I get sound card(NI audio 8dj) dropouts here and then, both Programs are running at the same sample rate and latency. I have the wifi turn off, and just those 2 programs running when I gig. Of course my laptop is plugged in with computer and display sleep turned off. I use smc fan control to keep my laptop cool. If theirs anything i could improve on, please let me know! Thank you.

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  1. upgrade memory
  2. upgrade to an SSD (if possible)
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i really need to do this.

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Upgrade to a new MacBook Air or Pro, even a 3 year old i5 Air has more processing ability than your C2D.

At least then you’ll also be getting an SSD and RAM that’s configured right as in it’ll be running dual channel because at the moment with 5GB you must have a 1GB and a 4GB which will drop it back to single channel. And you’ll be getting more processing ability.

For example, my old 2.2GHz C2D black MacBook with 6GB of RAM and SSD still has half of the total processing ability of my current MacBook Air 1.3GHz Core i5.

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Thank you guys. I will take every for consideration!

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I do plan on purchasing a new macbook pro before my next semester of collage. :thumbsup: but bills will have to be payed first!

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Have a look at an App called Onyx.

You can clean up a lot of processes and turn off shit you might not need.

I use it and have been using it for a few years.

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Another option would be to remove Ableton from the equation.

Buy a cheap mixer (Alto Zephyr Series ZMX862 6-Channel Compact Mixer | Guitar Center) - put the live elements into there.

Then run the line into Traktor via your Audio 8.

Think that would work?

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I run a pc but my setup could work on a mac as well…

I have 3 partitions on my HDD, one for linux (my main OS) one for windows (no internet, bloatware, drivers etc… just audio apps and external gear) and a partition to share files between the two operating systems.

My 2.4 i5 loads up in 12 seconds, which is not bad for a standard sata drive. I can have my laptop from off to traktor or ableton in 30 seconds :slight_smile:

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Not necessary to jump to a (generally very expensive) SSD, consider a hybrid drive, it will give you a great speed, and better storage capacity for your tunes, you will notice a big difference. Upgrade RAM too if you can

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It will improve application / os boot times, but little else.

A better solution would be to install a smallish SSD in the CD drive bay, use that as the OS drive (128gb would do).

Cost: $100 or thereabouts.

The method that worked flawlessly for me was to:

  1. Create a partition my original 1TB OSX disk
  2. Copy the “Big folders” to a folder/set of folders on the partition. Mainly Downloads/Documents/Music/Video/Audio Libraries/Pictures
  3. Delete the old big folders (results in only about 15gb of space used on the disk)
  4. Symlink to the new folders using the Symlinker Application
  5. Clone the new cut down OS drive to the SSD
  6. Boot and verify everything is working, if not, just redo the symlinks for those folders.
  7. Format old OS disk and you are ready to rock n’ roll.

Be sure and use the SSD as the cache drive for Ableton or other apps that use a disk cache

Needless to say a Ram upgrade will help, but only so much upgrading a system like that will do when you are running two pretty CPU heavy apps simultaneously.

I have never, ever found there is any speed boost on OSX when a separate application specific partition is used.

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I already have a SSHD(: really good investment