MBP 2.7ghz I7 has trouble running traktor w/ all my gear.. will ssd hd upgrade fix it

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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MBP 2.7ghz I7 has trouble running traktor w/ all my gear.. will ssd hd upgrade fix it

so, i’m using a 2011 macbook pro 2.7 ghz I7 w/ 4gb of ram and a 500gb sata drive. my gear includes A6 with rane ttm56 and 1200’s (i like to scratch a lot), S4 & maschine with a cool mapping i found on digitaldjtools.net which gives me full control of remix decks c & d. i use one turntable as deck c remix deck with maschine, and 1 turntable as deck b track deck… deck a I control with the S4, and deck d with just the maschine. i select the A6 as the audio device and use the S4 & maschine as midi controllers

When i run just two decks with the A6, the computer is ok, no issues. but once i start using decks c & d, especially if I have them loaded as remix decks, the computer starts to have a hard time.

1 - if ive been working in the remix decks for a while, sometimes the maschine stops responding (hit the button nothing happens) and I have to restart traktor, obviously super lame if im playing a show

2 - even though i adjust latency, with the maschine & remix decks sometimes when I trigger a sample cell in a slot that is not currently playing, there is a delay or slight lag.. clearly super lame as well because it sounds like poopoo

3 - again if I’ve been working in the remix decks for a while, and I close traktor while a remix deck is loaded, traktor freezes up at the ‘storing collection’ message and I have to force quit out losing whatever work ive done (sucks when building the remix sets) i have however found a work around for this by simply switching decks c & d to track decks in stead of remix decks before closing traktor, when i do this it doesnt crash

just in general seems like the computer struggles with the workload I’m putting on it

so my question is, will upgrading to 8gb of ram and a 256gb SSD drive fix this or should I go ahead and get a new computer that already has that with with an upgraded processor.

is the processor on the macbook I already have capable to run my setup without issues?

any input is appreciated thanks!!

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Your processor is still quite powerful compared to the newer models (I’m guessing it has an i7-2620M?) so a CPU upgrade is not likely to help.

Have you tried different Traktor versions?

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Also, what latency are you running? I have an i5, and mine runs fine at around 10 ms latency, even with c and d going.

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i am running tsp 2.6.3 (the only option to for full remix deck control with my maschine, right?), and osx 10.8.5..

i usually keep my latency right around 9-10 ms, sometimes when it seems like its having a hard time i up it to 12 or so

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durrr gonna go ahead and upgrade to 2.6.4 will report back if it fixes issues

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Hmm, yeah, sounds like something is going on, here. An i7 MBP shouldn’t even flinch at that, imo.

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I found Mountain Lion to run a lot better on 8gb of RAM or more. 16gb isn’t much more so I’d try that.

You shouldn’t need a SSD but it’s worth it to upgrade to one eventually. It made my 2011 MacBook Pro i5 feel like a brand new machine.

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What’s your latency sample rate?

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ok, so im running os 10.8.5 .. makar1 after you posted that I checked and saw that I was missing 2.6.4, ive been using 2.6.3 so im doing some testing now to see if the update helps..

i usually keep my latency around 9-10 ms, sometimes when it seems like its having a hard time i bump it up to 12 or so

and the sample rat at 44100.. is that what it should be?

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Try upping the latency to 512 samples.

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No, once Traktor is loaded up there is no use to upgrade to an SSD.

Maybe if it load slowly at the start or if it takes a while when entering in a different folder, nothing else.

SSD = speed reading the data not power to elaborate it

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It’s only anecdotal, but I’ve found that things just don’t run quite as smoothly on Mountain Lion so I downgraded back to Lion and am going to wait for Mavericks to upgrade again.

As I said though, this is only my personal experience. Your setup seems more than capable of what you’re asking of it, so it very well may be something else that you’re missing entirely. Open activity monitor, kill everything that you know isn’t necessary while using Traktor, then open Terminal and type “purge” (without the quotes). That will purge all inactive but wired ram and make it available for whatever needs it. OSX is typically very good at memory management, but I will purge my ram usually once a day regardless. (As a side note, if you’re ever having choppy video playback on a stream, often the purge command will clear it up as well).

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As others have said, your processor should be more than powerful enough. I think a RAM upgrade could definitely help. For comparison, I’m on a mid 2009 Macbook pro with a 2.53 ghz processor (Core 2 Duo), and I run either an S4 or DJM900, plus an F1, 2 CDJs in HID mode, a Faderfox LX2, and a Numark Orbit and the computer still runs fine.
I upgraded the ram to 8gigs, and I have a 500gig SSD.

You could also try cleaning out your computer, using a utility such as Onyx.

Also check your USB cables if you are losing connections to your gear.

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I’m running a Lenovo, Windows 8 with an i5 with an S4 and it eats Traktor alive (Until Windows 8 does it’s thing, which no matter how many times I turn off it needs to remind of something else that I don’t need to know about) so an i7 MBP should have no trouble running Traktor, even at 10 ms latency. My guess is there’s some conflicting software on your system, what it could be, god only knows.

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When I put an SSD into my 2011 13" Macbook Pro 2.8ghz Traktor has run much more smoothly. The software itself may not benefit from a faster disk, but remember that the soundfiles are being read from the disk drive and the standard HDD in the 13" MacBooks was 5400. Even when you use a 7200 speed disk it’s much better than a 5400. Also add some RAM, at least 8GB.

I think it is worth adding an SSD. I’ve had 0 problems since I put one in, when I did a bit before

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SSD will speed up song load times , boot times, program launch times, but the problem here is probably that your ram is getting full, so the OS writes part of the ram to your HDD, which you probably know is a helluva lot slower than your ram. Yes, an SSD will make the writing to disk faster, BUT, what i suggest is to FIRST upgrade the ram to 8gb, and only then if your problem isn’t fixed, to go for an SSD.

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I think I am going to upgrade mine as well, I rarely have clicks and drop outs, but they do happen.