Another user with RAM issues

[fenrir]

Hi,

I’m currently running Audirvāna Studio 2.8.0. I just upgraded my iMac RAM to 64GB, and Studio is taking over 50%, which seems insane. I don’t have upscaling turned on. I also lowered my bit rate to no more than 44.1 and turned off Exclusive Access. No change. The RAM draw is causing my Adobe apps to lag, and I’d love to have a fix. Below is my debug info.

Thanks.

Audirvana Studio 2.8.0 (20800)

macOS 14.2.1 with 64GB physical RAM

NETWORK
Status: available

SIGNAL PROCESSING:

Polarity Inversion:
	Globally: OFF
	Per track: ON
Effects plugins NOT ACTIVE

UPSAMPLING:
SoX not in use
SoX filter parameters
Bandwidth at 0dB = 99.5%
Filter max length = 30000
Anti-aliasing = 100
Phase = 66%

AUDIO VOLUME:
Max allowed volume: 100
Replay Gain: None
SW volume control: OFF

LIBRARY SETTINGS:
Sync list: 2 folders
AUTO: /Users/Desktop/Astriferous - Pulsations from the Black Orb
AUTO: /Users/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Desktop - iMac/Music/SUNN O))) - Oracle
iTunes/Music library synchronization: last synchronized on Mon Feb 19 10:22:45 2024

Library database path: /Users/Library/Application Support/Audirvana/AudirvanaDatabase.sqlite

Local audio files fingerprinting
Tracks with no MBID: 3996

Remote Control server:
Listening on 127.0.0.1 on port 57567

ACTIVE STREAMING SERVICES
TIDAL: Connected as PREMIUM

=================== AUDIO DEVICE ========================

Active method: Local

Max. memory for audio buffers: 62464MB

Local Audio Engine: CoreAudio
Exclusive access: OFF
Integer mode: ON
Use max I/O buffer size: ON
Actual I/O buffer frame size: 512

Preferred device:
LH Labs Geek Pulse 1V5 Output
Model UID:Geek Pulse 1V5:2522:0009
UID:AppleUSBAudioEngine:LH Labs:Geek Pulse 1V5:14600000:1

Active Sample Rate: 44.1kHz
Hog Mode is off

Bridge settings:
Sample rate limitation: 44.1kHz
Sample rate switching latency: none
Limit bitdepth to 24bit: OFF
Mute during sample rate change: OFF

Selected device:Geek Pulse 1V5 Output
Manufacturer: LH Labs
Model name: LH Labs Geek Pulse 1V5 Output
Model UID: Geek Pulse 1V5:2522:0009
UID: AppleUSBAudioEngine:LH Labs:Geek Pulse 1V5:14600000:1
USB Vendor ID: 0x2522
USB Product ID: 0x0009
ID 0x7e

8 available sample rates up to 384000Hz
44100
48000
88200
96000
176400
192000
352800
384000
Audio buffer frame size : 14 to 4096 frames
Current I/O buffer frame size : 512

Volume Control
Physical: Yes
Virtual: Yes
Max volume alert: Enabled

MQA capability
Auto-detect MQA devices: Yes
Not a MQA device, user set to not MQA

DSD capability
Unhandled (PCM conversion) with boost gain of 6dB

Device audio channels
Preferred stereo channels L:1 R:2
Channel bitmap: Ox3, layout:
Channel 0 mapped to 0
Channel 1 mapped to 1

Audio channels in use
Number of channels: 2
Use as stereo device only: No
Simple stereo device: Yes

1 output streams:
Number of active channels: 2, in 1 stream(s)
Channel #0 :Stream 0 channel 0
Channel #1 :Stream 0 channel 1

Stream ID 0x7f 2 channels starting at 1
16 virtual formats:
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 384kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 352.8kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 192kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 176.4kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 96kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 88.2kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 48kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Float 44.1kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 384kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 352.8kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 192kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 176.4kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 96kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 88.2kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 48kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 44.1kHz

16 physical formats
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 384kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 352.8kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 192kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 176.4kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 96kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 88.2kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 48kHz
2 ch Mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 44.1kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 384kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 352.8kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 192kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 176.4kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 96kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 88.2kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 48kHz
2 ch Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 32 little endian Signed Integer 44.1kHz

Local devices found : 3
Device #0: ID 0x7e Geek Pulse 1V5 Output
Manufacturer: LH Labs
Model UID: Geek Pulse 1V5:2522:0009
UID: AppleUSBAudioEngine:LH Labs:Geek Pulse 1V5:14600000:1
USB Vendor ID: 0x2522
USB Product ID: 0x0009
Model name: LH Labs Geek Pulse 1V5 Output
Device #1: ID 0x72 iMac Speakers
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
Model UID: Speaker
UID: BuiltInSpeakerDevice
Model name: Apple Inc. iMac Speakers
Device #2: ID 0x4a Microsoft Teams Audio
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corp.
Model UID: MSLoopbackDriverDevice_ModelUID
UID: MSLoopbackDriverDevice_UID
Model name: Microsoft Corp. Microsoft Teams Audio

UPnP

UPnP devices found : 0

Chromecast

Chromecast devices found : 0

[Djm1960]

Your max memory for audio buffering is set at 62 GB out of 64 GB ram. Reduce this to +- 4GB. Restart Audirvana and monitor memory usage in Activity monitor. With no upsampling and playing 44.1 files it should not use much more than 1GB Even if I play DSD 128 or upsample to 768 kHz ram usage does not normally climb above 3.5 GB.

You can also in activity monitor, memory tab select the purgeable ram parameter to display. Which can be useful to monitor also.

Let us know how this goes…….

[RunHomeSlow]

Update your Mac to 14.4

[fenrir]

Ah, totally missed that setting. That seems to have fixed it. Thanks!

[Djm1960]

It’s a default in AS. Left unchanged I think for years since the days Mac’s shipped with 4 GB Ram. Based on file sizes you should never need more than 4GB unless playing very high sample rate DSD files.

I would watch your usage for a while to be sure it is ok.

[fenrir]

You’re right, it’s creeping back up. It’s currently running at 22% RAM, which would be 14GB, even though I lowered the setting to 4GB. I also updated my OS to 14.4. It’s still better than it was, and my apps aren’t lagging as badly.

[Djm1960]

Post a screenshot of activity monitor (in utilities folder) so we can see the status of each apps ram usage, a good idea to also open a new column of purgeable memory so we can see what is going on with each app. I have 128 GB ram and it is common for my Mac to use 20GB plus. Even with only AS and a mail app in use.

Since Mavericks macOS by design tries to use as much ram as possible to maximise performance. Only when memory pressure increases will it start compressing ram or purging pages that have been released by the apps. Follows the old saying that unused RAM is wasted RAM.

Below is a screenshot of activity monitor memory use of my Mac after several hours of playing DSD128 classical music with only a mail app open. As you can see memory used is 27 GB. Audirvana is using 3GB with 0.5 GB marked as purgeable. This is normal behaviour, macOS memory management is a complicated topic but in layman’s terms apps make calls for RAM and tell the OS when it can be released but your Mac using its memory management predictive algorithms control what is used either RAM, compressed RAM, virtual memory etc. etc. to optimise your system performance. Basically if you have more RAM macOS will use more of it until memory pressure increases then it will release RAM that has not been used and is idle, or compress it etc etc to make room for newly opened apps to use.

[fenrir]

Looks like Audirvana is vastly overstating the amount of memory used.

[Djm1960]

Think it reports the total RAM used in RAM usage display not the amount used by Audirvana. Your system looks pretty normal for RAM usage when playing 16/44.1 files. I would say everything looks good.

[fenrir]

Thanks for your help.

[Djm1960]

No worries. Enjoy your music. You have more than enough RAM should you wish to try upsampling, don’t let RAM concerns prevent you from trying this out. Your system looks good.