64 Bit DAWs?

musicformedia

Hi guys going to upgrade my PC from 4gigs to 8gigs ram and am looking at 64 bit DAWs. I used to use Cubase but its a fairly old version now at this stage and I have a bit of cash so am looking to upgrade.

I've been having problems trying to find 64 bit DAWs as whenever I search for information on them it just seems to bring up random dodgy websites.

Any information appreciated

Neurojazz

musicformedia wrote: »

Hi guys going to upgrade my PC from 4gigs to 8gigs ram and am looking at 64 bit DAWs. I used to use Cubase but its a fairly old version now at this stage and I have a bit of cash so am looking to upgrade.

I've been having problems trying to find 64 bit DAWs as whenever I search for information on them it just seems to bring up random dodgy websites.

Any information appreciated

From what i've seen so far is that the 64bit DAWs work ok, but then they hit a big problem addressing 32bit plugins - some use wrappers to deal with this, but mostly third party (last time I looked) - I tried the 64bit cubase a while back and was very buggy.

People are screaming for 64bit, but not much support from the plugin makers (unless you'd like to buy all your plugins again!)

Paolo_M

musicformedia wrote: »

Hi guys going to upgrade my PC from 4gigs to 8gigs ram and am looking at 64 bit DAWs. I used to use Cubase but its a fairly old version now at this stage and I have a bit of cash so am looking to upgrade.

I've been having problems trying to find 64 bit DAWs as whenever I search for information on them it just seems to bring up random dodgy websites.

Any information appreciated

Going to 64 bit on a machine that was intended for 32 bit is not as simple as adding more RAM. 64 bit software can address more RAM but it is slower to do so. Therefore the RAM speeds need to be faster and that's almost always not possible as it comes down to what the motherboard can handle and the specific RAM type. For example if your RAM is 887MHz then running a 64 bit application could actually cause it to be more sluggish.

64 bit, like any other technology, is being touted as the next big thing and rightly so. With the right hardware it will offer literally infinite possibilities. The machine you run it on has to be up to the task, and if you haven't bought one in the last 6 months or don't intend upgrading then it's probably not.

For me; I'm not limited by 32 bit technology, there's no sound quality improvement in 64 bit technology despite the common mis-understanding, I'll most likely experience a lot of difficulty with my favourite, non native, plug-ins under 64 bit, and my MacBookPro is an Intel Dual Core and has a max of 8GB 1Ghz RAM so I think it will run slower, though it did ship with Snow Leopard. For these reasons I'm sticking with 32 bit for now.

musicformedia

Cool thanks for all the help guys. I'll stay with 32 bit for now so. Didn't realise it was so akward and not as useful as I originally thought to have the extra RAM.

Cheers

DamagedTrax

if you are looking to utilise extra ram in a 32bit environment then you could do worse than looking at reaper.

you have the option to run plugins (all or only those you choose) as a seperate process to reaper, thus enabling you to utilise the ram that the host isnt using. while this wont get you past the 3.75gb (app) 32bit ram cap, it will let you get that bit extra that other daws cant get to and can be especially usful for large sampled instruments.