Does memory bandwidth impact the amount of RAM required for processing audio? For example, if other factors remain unchanged will double the memory bandwidth significantly increase a system’s ability to handle large instrument libraries?
Edit: If it makes a difference, I am ultimately interested interested in looking at the expected playback abilities of Mac M-series processors with “unified” memory and notice that the memory bandwidth can vary significantly between different cpu/ram options.
Memory bandwidth is not the only limiting factor in the equation, but also e.g. the disk transfer rate, the buffer size and the like.
Sure you can try, but though I’d expect indeed an improvement, it will be less dramatic than what probably you expect.
Thanks, @Ulf. Unfortunately “trying” will likely be unavailable but it is good to know any improvements based on memory bandwidth alone will likely be unremarkable.
The base M5 has a memory bandwidth of 153.6 GIGAbytes per second.
1 second of audio data at 44.1 KHz takes 172 KILObytes. By my calculations, you could fit over 900,000 of those through the bandwidth.
The M5 MacBook Pro has an SSD read-write speed of over 6 GB/s, so that would be the bottleneck, allowing only a mere 36,500 seconds-worth of audio data per second. Let’s assume inefficiencies for smaller files and the OS being slow, and conservatively reckon a third of that.
I dare say that there are other bottlenecks and real-world issues in how software reads, processes and outputs audio data; and also how much RAM you’ve got. But, really, these things are insane, and audio work just isn’t limited by hardware anymore.
These Macs are doing things like applying filters to 4K video streams in real time. Audio is piffling in comparison.