Even if you’re not a fan of a particular St. Louis
football team, or Dodge Truck, RAM can be very
important to you.

Especially in recording digital audio.

RAM is Random Access Memory, and its crucial
to running more processing intensive
applications. Word processing doesn’t require a
lot of it. Long audio recordings do.

You may need to boost your RAM if digitally recording
longer programs of 20 minutes or more. Recording
longer program segments when there isn't enough RAM
allocated to the Digital Recording/Editing program can
cause the audio to skip and drop out, as the program
struggles to keep track of what its already recorded and
to capture the new audio constantly coming in.

If I am recording a 20 min. segment, I like to have 100
MB of RAM or more available to the program. Different
software editors have better memory management. But
better safe than sorry. RAM is cheap enough and, in most
models, easy enough to install so that this should be a
priority if digital recording is a backbone of your
strategy.

How do you know how much RAM is enough?

1.
Do a few test recordings. If you end up having drop outs
- where some of the audio ‘drops-out’ or disappears –
there’s a good chance you don’t have enough RAM to
keep up.

2.
Call the manufacturer of your editing software and ask
what they recommend. They deal with their application
every day and know it intimately. Be sure you have the
specs on the type of computer your using (i.e. Dell
Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz, 256 megs of RAM) – this will help
your support person immensely.

3.
Record your programs in shorter segments so your
computer won’t have to huff and puff to keep up. Four
15-minute segments placed end to end sound EXACTLY
the same as one 60 minute segment when you burn it to
CD.

This issue isn’t as crucial with newer computers that
come with more RAM and faster processors. However,
its good to know this before you record to test your
system. You don't want to find your "once in a lifetime
dream performance" massacred by a computer that just
couldn’t keep up.

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