Average size of Logic Pro X projects

L

Libertine Lush

New member
Hi everyone,

A novice question to help decide the SSD size I need in an upcoming MacBook purchase for my first foray into music production.

I'll be using Logic Pro X as my DAW and Komplete 10 as my VST library--that's it, nothing more. Assuming song lengths of 5 minutes and average complexity (not too many tracks), roughly what would the size be of such projects on average?

Thank you!
 
do not ever store/save/stream your project/audio files to/from an ssd - they are volatile files (their contents can change often over time) and so should be saved to a normal high speed hard drive media

an ssd is good for your programs and libraries because they are essentially static in nature (they do not change over time)
 
bandcoach said:
do not ever store/save/stream your project/audio files to/from an ssd - they are volatile files (their contents can change often over time) and so should be saved to a normal high speed hard drive media

an ssd is good for your programs and libraries because they are essentially static in nature (they do not change over time)
Click to expand...

Can you explain further why the ever-changing nature of project files is a bad thing for SSDs but not HDDs?

By "normal high speed hard drive media," do you mean an external 7200rpm HDD?

Would the general operation/recording process be faster if the project file was also on the internal SSD along with the applications and libraries?

Thank you!
 
Last edited:
New SSD's are NAND flash, which are non-volatile.

As for size, and if 10 is anything like 9, they can vary in size quite wildly depending on whether you include assets or not; ~1MB without ~50GB with
 
ssd's are mainly meant for storage of files that do not change over time and whilst the new generation of ssd's are more forgiving of files that change frequently, if I were making money from those files I would not want to loose them because the one time the ssd drive fails is when I am about to finish a project.

HDD's are designed to be written to many times (far in excess of what an ssd is rated at by a few orders of magnitude)

a project file on its own is very small; sub 1mb mostly

the assets are the audio files which can easily top 80 mb per for a 3 minute song depending on project settings as well as the wave cache, the backup versions of your sessions

44.1kHz/16 bit stereo requires 44100*16*2/8 = 44100*4 = 176400 bytes of storage per second (172.26kB or 0.17MB) = 30.28MB for one stereo track at 3 minutes (180 seconds)

48kHz/24 bit stereo requires 48000*24*2/8 = 48000*6 = 288000 bytes of storage per second (281.25kB or 0.275MB) = 49.43MB for one stereo track at 3 minutes (180 seconds)

88.2kHz/24 bit stereo requires 88200*24*2/8 = 88200*6 = 529200 bytes of storage per second (516.79kB or 0.50MB) = 90.84MB for one stereo track at 3 minutes (180 seconds)

96kHz/24 bit stereo requires 96000*24*2/8 = 96000*6 = 576000 bytes of storage per second (562.5kB or 0.55MB) = 98.87MB for one stereo track at 3 minutes (180 seconds)

taking each of those values and applying it to a typical session of 10 tracks or so (more depending on what you are trying to achieve)

and your entire project file grows to be
44.1/16 ~ 302.81MB +
48/24 ~ 494.38MB +
88.2/24 ~ 605.62MB +
96/24 ~ 988.77MB +
 
bandcoach said:
ssd's are mainly meant for storage of files that do not change over time and whilst the new generation of ssd's are more forgiving of files that change frequently, if I were making money from those files I would not want to loose them because the one time the ssd drive fails is when I am about to finish a project.

HDD's are designed to be written to many times (far in excess of what an ssd is rated at by a few orders of magnitude)
Click to expand...

My understanding is that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs--partly as there's less moving, mechanical parts. What you're saying doesn't seem to necessarily mean that SSDs are less reliable, but rather that they cannot be written to as often, and once you're written to it too many times, that's when they become less reliable. Is that correct?

Thank you for the great specificity of the project size info. That helps me a great deal.
 
Last edited:
SSD's are much better now than they were even 2 years ago, due mainly of course to better tech. Ars killed a bunch of SSD's with continuous writes, and if i remember right the worse one was 700TB before failing. 700TB is 700,000GB, so to put that in perspective if you were to write to the drive, say, 10GB per day then the drive would last 70,000 days, which, as a guesstimate, is ~200 years. The most resilient ones were in the PB's so forget about it.

Compare that to a mechanical drive which is generally looked at as 5% failure rate in the first year and 12% per year after the first 3, which is ~50% failure after 6 years.

It's pick your poison i guess, although saying that i still use mechanical for projects due to cost.

Don't forget assets are anything that you choose to include in your project folder that you are using in said project. So yes, if you are just using the audio on your tracks (i.e. no samples, no impulse response,s no reference, no video, etc.,) then you can work out size by using the simple formula: sample rate*bit depth*time*channels. Divide by 8 for Bytes.
 
If you’re still hesitant about their longevity and want to have maximum possible lifespan you could always ensure you go for an slc or mlc drive (which is likely what you’ll get anyway), rather than a tlc which is the best current performance. Even tlc’s have been tested to a couple hundred TB’s mind.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top