Upgrade to 2-4gb Ram

Hello everyone, i just upgraded my old Akai MPC to 4gb from 2gb, and as i know all the standalone dj consoles from inmusic using the same cpu doc board with the only difference of ram size, DJ consoles using something like 512mb, akai MPC mostly 2gb and latest versions 4gb. I was thinking to upgrade my Numark Mixstream Pro to 2-4gb also, i think is worth to have a faster file analysis specially when you loading a new usb drive with different libraries like rekordbox or serato.

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t firmware also need to be adjusted in order to utilise that hardware change?

It’s not like upgrading a computer.

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No, the board DOC is separate like a bigger sodimm slot, can use even the board from any Akai MPC or Force directly.

But whilst more ram is nice in home computers , I think Stu-C is correct in his comments than firmware would need to be changed to make use of something which deviates from what every unit of any particular model has onboard.

A sampler is dependent on RAM, so it makes sense that sampler firmware might have been written to detect and make use of all spare RAM installed. I’d have thought that it’s highly unlikely that a mixer/deck combo would have been gifted such fanciful “in case of a lottery win” likely features.

For example - the firmware is probably locked at analysing say 2 files at a time so that the processor isn’t prevented from carrying on with important tasks like playing music and allowing tracks to be searched for, cued up etc - adding more memory wouldn’t change that “2” in the firmware to a 4 or 8 etc

I think this idea of adding extra ram would be like painting some higher numbers on a car’s speedometer 160mph, 180mph etc without actually changing the engine, the gearbox, the ECU mapping etc

Still, we can all look forward to a really well controlled and we’ll documented A to B scientific test of the same 1000 track usb stick being analysed with, and without, extra memory… can’t we?

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Better performance will be for sure, not even to analyze faster but also when you import from other libraries. The only thing that is not worth i think is the costs between memories price and the work to soldering them on the board. Anyway i will try just for fun, see what’s happening…

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No firmware update is needed. I seen that mod done on AKAI force as well. RAM is managed by the CPU, not by the firmware.

It works exactly like if You would swap out 2 GB DDR RAM in your PC for a 4GB. If the motherboard can take it - it will just work.

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What allocates RAM though? for example on a computer, your RAM slots have a maximum capacity and once you install new RAM the PC has to recognise it in the OS, at which point it can start allocating that memory to different tasks/threads.

If the device has been hard configured to have say 2gb of RAM, wont the whole application that runs on the device be geared around allocating that resource? and if you don’t tell it to allocate more it wont.

Here, have a look:

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All recent Denon/Numark/Akai devices since the SC5000 are based on the same RK3288 chip and either have 2GB (most devices) or 4GB of RAM (like the MPC Keys 61 or X SE).

The chip itself (low-mid tier and introduced in 2014) is what limits faster file analysis or stronger STEMS performance, not RAM, although having more never hurts and you can give it a try of course.

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That’s interesting, almost like the device knows it can use more memory.

It seems that the chip is ready for more RAM by default. It just comes with a standardised packages 2 or 4GB.

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Even if it works, custom upgraded RAM packages probably aren’t a scenario which the development team uses to test future firmware upgrades. So at any update it could fail and brick the device.

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For most things, yes.

Depending on how they configured the OS, additional RAM may not be utilized at all like you suggested.

The fact that these devices are highly optimized (and i’m thinking down to CPU clock cycles sometimes), adding RAM is likely not to be used and won’t speed things up. There is a slight chance that increasing RAM (assuming the OS is setup this way), may increase the RAM disk cache, but that won’t speed things up other than accessing blocks of data from storage that one already accessed in the past.

If anyone ever wants to see their devices get wonky: Add a 1GB USB LAN adapter to the device and use that to access music across them. The devices :poop: :point_right:t3: :bed: quick!

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But as You can see on YT videos- people are successful in getting that mods to work. But of course it’s not recommended and voids your warranty.

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What I find interesting after watching this video is that we see that the RAM and the Rockchip CPU are on a card module that fits into a sort of slot.

If the architecture in the players is identical, we could imagine that InMusic could in the future offer card modules with more RAM and a more powerful chipset that could fit into the slot of the original module.

This would make it possible to upgrade older units at a lower cost. Although I doubt that InMusic will propose to follow this path TBH, because they have much more interest in selling new units than in selling replacement chipset cards.

This opens up a reflection on how readers should be thought of and designed at the origin to be easily upgradeable and effectively combat planned obsolescence.

We could imagine readers with an easy-access hatch opening directly onto the CPU/RAM module that could be replaced as easily as the SSD in the bay provided for it, without having to open the unit.

Having this type of architecture would be a revolution in the industry and would allow us to follow the evolution of Engine OS.

Because don’t dream, there will inevitably come a time when Engine OS will no longer be updated on current hardware and will only be updated on future, more powerful units.

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Let’s hope to see good results, video of the before and after process, I think your machine will be faster

What do you mean with the 1gb USB Network? Not sure this is sarcasm or an speed boost to access the Notebook Library.

Might be interesting!

Nope. not sarcasm at all. Literally, all of the SC6000Ms i have struggled with adding a 1GbE USB Network Adapter. It did speed some things up, but other things suffered like audio glitches and what not.

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I totally missed this. thank you :slight_smile:

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Thanks, does sound like an interesting glitch, like the external driver for it uses too much processing power.

Would be an interesting peak into the Linux system and CPU loads etc.