EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

DIGITALMechanics@... wrote: 

>
> I'm on the market for an HD to be used exclusively for streaming 
> samples in EXS and Kontakt and I'm not sure if the drive with 8 MB 
> cache will improve the performance in any way. Can anyone shead some 
> light on this? 


When drives with 2MB of cache are run head to head with  otherwise similar 8MB
cache drives some significant differences are found on some benchmarks. How
well these will translate to EXS24 streaming performance is hard to say --  you
really need to test the drives with the application you have in mind. 

The firmware in the drive will determine what caching strategies are used and
if the right data is cached ahead of a read request (a cache hit) the data will
be transimitted to RAM or the CPU much more quickly than if it has to be read
off the media.

I gather that the caching approaches taken by some drives (eg Seagate's new 10K
rpm SATA Raptor ) are quite different from most enterprise (database) optimised
drives so the performance delta between drives would probably vary from brand
to brand and model to model. 

In the case where you are streaming up a lot of long audio files (eg recorded
audio tracks or sustained piano notes -- think the chord at the end of A day in
the Life) I suspect that the difference would not be great. In the case of
smaller files (eg short percussion samples sitting close together on the drive)
it might make a larger difference. Personally I went with an 8MB drive.

Go to storagereview.com and read some drive reviews if you want more info on
this.

Regards,
Murray