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RKfan

Something someone said on another thread has got me thinking. If the OS were rewritten so that all samples (EXs and user samples and not just pianos and drums) were able to stream from the SSD then there would be no need to load the RAM with EXs - there would be more free RAM for temporary stuff (recently sampled stuff that you are manipulating) - and also the boot time would be quicker.

Like I said dumb question - but:

(1) is this possible?
(2) If not why not (is there some sort of memory management or bandwidth issue if everything is streaming - or will the SSD break)?

RKfan · Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 6:57 pm Post subject:

Dumb question - and fat fingers

Sina172 · Platinum Member Joined: 29 May 2007 Posts: 1194

RKfan · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:56 am Post subject: One for Dan

Maybe this is a question for Dan?

EvilDragon · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:21 am Post subject:

What do you mean, "all samples and not just pianos and drums"? All EXis can be loaded using virtual memory/disk streaming...

And, as explained before, you cannot stream samples DIRECTLY from SSD, by not utilizing RAM as a pre-buffer, simply because RAM still has faster access time than any SSD, which is important for the attack phase of a played note.

ScoobyDoo555 · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:22 am Post subject:

Surely the downside would be losing the SST function, as regardless of the speed of the drive, it would still take some time to change sounds (similar to the old emu e4)..... Streaming wouldn't be instanaeous patch changes.

Unless I've misread your post....

Dan
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EvilDragon · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:22 am Post subject:

Nah, it wouldn't have anything to do with SST.

ScoobyDoo555 · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:25 am Post subject:

Either way, it wouldnt work by the sounds of it! Laughing

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EvilDragon · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 8:07 am Post subject:

Yep, wouldn't work. Laughing

X-Trade · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 8:23 am Post subject:

I'll back up what EvilDragon said. EX Samples are already streamed from the SSD. The bit of them that takes up the ram is only the little preload buffer that gets it started when it starts playing. Kinda think of it that it starts the notes from RAM and then the SSD catches up.

Likelyhood is that the User samples aren't currently streamed by SSD because that little preload bit has to be very precisely tweaked for each library.
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synthguy · Platinum Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Posts: 661

If KORG were clever, they could get Disc Streaming to work with all samples. The Kronos Engine would load in the sample starts of your sample files, and then make markers which pointed to the rest of the waveforms for each multisample.

But I know that this could hang the system up long enough to reduce polyphony, cause hiccups in SST, who knows what all. I've learned that every little thing in computer design affects overall system performance. If you recall the earlier workstations from the 90s and 00s, such as the Roland XP series, they all made mention of using RISC processors. This stands for Reduced Instruction Set Chip - or something, and likewise there sprang up ASICs, or Application Specific processors. These guys were processors which had instruction sets structured specifically for the synthesizer family they were made for. All kinds of manufacdturers for everything from synths to cell phones and TVs discovered that if they used general purpose processors, the extra unused instructions in the CPU would bog the processor down as it had to sort through them all for each step of every process. Kind of like the difference between a law library or science library that had all the books from a public library. The extra unused books would be in the way and slow down researchers who had to browse past them all. And this is the fast part of a device.

Unfortunately, everything in a synth has to be accounted for in order to get the performance out of it they and we want. User streaming might kill things like SSI and polyphony for all I know, or even make Kronos less stable. I wouldn't like it if my samples had pops or lurches in them.
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EvilDragon · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:42 pm Post subject:

If Korg used a more powerful CPU, user sample streaming would be a very viable possibility. But they are already squeezing that Atom real hard, and I'm not sure the CPU and data transfer bus would handle that much streaming, or if the SSD would perform up to par (remember, it's an older generation Toshiba SSD - Toshiba didn't produce newer generation SSDs which can read at well over 250 MB/s, so I presume Kronos' SSD is in the range of 100 MB/s). Just my 2c.

RKfan · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:28 pm Post subject:

I thought all the piano samples are streamed from the SSD - and these are big samples. The idea I had would be to stream things like the HD samples (not user samples per se) since these are Korg presets which Korg knows well. RAM would be used for indexes and user samples. And because the preset samples are not loaded then the boot time would be seconds.

Even with a read time of 100MB/sec you can read very many samples at a time and still output at 192/96 or 48 KHz (48 bit).

A company I used to work for used to stream TV programmes from RAID discs for MTV - that was in 1999 and they were 7200 RPM.

Guess we need someone like Dan to explain where the issues might be.

danatkorg · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 9:12 pm Post subject:

danatkorg · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 9:13 pm Post subject: