For those of you OS9-ers and Windoze users, and even some OSX users, who are hunting for virtual sample playback rigs, I wanted to take a moment to clear something up that I think you guys have been hung-up about.
Yes, when hunting for a great direct-from-disk sample playback solution you have to consider the amount of RAM that system has so that you can figure out how many samples you load.
The first thing people think when they think about buying RAM for sample playback is:
"with 8GB of RAM I can load 8GB of samples."
This is true and false. It's true if you are playing back the entire length of every sample from RAM (Old school hardware sampler way, such as Roland, Akai, and Kurzweil; ie: The more ram the more samples). But it's false, if you have a sample playback solution that allows for the buffering of the attack of each sample into RAM and the rest "to be played back" direct-from-disk.
So, for those who realize that first step's truth, the next thing people think, is "Ok, if one sample needs 80Kb of RAm, then with 1GB of RAM I could theoretically load 13,000 samples." Now that's true ... and false. It's true if you are using a Giga setup for instance with hard-coded buffer stream sizes, or any other system not running under OSX. Because OSX proves this thinking false, fortunately.
Under Apple's OSX, RAM only is only used to buffer virtual memory, system-wide all across the board, no exceptions allowed. Applications do not access RAM directly. They request data with a High Priority flag from the OS, and the OS get's it to the App as fast as it can. Because OSX does this, your possible RAM limitations are lifted beyond jsut installed RAM and move to how much free space you have on your hard drives (where it stores it's hidden virtual ram space).
LOGIC running on a G5 with 8GB of RAM can easily, because of the G5's bus architecture, load around 20GB worth of buffer streams without any noticeable difference between a G4 loaded with 2GB of buffer streams. Mainly that's because of the computer architecture.
So, let's get something straight. When you buy a G5 with 8GB of RAM, you are not restricted to 8GB of RAM-space. You easily can load 20GB of data into RAM-Space without much noticeable drop in performance. And from there you can load an umlimited (based on hard disk space) amount of data. The practial limit might theoretically be around 40GB of buffer streams. Doing the math, a 40GB of 40kb buffer streams will yield you a grand total of 1 Million samples streaming from disk in realtime. And you can continue to load more with system performance decrease if you need to, you'd just mixdown/bounce to listen to what's programmed/sequenced.
So, please, people shopping for the best solution for disk-streaming sample playback, consider that 8GB of RAM has nothing to do with how much you can load into a computer running OSX, and certainly not with a G5 running Panther (out in 15 days).
RAM is a non-issue with the UNIX-core based OSX Apple computers.
Evan Evans
Yes, when hunting for a great direct-from-disk sample playback solution you have to consider the amount of RAM that system has so that you can figure out how many samples you load.
The first thing people think when they think about buying RAM for sample playback is:
"with 8GB of RAM I can load 8GB of samples."
This is true and false. It's true if you are playing back the entire length of every sample from RAM (Old school hardware sampler way, such as Roland, Akai, and Kurzweil; ie: The more ram the more samples). But it's false, if you have a sample playback solution that allows for the buffering of the attack of each sample into RAM and the rest "to be played back" direct-from-disk.
So, for those who realize that first step's truth, the next thing people think, is "Ok, if one sample needs 80Kb of RAm, then with 1GB of RAM I could theoretically load 13,000 samples." Now that's true ... and false. It's true if you are using a Giga setup for instance with hard-coded buffer stream sizes, or any other system not running under OSX. Because OSX proves this thinking false, fortunately.
Under Apple's OSX, RAM only is only used to buffer virtual memory, system-wide all across the board, no exceptions allowed. Applications do not access RAM directly. They request data with a High Priority flag from the OS, and the OS get's it to the App as fast as it can. Because OSX does this, your possible RAM limitations are lifted beyond jsut installed RAM and move to how much free space you have on your hard drives (where it stores it's hidden virtual ram space).
LOGIC running on a G5 with 8GB of RAM can easily, because of the G5's bus architecture, load around 20GB worth of buffer streams without any noticeable difference between a G4 loaded with 2GB of buffer streams. Mainly that's because of the computer architecture.
So, let's get something straight. When you buy a G5 with 8GB of RAM, you are not restricted to 8GB of RAM-space. You easily can load 20GB of data into RAM-Space without much noticeable drop in performance. And from there you can load an umlimited (based on hard disk space) amount of data. The practial limit might theoretically be around 40GB of buffer streams. Doing the math, a 40GB of 40kb buffer streams will yield you a grand total of 1 Million samples streaming from disk in realtime. And you can continue to load more with system performance decrease if you need to, you'd just mixdown/bounce to listen to what's programmed/sequenced.
So, please, people shopping for the best solution for disk-streaming sample playback, consider that 8GB of RAM has nothing to do with how much you can load into a computer running OSX, and certainly not with a G5 running Panther (out in 15 days).
RAM is a non-issue with the UNIX-core based OSX Apple computers.
Evan Evans