.Wav files read from Ram?

[pa28]

Maybe a daft Q, but, all my .wav files in Cubase 5 are kept on a seperate usb drive (as are my projects within the audio folder).

As I now have a PC with 16gb Ram can I load all the .wavs. into ram somehow automatically to utilise the speed, rather than streaming from the HD or does this happen anyway?.

[muzines]

How many audio tracks are you running?

A regular disk drive has plenty of bandwidth to stream hundreds of tracks, as the tracks do not have to be loaded in real time - only small parts need to be loaded and buffered during playback.

Search for ramdisk software for your computer, which lets you create a virtual disk drive in ram - but remember, "saving" files to this disk will be lost on power-off unless you copy them to a real disk first...

[pa28]

Desmond, I certainly do not stream hundreds of tracks, probably 20-30 max for the recordings I do. I asked this because on my previous PC (XP Pro) I noticed that If I didn't play the project for a while (tea break for instance) all the midi tracks started as expected, but there was a small lag before the audio started. So just stopped and started again and this didn't give me any problems as when working normally the audio always starts on cue (Presumably buffered somewhere?). Just thought if all went to Ram this wouldn't happen, but isn't a major problem.

[muzines]

That's most likely because after a period of inactivity your hard drives spin down, and need a little time to spin back up again...

[Pete Kaine]

Desmond's probably right about the reason behind the drive lag. You can disable drive spin down in control panel > power options panel.

[pa28]

I will try that option, thanks.