What does disk streaming mean?

[Ahmed]

HI,
What to we really mean when we say disk streaming regarding samplers? and why do people dedicate very larg HD space for this matter?

Thanks,
A.

[Gwydi]

Normally a sampler loads an entire sample into RAM. This is fine for small samples, but with large samples, your RAM fills up very quickly.

Disk streaming plays the samples directly from your hard disk as they are needed during playback. This means very little RAM is required, but it does put an extra load on the processor and hard disk.

As for disk space - sample libraries are getting bigger and bigger, because people expect more and more realism, and that means more samples, especially if you're using layered multisamples. Plus, if you're streaming them from disk, you don't need to worry about making them fit into memory!

Hope that helps,
G.

[Warmonger]

It's important to note that disk streaming still requires a fair amount of RAM, because some of each sample must be stored in RAM. I think Kontakt defaults to something like the first 128KB of each wave being stored. With every disk streaming sampler I've used, this adds up to a fairly substantial amount of RAM usage, despite the use of streaming. If you have a large number of small samples, you might as well load everything into RAM. When you're using big samples, however, disk streaming pays off very nicely.

[Ahmed]

Are we talking about recording from hardware synths into the computer, if that's the case it doesn't apply when I only use softsynths and samplers only to playback SFz and other formats, dose it?

Thanks, Gwydion, Wormonger

[Warmonger]

Nope, we're not talking about hardware samplers or synths at all. AFAIK, disk streaming can only be done using certain software samplers.

If you're using sfz, you can enable DFD mode, which is another name for disk streaming (Direct From Disk, if you care).

It has no relevance to softsynths at all.

[Ahmed]

Thanks for the great infoz, G.and Wormonger !

Ahmed.