[PD] sfread~ droupouts / understanding buffer parameter?

[Roman Haefeli]

On Mon, 2013-04-08 at 12:03 +0200, João Pais wrote:

> 
> > I don't know about Windows, but in Linux usually recently read files are
> > cached in the free areas of the memory. The second time you read those
> > files, the harddisk isn't involved, provided there is enough free memory
> > available which mitigates problems you describe. IIRC, I never had
> > problems playing 80 channels at the same time, though I haven't tried
> > with 80 separate single-channel files. And this is with a few years old
> > hard-disks.
> 
> This is a rec-play piece, so the files should be read only once each time  
> it is performed. Memory isn't a problem at all, as the total space in the  
> disk is around 80Mb.

Well, then. I'd try to make the buffer of each [readsf~] instance as big
as the file it plays. Give it enough time to pre-load data before
playing and see if that helps. 

If you play the files only at original speed any way, you could
alternatively load them to tables and play them with [tabplay~ ]. This
way you can also be sure that they are played from memory and not from
disk. Getting the tables loaded probably requires some trickery to avoid
drop-outs at loading time.

Roman