HansDampf
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Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
ok, ok, Sonar 6 is even not officially announced yet. But playing out around with ramdisk-software one real major improvement for the x64-Version of Sonar came to my mind. It may be not so new, but since Vista will be the first "real" 64bit-Version of Windows it is about time to discuss it seriously:
Sonar should extend its use of RAM dramatically. Especially to unload the hard disk. With 64bit you can address more than enough RAM to make this come true. So the disk performance will be of no matter anymore. Sure it should use the harddrive for saving it constantly in the background, but it shouldn`t have to load audio data in realtime from the harddisk.
And in the meantime the prices for RAM will decrease about 10 times, won`t they?
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billkath
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 6:46 AM
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Hans,
are you saying that Sonar should be recording to RAM--like a buffer-before it's transferred to HD as a background task? And that on Playback all tracks should be loaded into RAM?
Billy E HeartBeat Studios
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HansDampf
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 8:25 AM
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Something like that, yes. Honestly the concept could need a little more elaboration, but that should be the direction. The point is: you can do this already if you are using a ramdisk. But that is a little bit long winded on the one hand because you would have to move the complete project into the ramdisk everytime you use it. Ok, you could also use imagefiles with some ramdisk-software to automate this. But on the other hand you can use only 4 GB of RAM on the known 32-bit-Windows-XP-Versions. This would be not enough for many projects. I don`know the exact value for Vista, but with the x64-version of XP Pro you can already use 128 GB of RAM theoretically. Practically there are not so many affordable 128 GB-RAM-chips on the market yet ;-) Maybe there is a conspiracy between all the HD-manufacturers out there and they already bought all patents for 128 GB-chips of ROM (!) and won`t produce them until they have to build new factories anyway  
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Steve_Karl
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 8:31 AM
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This idea would totally ruin the possibility of using softsynths that load samples into ram by necessity. So no more Kompakt, Kontakt etc. The other problem I see with this idea is that any system glitch might possibly loose your recording. When you're writing to HD once it's on the HD then it's safe. As long as it's in ram, is easily lost. And what is the motive anyways? I can already playback 80+ audio tracks with minimal disk usage. HDs are plenty fast enough in my opinion. Leave the ram available for where it is needed. Loading samples.
post edited by Steve_Karl - August 20, 06 8:48 AM
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HansDampf
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 8:44 AM
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This idea would totally ruin the possibility of using softsynths that load samples into ram by necessity.
So no more Kompakt, Kontakt etc. Why that? The idea is to extend that load-to-RAM-concept on all audio-data of a project. But this will only be practical on a 64bit-OS, decent mainboards and affordable RAM. But I am pretty sure we will be there in about 1-2 years. And maybe in 4 years we don`t need these mechanically driven harddisks anymore, because we will use some kind of ROM instead. And what is the motive anyways? I can already playback 80+ audio tracks with minimal disk usage.
HDs are plenty fast enough in my opinion. I honestly disagree. It may be not so much about the bandwith, but about the access time. And the way I record I can clearly see my harddisk-usage increase. And even then: HDs are too mechanically IMO, so I can`t wait until we can totally replace them with something chip-based. 7200 U/min is the standard today, but it is not that easy to get A HD cool and quiet. I mean really quiet. At least the little hum is always hearable, it is definitly not like my flash-based-mp3-player, you know. I am really fine with my situation right now, but it is always like working on the symptoms...
post edited by HansDampf - August 20, 06 9:16 AM
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...wicked
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 3:31 PM
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ORIGINAL: Steve_Karl
And what is the motive anyways? I can already playback 80+ audio tracks with minimal disk usage.
HDs are plenty fast enough in my opinion.
Holy cow, I'm partying at your house!
=========== The Fog People =========== Intel i7-4790 16GB RAM ASUS Z97 Roland OctaCapture Win10/64 SONAR Platinum 64-bit billions VSTs, some of which work
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metaprog
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 10:12 PM
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ORIGINAL: Steve_Karl
And what is the motive anyways? I can already playback 80+ audio tracks with minimal disk usage.
HDs are plenty fast enough in my opinion.
Yowzers, what are you using for a computer? I've got 3 Ghz/2 GB RAM, and I get into the 75% range with less than 20 tracks and maybe 10 plugins. (Of course, I do have a USB iLok for Miroslav; I imagine that's sucking a bit of CPU power.)
DAW: Studiocat Core2Duo, Asus P5K mobo, 4GB 1066Mhz WinXP2 > Sonar 5.2 PE > Lynx 1 > VXP/GT Brick Mics: GT-66 / Guitars: Carvin DC400, Brian Moore i21.13, Ibanez JS1000, Morris W616, Rodriguez A, Takamine EG523SC-12, Peavey Fury bass
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.
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 10:31 PM
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We regularly get 80+ tracks with fx and software synths on our old AMD FX51 chip & SATA drives.
post edited by . - August 20, 06 10:44 PM
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whoop 
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 20, 06 10:35 PM
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really, this is a non-issue. the only way anyone will have a problem is if they're using the same drive for the swap file, sonar temp, and sonar project files.
the new SATA drives are plenty fast enough for anything i have to do.
most of my projects are 40 - 60 tracks of mono audio, and i also freeze synths to stereo tracks.
i do use goldwave (which records directly to RAM) for recording the final mix though, to eliminate any possibility of disk trashing, but i could just as easily use a different drive (i have 4) that isn't used by sonar or the OS.
your wish will come true for eliminating hard drives soon enough, considering how fast USB flash drive are dropping in price and how big they're getting. i just saw an advert for an 8gb USB hd for $79. i wouldn't be surprized to see 100gb for that price by this time next year. samsung just announced a 4X increase in size, so 32gb drives should be available very soon, maybe by the end of this year
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D.Triny
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 21, 06 9:56 AM
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your wish will come true for eliminating hard drives soon enough, considering how fast USB flash drive are dropping in price and how big they're getting. yep!!
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kp
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 21, 06 1:01 PM
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And waiting how long for a project to open, save, and re-open? No thanks - keep audio data (and sample data) on disk where it belongs.
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cemastering
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 21, 06 4:49 PM
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Using Sonar 2.2 i tested my system at 168 tracks (no plug-ins)! It needed some tweaking, and the latency wasn't great, but it was stable!
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EgM
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 21, 06 6:14 PM
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I've rarely seen hard disk drive speed being the bottle neck of audio performance... and like others said, too much ram in use would cause major problems for samplers.
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JB1592
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 21, 06 10:19 PM
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ORIGINAL: D.Triny
your wish will come true for eliminating hard drives soon enough, considering how fast USB flash drive are dropping in price and how big they're getting.
yep!!
This is true. Flash is more than likely the future of storage technology, although there are other things out there too. Point is though, you shouldn't expect RAM prices to drop like a rock just because suddenly Windows is capable of addressing more RAM. It's not going to happen. I hope to see more reasonably priced 2 and 4 GB modules in the near future, but it's going to be a long time before you see 128GB on a motherboard you'd use in a typical DAW. There are problems with chip density and signal integrity that have nothing to do with what Windows will support. The laws of physics are beginning to work against current technologies. Too much crosstalk and such on the data lines. As for a conspiracy by hard drive makers... why? What would they have to gain? I know it was just a joke, but it's really just silly to anyone that understands computer architecture. RAM is volatile memory. That means it loses its data when it loses power. Even if you had multiple terabytes of RAM, you couldn't eliminate the hard disk. You'd still need some form of nonvolatile memory to permanently store your data on. Conceivably, some sort of battery system could be used to maintain data, but data corruption would be a huge problem and I would't relish the idea that if my computer happened to (for some reason... perhaps I went on vacation?) not get turned on for a while then everything would be wiped when the battery drained down.
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HansDampf
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RE: Serious feature request for Sonar 7/8
August 22, 06 2:30 AM
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As for a conspiracy by hard drive makers... why? What would they have to gain? I know it was just a joke, but it's really just silly to anyone that understands computer architecture. RAM is volatile memory. I am sorry, I didn`t mean that they hide some RAM patents, but alternatives to harddrives or something like that. But in the end it was really a joke...
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