useful free software for running programs from ram memory

[tannoydmt]

If you want to run programs from your high speed ram memory I have found Dataram RAMDISK is excellent, its free for use up to 4GB, can be used for ultra quick internet browsing or rapidly editing photos, or in my case playing back flac music files using Foobar directly from the ram memory. The software is easy to install and setup and creates when opened a new hard drive in 'My Computer' which is actually located in your ram memory. There are a couple of points worth noting on initial setup, firstly it defaults to FAT16 I change this to FAT32 only requires ticking a box, you can use NTFS, see web site for info as it is a bit more involved, also the amount of ram you can designate for use will depend largely on the amount of ram fitted and your operating sytem requirements, the software does indicate a maximum value, however,not sure how it calculates this, when playing back my flac music files I normally select around 500MB as the files aren't much larger than 350MB for a single cd, this can easily be used on most computer sytems I would think, if you want to playback 24bit96khz you will need to select a much larger value probably around 1-1.5GB, I have also tried this and it plays faultlessly, changing tracks is instant. You need to bear in mind that when you close the program down or shut the computer down all the info within the ramdisk portion will be lost and the new hard drive shown in 'My Computer' will disappear, this can be very useful if internet browsing.
There are a few similar programs available (paid versions I think) which can also use the part of the ram which can't be seen by some operating systems for example windows 32bit which is limited to around 3.7gbs I believe.

[AlexM]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the tip - I can see that it would be useful for temp files and browser cache to speed things up, but what benefit is there from caching an entire CD in memory?. I can't see why this would have an effect on SQ (assuming this is the benefit) for a computer with an external DAC, but I'd be interested in understanding the rationale.

Regards,
Alex

[Welder]

The rational is once the track is loaded to RAM (assuming you’ve optimised your OS)
there is no BUS activity between the hard drive and processor and no hard drive spin.

[Werner Berghofer]

John,


no hard drive spin.

I beg to differ: as long as the computer is active, the hard drive always will be spinning. Guess what you meant to say is no hard drive access to read the audio file. Considering the average RAM available in recent computers, I think any application – even iTunes – will attempt to read the audio file in one step, so there should not be any access to the audio file during playback.

I’m not sure if this really has any impact on the playback quality.

Werner.

[Welder]

Yep, cheers Werner, I did indeed mean access during playback :)

I’m not sure if having a complete track loaded into RAM makes an audible difference either.

SSD hard drive and minimal bus activity are another matter.

[Tim]

I tried an SSD in my media player, alongside a 2TB hard drive with the OS on the SSD and the music on the mechanical drive.

I then tried partitioning the hard drive and put the OS on a small 20GB partition and the music on the larger 1.8TB partition - tried lots of different music and couldn't discern any difference in SQ between the two. So I took out the SSD and use it in a netbook now.

[Welder]

That was a waste of money then Tim :lol:

I believe I can hear a difference between an SSD and a conventional drive in my music server.
It took many hours of listening before I this belief set in and I found it most noticeable through headphones. Of course it could just be audio nervosa.
But, think on this, a handful of possibly audio nervosa’s may just add up to a clearly audible difference :eyebrows:

What’s even more alarming I can hear the mechanical drive in my laptop and in my PC spinning late at night when it’s quiet and I’m not even playing any music :eek:
Present either with an above average retrieval demand and then the fans join in the chorus :eek::eek:

Of course, some drives make more mechanical noise than others; no moving parts and that’s one less thing to chew ones nails about :eyebrows:

[Stratmangler]

What’s even more alarming I can hear the mechanical drive in my laptop and in my PC spinning late at night when it’s quiet and I’m not even playing any music :eek:

All the more reason to have a remote serving machine feed the digits to a Squeezebox over a network ;)

[Tim]

That was a waste of money then Tim :lol:
:lol: Yes and no, if I had never tried it I would have always wondered :scratch: Not tried listening with headphones mind you?

I can't hear my hard drive at all, got me a Western Digital Green Power drive as recommended on SilentPC as one of the quietest mechanical drives, totally silent from my listening position and from more than a couple of feet away for that matter ;) I was going to buy a hard drive silencer, but no need in my current case, as the drive is suspended on silicone mounts. I also used to stream from the NAS, but got the very occasional skip, so my NAS is now the backup and the music server does the lot. I'm in musical heaven right now too with my eBay Albarry amp - pure liquid honey and it's all down to the boys at AoS :)

[dave2010]

Maybe one of these could do the job. http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookair/
Good excuse to buy one anyway!

[Tim]

Maybe one of these could do the job. http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookair/
Sorry Dave, I wouldn't have one of those if you gave it to me, it would go straight on eBay :o
Doesn't make me a bad person though ;)

[AlexM]

Hi,

I think that there is a misconception here in that there will always be activity on the PCIe bus whether or not the HDD is active or not, from the the display adapter, network chipset, sound cards etc.

The operating system will be accessing the paging file as a matter of course as well, preventing any inactivity timer from spinning the drive down.

Having said all of that, I have noticed some noise break-through on the headphone socket of my laptop during intensive disk access on my laptop, but I wouldn't expect this to affect a SPDIF or USB output. I put this down to careless EMI suppression on the analogue output stage, but I doubt anyone with high SQ aspirations would be using an onboard sound card in this way anyway!.

In my own case, I use a remote NAS server (Thecus N5200Pro) with a wired ethernet connection via a switch to a wireless router and directly into a squeezebox touch. That way, the server is a long way away from the listening room, so mechanical noise, induced jitter, OS driver or mixer issues or other problems potentially affecting a local music server/client are irrelevant.

I think for a digital music solution, seperating the roles of client and 'audio renderer' has significant advantages, not least because you don't need to interact directly with a PC desktop. You could still use a diskless/headless quiet PC client in conunction with squeezeboxserver via squeezeplay, controlling the whole lot through an iPad running iPeng or similar.

There are lots of possible solutions, and I do feel that computer audio will remain somewhat problematic for the majority who can't or aren't interested in a fairly complicated computer-based solution. For them I would say that Squeezeboxserver / SBT and a good Dac is an excellent platform with less to cause audiophilia nervosa.

BTW, thanks for the ramdisk tip - it has speeded up my browsing considerably!.

Regards,
Alex

[alfie2902]

Well, this memory player software is not free but there is a downloadable free trial.

For the last couple of weeks or so, I've been trying out the trial version of a memory based audio player for the Windows 7(or vista) platform, called JPLAY. So far I'm pretty impressed with the sound quality it's a step up on Foobar IMO.

The idea behind JPLAY is ultimate sound quality & it's certainly very good, but to get the extra quality it's a very minimal player at only 250KB & has no GUI, File management or playlist support! Its stripped-down, bare-bones playback engine fits completely inside CPU cache & will allow you to pick tracks from Foobar, JRiver etc by copy & paste method. JPLAY then pre-loads the complete chosen tracks into the PC's RAM guaranteeing zero disk operation during playback. There's a few options to choose from & it's pretty easy to get up & running. One of it's main features is 'hibernation' mode, Your PC is used for audio playback only, this kills all unneeded processes from running in the background during the hibernation. A drawback to this is your PC is locked into hibernation until the chosen tracks have been played i.e no browsing or nothing. Hibernation is an option, so you can choose a little less sound quality to be able to use your PC during playback, but this does kind of defeat the point. You can use the player from a USB memory stick & removing the stick will stop the hibernation if needed.

Here's a link to the website for more info & it's full features. There's 32 & 64bit downloadable trials, it does drop out for a couple of secs every 2 or 3 mins or so but it's good enough to see what it's about! It does though cost 99Euro for a single license of the full version.

JPLAY claims
Full memory-based playback: most other memory-based players dynamically load tracks into memory during playback. In contrast, JPLAY pre-loads complete playlist into RAM guaranteeing no disk activity during playback.
Large Page Memory: superior memory management provides minimal CPU latencies.
Maximum System Timer: reduce operating system latency by making Windows switch tasks faster. (0.5ms instead of default 15.6ms)
Maximal Priority Scheduling: ensure uninterrupted flow of music data by running music playback at highest possible priority.
Hibernation Mode: cancel OS ‘noise’ by eliminating dozens of jitter-inducing processes and hundreds of threads.

http://jplay.eu/

Review here http://www.digitalaudioreview.net.au...er-for-windows

It does seem to lift a veil & offers improved low end performance & better separation over what I'm hearing with Foobar, infact as good as I've heard in a player, but at some expense, in cost & ease of use in file management.

Well worth a trial if you use a Windows 7 PC set-up IMO.

Edit: 2nd thoughts, I think this software is that good it deserves it's own thread! that's here http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12735

[dave2010]

Sorry Dave, I wouldn't have one of those if you gave it to me, it would go straight on eBay :o
Doesn't make me a bad person though ;)
Agree it doesn't make you a bad person, but misguided perhaps. They seem really nice machines, though I don't yet know whether Lion is going to be better/worse/just the same as Snow Leopard.

Now have my hands on one of these, so may be able to test if the SSD drives will work, though not in a rush to do this.

[Tim]

Agree it doesn't make you a bad person, but misguided perhaps.
:lol: that's an Apple users response for sure..... yep, I'm misguided and I have yet to see the light.