To DFD or not to DFD?

[johnmarley]

hi,

was wondering what's the deal with DFD? is it better to leave it on or off? I've heard that loading samples into RAM instead of DFD is best, what's the verdict? :)

[James W.G. Smith]

RAM is better, but unless you have like...40GBs of it then go DFD. You won't be able to load more than a few instruments directly to RAM, but you can stream (DFD) about 10x more (depending on the samples of course). Does anyone NOT use DFD anymore?

James W.G. Smith

[trash80]

In XP, I've noticed that after using other applications extensivly its good to have your machine setup to clear the pagefile on shutdown. then reboot for optimum DFD performance. This might only apply to Kontakt 2. Havnt tested it with the player plugin. This is after i had a hard time troubleshooting why certain songs wouldnt play without glitching out sometimes.

A google search yields how to do this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=clearing+pagefile+on+shutdown&btnG=Search

:)

Oh and if you dont know. http://www.musicxp.net has a good 'checklist' for improving performance on a XP machine.

/trash80 _-_ trash80.net

[ToddK]

Im pretty sure that if you have more than 1 gig of ram, you
can just turn the paging file/virtual memory off.

TK

[trash80]

well i have 2 gigs, some (stupid) programs require the pagefile, such as photoshop.
as well, kontakt 2 seems to run a bit smoother with the pagefile active.. dont know why, its probably optimized to use the pagefile for DFD.

[AndyFinkenstadt]

Turning off the pagefile is actually detrimental to your system's ability to reclaim RAM from inactive programs.

With no paging file, all those tasks (in task manager) that are "available to run" and showing up in the list, are resident in RAM and stealing memory away from anything else you want to do.

There are only two ways to get them "out"... turn them off, or swap them out to the page file. Black Viper and MusicXP both have good guides (differently focused) as to how to turn everything off that isn't needed. But for those things that are required for the system but are otherwise quiescent, the pagefile lets you get them out of your way.

On the other hand, if they suddenly awaken, your system will steal time/diskIO from your synth to page them back in and do whatever they needed to do. Minimizing the number of things that can do this will help gain a consistent behaviour -- especially while rendering in "real time". (And bouncing in Sonar is technically rendering in real time, at the moment.)