Disk Cache

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smooth_mix

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I'm working with Pro Tools on a Mac...
It tells me here that if I reduce the size of my Disk Cache that it will speed up bounces to disk and session saves. I'm not really sure I understand this, and it almost seems opposite of what I would expect. I have a 600 Mhtz processor and just upgraded to 384MB of RAM. My default Disk cache size is 8160K. Pro Tools is telling me to reduce this size all the way down to 512K. This just doesn't seem right to me.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

smooth
 
Smooth,

> My default Disk cache size is 8160K. Pro Tools is telling me to reduce this size all the way down to 512K. This just doesn't seem right to me. <

I'm not a Mac guy, but here's the logic as it applies to Windows, anyway: With a large cache, a lot of data accumulates before the operating system writes it to the disk. So when that finally happens, it takes a long time to write all that data which interrupts things for too long. So you can get clicks and pops in your recordings. With a smaller cache the OS writes the data more quickly, sooner after it arrives, and you never accumulate so much that it takes very long to flush the cache to disk.

--Ethan
 
When I worked at Digidesign (almost two years ago now) the standard practice was to disable virtual memory and make a small disk cache. I think it was just impossible to get really fast drive access while the drive was trying to also cache RAM to the disk. You might not see any problems, depending on the amount of audio tracks in your session... but I would go with what the manual says. If you need more help on Pro Tools issues, check out the Digi User Conference at http://duc.digidesign.com.
 
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