RAM Recording and the Solid State Disk Drive
As USB memory sticks increase in capacity, the option of recording to RAM opens up possibilities, can revive the performance of older computers and makes recording on the road a breeze.
My Rain laptop goes everywhere-which means multiple countries, states, and plane trips. And since its most valuable product is data, I've always been concerned about what to do if the computer gets dropped or stolen. It wasn't that long ago when 8, 16, and then 32MB USB memory sticks started to appear, and I was a happy guy: I could save my data to a rugged, small, portable memory medium. (I should probably add that the Rain never has lost its mind or its data, but there's always a first time...and I try to be prepared.)
But now USB memory sticks have moved from USB 1.1 to USB 2.0 and from 16MB to 16GB (and more), making them look increasingly like solid-state disk drives. And for those on the road with a laptop, this can be a great thing.
For example, I was in Germany doing some video editing with my Rain Livebook, running Sony's Vegas 8 video editing program, and recording narration using Sony Sound Forge and a USB mic. But my hard drive was almost full, the video project was very complex, and although I had a small portable drive for backup, it ran at 5400 RPM and give me little advantage over using the internal drive. It was midnight, there was no way to hit a computer store for a 7200 RPM FireWire or USB drive, and I was getting hiccups, audio dropouts, and really slow rendering of effects.
But I did have a 2GB memory stick, and it struck me: What if I dumped the entire project onto the stick, and streamed all the project files from RAM instead of from the system drive?
Bingo! The hiccups went away, the dropouts left, and once again, the project felt like it was running from a fast desktop drive. (Incidentally, the year before I had been doing video editing in Germany with the Livebook, but with Sony's consumer-oriented Movie Studio program. Because of its limited track count and minimal effects, I had no problems. But Vegas 8 is a heavy-duty program that wants a heavy-duty computer; it's no slight on the Livebook that a circa 2005-designed computer couldn't keep up with a complex project using a circa 2008 piece of pro software.)
Putting the project on the RAM stick was like discovering the Computer Fountain of Youth. After getting home, I tried some other experiments-like recording as many tracks as I could into the "RAM drive" using Cakewalk Sonar. Although I had been told that USB memory doesn't write as fast as it can read, I was nonetheless able to record 24+ tracks simultaneously to the USB RAM stick with perfect timing and stability. Trying to do the same with the internal hard drive wasn't even close: There were dropouts, and the timing varied wildly.
But the biggest improvement from using USB memory sticks came with Ableton Live software, the foundation of my live solo act. Ableton Live is, as the name suggests, a live performance program that's optimized for DJ-type remixing applications. It involves looping multiple clips, and that's where problems can arise with laptops. If you have 20-30 clips playing against each other, that's asking a lot from your hard drive compared to just streaming a couple of tracks. So, Live has the option to designate clips as disk clips or RAM clips.
USB memory sticks have moved from USB 1.1 to USB 2.0 and from 16MB to 16GB (and more), making them look increasingly like solid-state disk drives. And for those on the road with a laptop, this can be a great thing.
However, using RAM clips isn't necessarily the solution either, because it doesn't take too many loops to make a serious dent in your system RAM, thus short-changing the operating system and any applications you're running. So most musicians compromise, designating the longer clips as disk clips, and the shorter ones as RAM clips. Still, it's always a balancing act, and if you don't choose properly, you could have a live performance meltdown if your computer chokes-mondo embarrassing.
The USB RAM stick is the perfect solution. What you do is move the entire Live project over to the stick, then designate all the clips as disk clips (Fig. 1).
Figure 1 - A clip can be designated in Live as a disk clip or RAM clip. Here, the RAM clip option has been deselected, thus turning the clip into a disk clip. If you put the project on a USB RAM stick, select all clips, and designate them as disk clips, you get great performance without tying up your computer's RAM or disk drive.
Live thinks it's streaming the clips from disk, so it doesn't put any of them in RAM. But the clips themselves act like RAM clips, with none of the limitations involved in streaming from a hard drive. So not only is the performance much better, the project doesn't tax the laptop's internal hard drive, or tap the system RAM. It's a beautiful thing!
So next time you're doing an intense audio/video project on a laptop, try loading from USB RAM. Even
if you have the latest and greatest Rain laptop, it will still make a difference in terms of speed,
convenience, safety (your project is inherently backed up to a non-volatile medium), and your computer
can work at maximum efficiency. With 8GB sticks selling for under $50, you can't go wrong-check it out.
Copyright 2008 by Craig Anderton and licensed to Rain Recording. All rights reserved.
Author
Craig Anderton has played on, produced, or engineered over 20 major label releases. He is currently Editor in Chief of Harmony-Central.com, Executive Editor of EQ magazine, and performs in the band EV2 with Brian Hardgroove from Public Enemy. He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 37 states, 10 countries, and in three languages.