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Topic: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming" (Read 11000 times) previous topic - next topic
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Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Hello All!

I am using two different programs to stream my music.  All of my music is stored in FLAC files on an external hard drive, controlled by a dedicated laptop running Windows 10.  One of my programs (MusiCHI) loads files selected for Play into computer RAM before playing each file.  The other program (MusicBee) loads only a portion of the file (to accommodate the Buffer feature) into RAM.

My question is:  Is there an audible difference between these two approaches?  Does using RAM to completely contain the file improve the sound, degrade the sound, or have no impact?

Thanks.

Art

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #1
One of my programs (MusiCHI) loads files selected for Play into computer RAM before playing each file.  The other program (MusicBee) loads only a portion of the file (to accommodate the Buffer feature) into RAM.

My question is:  Is there an audible difference between these two approaches? 

The two approaches are functionally identical as the time data sits in memory is irrelevant, so no, there would be no difference.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #2


The two approaches are functionally identical as the time data sits in memory is relevant, so no, there would be no difference.

[/quote]

Did you mean to say that the time data sits in memory is not relevant?  If the time data sits in memory is relevant, then I don't understand your reply.

Thanks

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #3
Yes, should be irrelevant. 


Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #5
Hello All!

I am using two different programs to stream my music.  All of my music is stored in FLAC files on an external hard drive, controlled by a dedicated laptop running Windows 10.  One of my programs (MusiCHI) loads files selected for Play into computer RAM before playing each file.  The other program (MusicBee) loads only a portion of the file (to accommodate the Buffer feature) into RAM.

My question is:  Is there an audible difference between these two approaches?  Does using RAM to completely contain the file improve the sound, degrade the sound, or have no impact?


Correct answers have already been given by others, but IME your question is not unusual. I see people unecesssarily spending big bucks and resorting to odd procedures in order to address their misperceptions about computer processing of digital audio.

The basic rule that should guide your thinking is that consumer access to high quality digital audio has been mainstream and commercial since 1983, which is 34 years ago. The processing power of digital electronics more than doubles in about 2 years and has so for decades (Moore's law - google if you are not familiar with it.).   IOW there have been 17 2 year periods since 1983 and 17 doublings gives us 289 times the computing power. So, the power in a typical consumer appliance for handling digital audio processing is now almost 300 times more. In short, if we could do it easily in 1983, today processing digital audio should be (and is) like literally falling off of a log.

Another way to look at is is that  If I copy digital audio files off of  a typical 5 year old laptop-style USB hard drive (the slowest kind of hard drive in typical use)  , I observe that a 5 year old computer sustains a data rate of about 30-40 megabytes per second.

However, the data rate of uncompressed stereo digital audio is typically 0.176 megabytes per second. If you use compressed audio files the data rate is on the order of 10 times less. The higher data rate for uncompressed audio is over 1/200th of what this relatively slow USB slower speed miniature laptop style (2.5 inch, 5400 rpm) hard drive is capable of.

In short, when the available computer processing power typically exceeds the required processing needs by a factor of 100's,  it is exceptionally unlikely that anything that further speeds the processing will do anything at all to the sound quality. It is like driving a 200 mph supercar at 1 mph. Its actually a little surprising that the computer is happy going that slow because most supercars are not!

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #6
IOW there have been 17 2 year periods since 1983 and 17 doublings gives us 289 times the computing power.
Seventeen doublings would be a factor of more like 130 000.

Nevertheless, my previous laptop interrupted playback over a battery check no matter how I altered Windows' CPU priority. No matter how much more computing power it had than an eighties box, it had too much latency to play audio. Not always, but a few times a minute, enough to ruin audio playback. (Disabling the battery monitor solved it, but killed the battery.)

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #7
My question is:  Is there an audible difference between these two approaches?  Does using RAM to completely contain the file improve the sound, degrade the sound, or have no impact?

I assume that HD playback has enough throttle and buffering to be immune against dropouts, otherwise you would not have asked. If so, the only issue should be the sound of a spinning hard drive, if in the same room.


Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #8
Quote
Its actually a little surprising that the computer is happy going that slow because most supercars are not!
Which is why CPUs operate like a super car doing nothing in your driveway until it's time to be at the grocer in 10 seconds. ;)

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #9
Thanks to all who replied.  I will continue to use both software programs and, if I can hear a difference, whether real or only perceived, then I'll choose the appropriate program.

Now, I am considering whether or not I could possibly hear a "substantial" difference between using software players and purchasing and using a hardware player, such as a Cambridge Audio Azur 851N.

Again, comments are welcome.

Happy listening to all,

Art

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #10
Good lord, what's that thing made of, solid platinum? Does it come with 18 Windows licenses?

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #11
IOW there have been 17 2 year periods since 1983 and 17 doublings gives us 289 times the computing power.
Seventeen doublings would be a factor of more like 130 000.

Thanks for the correction. Your number is a lot closer. I got lost in my spread sheet.  But it makes the point that CPU power and storage speed are exceptionally abundant these days.

Quote
Nevertheless, my previous laptop interrupted playback over a battery check no matter how I altered Windows'

Bad code can bring down the largest processor. Whoever did that should be forced to listen to it, incessantly. Sounds like a power management bug, which IME  almost never happens.  What OS?  What laptop?

Quote
CPU priority. No matter how much more computing power it had than an eighties box, it had too much latency to play audio. Not always, but a few times a minute, enough to ruin audio playback. (Disabling the battery monitor solved it, but killed the battery.)

Hmm 80s, probably a DOS-based so-called OS which failed a number of computer science criteria for even being an OS.  Power management was generally not done by the OS itself, but an add-on.


Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #12
Good lord, what's that thing made of, solid platinum? Does it come with 18 Windows licenses?

When I initiated this thread, I did not realize that my questions about different streaming options would elicit humorous thoughts and comments.  While fun to read, I do hope that there will also be some comments from folks who have experience using different hardware and software methods for streaming music.

 

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #13
Why would you insist they don't have experience?

You're a self-described placebophile with no apparent understanding of electronics and computer science, which, save for a few apologists and those willing to convulse deep into left field in order to extend the benefit of doubt, is a poor fit for the guiding philosophy of this community.

Personally, I'm disgusted by placebophiles and for some twisted reason find my own enjoyment with the attitude; still, others find humor and are definitely laughing at with you.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #14
Thanks to all who replied.  I will continue to use both software programs and, if I can hear a difference, whether real or only perceived, then I'll choose the appropriate program.

Now, I am considering whether or not I could possibly hear a "substantial" difference between using software players and purchasing and using a hardware player, such as a Cambridge Audio Azur 851N.

Again, comments are welcome.

Happy listening to all,

Art

Probably some EQ or other effect enabled in one of the programs. Record the output and see what they are actually doing.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #15
Why would you insist they don't have experience?

You're a self-described placebophile with no apparent understanding of electronics and computer science, which, save for a few apologists and those willing to convulse deep into left field in order to extend the benefit of doubt, is a poor fit for the guiding philosophy of this community.

Personally, I'm disgusted by placebophiles and for some twisted reason find my own enjoyment with the attitude; still, others find humor and are definitely laughing at with you.

And, sir or madam, apparently your comprehension of English is a bit lacking.  I specifically asked for comments from experienced people - re-read my post.  As for the balance of your trite and snippy little comments:  I spent my entire business career in the electronics industry and retired 8 years ago from a senior management position with a large electronics company.  I built my first audio amplifier from scratch in the late 1950s.  What are your credentials?

Your post identifies you as a Global Moderator, That is indeed unfortunate for the health of this forum.  I do not need your silly and insulting thoughts and, whether or not you choose to reply to this post, or even to publish this post, is of no concern to me because this will be my last post on this Forum and my last visit to this site.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #16
  As for the balance of your trite and snippy little comments:  I spent my entire business career in the electronics industry and retired 8 years ago from a senior management position with a large electronics company.  I built my first audio amplifier from scratch in the late 1950s.  What are your credentials?

You just asked an incredibly naive question about how computers work on a forum full of engineers and software programmers.  People already understand your background well enough.  Do not embarrass yourself by asking for credentials. 

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #17
Thanks to all who replied.  I will continue to use both software programs and, if I can hear a difference, whether real or only perceived, then I'll choose the appropriate program.

Now, I am considering whether or not I could possibly hear a "substantial" difference between using software players and purchasing and using a hardware player, such as a Cambridge Audio Azur 851N.

Again, comments are welcome.

Happy listening to all,

Art

These days there is very little hardware that does something of substance and merit, that doesn't have a computer inside, running the software that provides the functionality that you desire.  In the case of audio players, I know of no actual software-free audio players. Furthermore, many of the players are very likely to be initially written in a high level programming language such as C++, and compiled to run on various forms of computer hardware that are incompatible with each other. There may or may not be some fine tuning of the object code after compiliation. Some of them are written in interpreted languages such as Java.'

In short, there currently are only music players that are implemented in software.  It may be obvious, such as software players that run under recognizable operating systems, or at the other extreme, the software player may be running under an operating system that was specially written to run it, or one that is designed to be imbedded in products and very self-effacing such as to be relatively undetectible.

Old timers such as myself wrote stand-alone utilities in assembly language that ran on bare hardware (in my case the IBM 360/370 mainframe), operated the computer hardware including the interrupt-drive I/O subsystem and channels directly and therefore handled their own buffering, but those days disappeared while I was still a pup (ca. 1962-4).  The ones I wrote were mostly for instructional purposes (learn how interrupts and I/O work) or toys (why not do this for grins and giggles on bare metal, no OS). We already had second and third generation operating systems such as OS/360 do do all of this for us. Mainstream code worked through system calls.

The last audio player I wrote (in 1999) was an ABX Comparator that I developed in Visual Basic which is a pretty high level interpreted language. I didn't write any of the I/O handlers or even the actual code for playing the file. My job was mostly to set up the playback environment and hand the audio files off to some stock subroutines that did the actual work by themselves driving the operating systems subprograms through systems calls.  I sensed about three or 4 levels of indirection between the code I wrote and the code that actually ran on the hardware.  The operating system my code ran on probably had several levels of processing within it, some of which were probably written in high level computer language(s) themselves.

As previously shown, modern computer hardware is working on being a million times faster than what would be required at the minimum to do a perfect job of processing audio files. Therefore, many layers of overhead in the interest of ease of use, ease of programming, security and reliability are completely acceptable and even desirable, and have no necessary effect on sound quality. 

The idea that relatively simple operations like buffering would add to or detract from sound quality in listening comparisons, can and should be dismissed out of hand. However, expectation effects are very strong in listening tests and grotesquely affect most of what you read about audio on other web sites. Look for those few web sites that base their claims on double blind listening tests like this one, or take their claims with a giant bag of salt.

So your question refers to an imaginary product, a hardware digital music player. There ain't any of interest now, and there haven't been any this millenium and maybe the last 30-40 years of the previous millennium.  I've never seen one or heard of one, and I've turned over quite a few rocks looking for one.

That all said, the stock answer is that any music player that actually sounds different as delivered, is broken as delivered or running on a broken system or both. An exception would be a player that implements a low-bitrate file compression or expansion technique such as 48 kb MP3.  OTOH many music players have features that allow them to color the sound of music to meet individual preferences.


Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #18
Why would you insist they don't have experience?

You're a self-described placebophile with no apparent understanding of electronics and computer science, which, save for a few apologists and those willing to convulse deep into left field in order to extend the benefit of doubt, is a poor fit for the guiding philosophy of this community.

Personally, I'm disgusted by placebophiles and for some twisted reason find my own enjoyment with the attitude; still, others find humor and are definitely laughing at with you.

And, sir or madam, apparently your comprehension of English is a bit lacking.  I specifically asked for comments from experienced people - re-read my post.  As for the balance of your trite and snippy little comments:  I spent my entire business career in the electronics industry and retired 8 years ago from a senior management position with a large electronics company.  I built my first audio amplifier from scratch in the late 1950s.  What are your credentials?

Your post identifies you as a Global Moderator, That is indeed unfortunate for the health of this forum.  I do not need your silly and insulting thoughts and, whether or not you choose to reply to this post, or even to publish this post, is of no concern to me because this will be my last post on this Forum and my last visit to this site.

So you think you and your 1950 amp means anything today when billlion+ transistor ARM SoCs are selling for ~$20 each. What does the latter crowd selling cheapo non placeophile gear know about signal processing am I right?



Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #19
So you think you and your 1950 amp means anything today when billlion+ transistor ARM SoCs are selling for ~$20 each. What does the latter crowd selling cheapo non placeophile gear know about signal processing am I right?

This points out a specific problem. In 1950 most audio electronics was so bad that it actually did sound different.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #20
I must say, looking at all the replies to the OP, (including the arrogant moderator), to me it's very difficult to imagine any of you actually enjoying music.
Well, at least you all seem to be very satisfied with yourselves and the knowledge you believe you have.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #21
I must say, looking at all the replies to the OP, (including the arrogant moderator), to me it's very difficult to imagine any of you actually enjoying music.

What is with the name calling in this thread?  Disagreeing with someone doesn't make one arrogant, and really not if they're also correct.  I think if you don't have something to say beyond to attack someone, you probably should keep your feelings to yourself. 

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #22
What is with the name calling in this thread?  Disagreeing with someone doesn't make one arrogant, and really not if they're also correct.  

Allow me to quote your moderator 'greynol':
"You're a self-described placebophile with no apparent understanding of electronics and computer science."

I am not name-calling here, I am just calling that a display of arrogance.

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #23
What is with the name calling in this thread?  Disagreeing with someone doesn't make one arrogant, and really not if they're also correct. 

Allow me to quote your moderator 'greynol':
"You're a self-described placebophile with no apparent understanding of electronics and computer science."

To the best of my knowledge, that is an accurate statement.  If you disagree, you should say why, rather than attacking the person making the statement.  If you just call someone names when you disagree with them, that accomplishes nothing other than to pollute the thread with toxic content.

(including the arrogant moderator)

I am not name-calling here,

Yes you are.  

Re: Storing Streamed Music into RAM versus "Direct Streaming"

Reply #24
Yes you are. 

Yes, I am calling him arrogant.
I deduct that from his reply to a new member, who obviously is not as digital-savvy as you all think you are, and comes here 'hat-in-hand'. To me the responses here come across as arrogant, and coming from people that don't have much sympathy for new members that are not as sharp, savvy and competitive.
So that's why I was honestly wondering: are these people able to actually enjoy music?

Feel free to reply with any witty comment, I won't respond on this topic anymore.
But just take a look at the signature of your moderator:
"Is 24-bit/192kHz good enough for your lo-fi vinyl, or do you need 32/384?"

To me that displays an arrogance that is not about enjoyment, or helping people, but mainly about 'being right' and 'being clever'.

Enjoy your show.