Ten Minute Master – Sample Streaming

This article from MusicTech is such a great read. 

Samples have come a long way, and we owe it to the great guys who continually push the technological boundaries so we can come ever closer to realism with our music.

The article talks about how it was in the days of sampling which, with unimaginably low resources (RAM only) allocated for samples, managed to squeeze only couple of seconds of samples for use in audio/music production.

Then came the revolutionary technology that broke the resource limitations of RAM capacity - the innovation of hard drive streaming, where sample data is streamed from hard disks to RAM.

It then talks about which types of harddrives are available and what aspects of hard-disk performance matters most when it comes to making music and getting the most when working with samplers. It also suggests some nice tips on how to spec-out your workstation to get the best performance for sampling based applications.

We are also reminded of the trend of greater efficiency with data, and continual improvements in technology, that music and virtual instruments in the future will sound ever closer to the realism that we dream of.