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New kexts proposed for ProBook Installer v6.1

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Yeah that's my problem, I really need the USB 3 for it's speed, as it is competing with SSD and FW800 to be the only three possible methods of streaming high resolution audio libraries for music projects.

Right now the other two options are on the back burner as my ExpressCard has a really bad FW400 connector forcing me to use the FW800 port if I want to have my soundcard reliably connected, and I just reinstalled Mac OS to my SSD, and don't really have space left on it for these massive audio libraries.

Since I have this 1 Tb USB 3.0 disk, if it could work for streaming libraries in Max/MSP, Logic Pro or Ableton Live it would be the ultimate answer.

One advantage I might have is that it will be essentially read-only, as I will just be putting the libraries on the drive and then reading from them, with little to no further writing. I can even do all my writing via USB 2 so there is no risk there. I think if I modify settings in my library hosts there will be some small writes to config files for the libraries, and saved patches, but it is very minimal.

Still, I guess the best course of action is to try putting a single library on a small USB 3 thumb drive and then working with that for awhile to see how stable it is in the long term. Maybe I could fit by best libraries on a 32Gb stick...
 
lunar7 said:
Yeah that's my problem, I really need the USB 3 for it's speed, as it is competing with SSD and FW800 to be the only three possible methods of streaming high resolution audio libraries for music projects.

Right now the other two options are on the back burner as my ExpressCard has a really bad FW400 connector forcing me to use the FW800 port if I want to have my soundcard reliably connected, and I just reinstalled Mac OS to my SSD, and don't really have space left on it for these massive audio libraries.

Since I have this 1 Tb USB 3.0 disk, if it could work for streaming libraries in Max/MSP, Logic Pro or Ableton Live it would be the ultimate answer.

One advantage I might have is that it will be essentially read-only, as I will just be putting the libraries on the drive and then reading from them, with little to no further writing. I can even do all my writing via USB 2 so there is no risk there. I think if I modify settings in my library hosts there will be some small writes to config files for the libraries, and saved patches, but it is very minimal.

Still, I guess the best course of action is to try putting a single library on a small USB 3 thumb drive and then working with that for awhile to see how stable it is in the long term. Maybe I could fit by best libraries on a 32Gb stick...
Click to expand...

What kind of "streaming audio" format exceeds 280 Mbit/sec of USB2?

Edit: Just as an example, I have full-fidelity Blu-ray backups with 7-channel audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTSHD-Master Audio) and 1080p video (H.264 or VC-1) that max out just north of 30 Mbit/sec. And the audio is only a small fraction of that total.
 
RehabMan said:
What kind of "streaming audio" format exceeds 280 Mbit/sec of USB2?

Edit: Just as an example, I have full-fidelity Blu-ray backups with 7-channel audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTSHD-Master Audio) and 1080p video (H.264 or VC-1) that max out just north of 30 Mbit/sec. And the audio is only a small fraction of that total.
Click to expand...

These are multi-gigabyte libraries emulating acoustic instruments that use a technique called DirectFromDisk (DFD) rather than loading sample data into RAM as it usually would cause a large hit to system performance with all that reserved RAM.

A lot of people in digital audio are some of the earliest adopters of these higher bandwidth data streaming technologies as the libraries always have lower and lower latency settings to use if possible to lower the total time between the MIDI note hit and the sample(s) starting to sound. I noticed a massive performance increase going to SSD and wish I could keep going with that option, but the other factor is that the size of these libraries cause you to fill up drives blindingly quickly.

So, if I can find a USB 3 based solution I will really be happy!
 
lunar7 said:
These are multi-gigabyte libraries emulating acoustic instruments that use a technique called DirectFromDisk (DFD) rather than loading sample data into RAM as it usually would cause a large hit to system performance with all that reserved RAM.

A lot of people in digital audio are some of the earliest adopters of these higher bandwidth data streaming technologies as the libraries always have lower and lower latency settings to use if possible to lower the total time between the MIDI note hit and the sample(s) starting to sound. I noticed a massive performance increase going to SSD and wish I could keep going with that option, but the other factor is that the size of these libraries cause you to fill up drives blindingly quickly.

So, if I can find a USB 3 based solution I will really be happy!
Click to expand...

Honestly, it sounds as if USB3 will only help only slightly in that kind of application. The biggest hit is the random access nature of it: the time it takes for the HDD read head to seek (that's the big one) to the requested cylinder plus the time for the platter to rotate to the specific sector requested. Once the data is lined up with the read head, USB2 speeds are enough. The time for actual transfer over the USB2 bus will generally be small compared to the time it took before the first bit of data was available, plus not all the data has to be read before the sound can be pushed to the audio device (that's the nature of streaming, you only have to read a small buffer before playback can start). After that, I can't think of how you'd need any significant bandwidth to sustain the rest of the sample.

SSD or any kind of flash based storage is where you see the real improvements because the "seek time" mentioned above are almost instant. There is no waiting for mechanical things to get into position.
 
Mieze's new driver is out. Version 1.0.3.
The forum post wasn't updated yet, but you can find the changelog in the binary zip.

Version 1.0.3 (2013-04-25):
The issue after a reboot from Windows has been eliminated.
Click to expand...
 
zoltankr said:
Mieze's new driver is out. Version 1.0.3.
The forum post wasn't updated yet, but you can find the changelog in the binary zip.
Click to expand...

Yes, I haven't quite finished merging with the changes (well, I've got the merge done, but haven't tested it yet...).
Eventually, I'll build it, test it, and update my download for the ProBook Installer...

For those of you annoyed by the bug, you can use Mieze's version, especially if you're not running SL...
 
Build is now updated with latest changes including the fix for "not working after warm boot from Windows" (Thanks to Mieze!!)
 
RehabMan said:
Honestly, it sounds as if USB3 will only help only slightly in that kind of application. The biggest hit is the random access nature of it: the time it takes for the HDD read head to seek (that's the big one) to the requested cylinder plus the time for the platter to rotate to the specific sector requested. Once the data is lined up with the read head, USB2 speeds are enough. The time for actual transfer over the USB2 bus will generally be small compared to the time it took before the first bit of data was available, plus not all the data has to be read before the sound can be pushed to the audio device (that's the nature of streaming, you only have to read a small buffer before playback can start). After that, I can't think of how you'd need any significant bandwidth to sustain the rest of the sample.

SSD or any kind of flash based storage is where you see the real improvements because the "seek time" mentioned above are almost instant. There is no waiting for mechanical things to get into position.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think you're right - and the truth is leading me to the best solution. Since I only have two SATA bays to work with in the 4530s, and because I really like having my 750Gb HDD present which came with the ProBook, what I should probably do is get another larger SSD and partition it in half, running the OS on one and the libraries on the other.
 
Updated GenericUSBXHCI.kext with Zenith432's latest changes. See post#1.
 
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