“I’ve seen a few posts on various lists about skirting the latency problems in computer hard disk recording by recording to a RAM disk. Could you please explain this procedure and the pros and pitfalls involved in this method?”
It’s an interesting idea, but in most situations isn’t going to help latency much. By recording to a RAM disk you can temporarily circumvent using the hard drive, which can be useful if you have a slow or fragmented drive. Most latency issues we run into are caused by drivers, software, and the time it takes a host CPU to process all the information it has to deal with. The speed of the hard drive, assuming it is adequate to record audio (as almost any modern drive is) doesn’t matter much – though there are other reasons why faster drives are better. The other two most obvious pitfalls to using a RAM disk are very limited capacity and volatility. If your computer crashes you’ve lost your recording unless you save it to your hard drive regularly.