How can I maximize my Disk Performance with Ivory?

Since Ivory uses more sample data than will fit into RAM, it uses a technique called “streaming” to read sample data directly from a hard drive. The drive that Ivory uses is the one that contains the Ivory Items folder. Ivory can only play back as many voices as your surrent setup will allow. To keep Ivory performing its best, it is important to know how to best set up your Ivory nstallation and keep your disk running efficiently.

For starters, install the Ivory Items folder on its own dedicated hard drive, at least 7200 RPM. Note that internal laptop drives are slower than this. Also take into account the hard drive interface. SATA is perhaps the best choice these days, but if this isn’t convenient, choose Firewire 800 if you can. Also consider creating a two-disk striped RAID, which is built into OS X.

Avoid installing Ivory onto a disk that is already close to being full. The sample data will become fragmented, and will reside on a slower portion of the disk, both decreasing Ivory’s performance.

Partitioning a disk drive into multiple partitions (volumes) is generally a bad idea. Seperate volumes on the same drive does not count as two seperate disks. It also may force Ivory’s sample data to reside on a slower part of the disk.

Slow disk performance is indicated by the appearance of the words ‘Slow Disk’ appearing just to the left of the MIDI light on Ivory’s main page. This is often accompanied by a ‘click’ as a voice abruptly stops playing. Although you should consider the recommendations in the preceding paragraphs first, changing Ivory’s Buffer Size may help. For newer computers, setting this to Small my yield better results. Ultimately, you may may need to reduce Ivory’s voice count if your current system simply can’t keep up.

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