Feature request: playing musicfiles from RAM

[agent_kith]

Would it be possible to add functionality that pre-loads and de-compresses music files into memory before playing?

That's something in my todo list, but not sure when it'd be ready yet.

While play from RAM has it's advantages, not  concinved yet it's the right way to go. The only advantage I can see is it's easy to setup. Which is why I'd be trying to add this feature in, just not sure what's the best implementation yet.

If you want to spend some effort on Snakeoil, in theory at least, the features already available on Snakeoil on paper should beat any RAM DISK playback available today.

Unfortunately the learning curve is steeper.

The features in Snakeoil that are of import are : 

• custom low latency kernel capable of servicing requests in real time (and now kernel boot options)
  
• ability to change priority of running process (Change Priority in snakeoil tab)
  
• ability to customise priority of theads and buffer tweaks (software  tab)
  

The above 3 work in tandem to streamline the push of data from your storage device all the way to the hardware. Merely setting all things to RT will not be ideal. You have to spend time to tweak, listen and access to work on a final magical setup.

Hardware wise you'd also need to make sure any bottlenecks are reduced to a minimum: 

• SSD instead of HDD.
  
• PCI-e Intel NIC instead of on-board NIC (enable jumbo frame if music is from NAS).
  
• Use R1 memory, and if your board has two DIMMs, pair it up to get double data rates
  
• Use WAV (and not FLAC)
  

While this sounds like a lot of work, the rewards can be very satisfying.