Feature request: playing musicfiles from RAM

[agent_kith]

A normal spinning HDD.
Not sure if a SSD will perform much better as a regular HD as SSD probably also produces more noise.

Worthwhile to try out SSD and see if it's any better. SSD to me produces less noise (in terms of audible noise, when the platters are spinning).. It depends on the computer case I reckon, for me I just find HDD don't work well with streamcom cases (a lot of people here in Perth is using this case).

Not entirely about SQ when it comes to SSD vs HDD. I can't say I can reliably pick it, but my preference is still SSD. Having said that, I don't use SSD. I use a NAS (5 x 4TB Hitachis), and kept this machine well away from the listening room.

It would be nice if Snakeoil gets the option to play from RAM as well in a sense that would load and decompress the music file first in RAM before starting to play it. This is what this feature request is about.

And this is why I'm interested in implemting this. The ability to decompress FLAC into WAV into some "scratch" folder, and then play it. RAM disk is ideal for this becase it will not cause fragmentation (if we do this on storage media over time the read/write performance will get worse and worse).

I'm willing to bet the reason why RAM play sounds so good is because people are listening to WAV and not FLAC, and not because RAM has a lower access latency when comparing to SSD or HDD.

Not sure when I will have this feature ready though. But for now I'd just try to get the foundations of Snakeoil right, and once that is done, I'd start working on this.