Music Buffer Settings

[Dubious]

[Service-Team]

Dubious wrote:
> In summary:
> 1. Why are the buffer setting options so small?

Well - these are not not the buffers for caching data from disk to memory, but from memory to soundcard.

In short: This is the max. delay eg. if you use the volume slider.

The buffers are short as sometimes one needs something close to "realtime" - eg. when using microphones in the karaoke mode.

> 2. What does the "Use hardware" option do?

It changes the way the soundcard is used. Normally, this should not affect the disk caches.

To your problem: We think, reading the data from disk and intelligent caching is the job from the operating system - and most time, it does this well. There are some "tricks" that can help tuning your network, however, the details depend on your specific network so that we cannot give any general suggestions here.

Hoping we could clearify some things - best regards,
Your Silverjuke-Team

[Dubious]

Service-Team wrote:
> To your problem: We think, reading the data from
> disk and intelligent caching is the job from the
> operating system - and most time, it does this
> well. There are some "tricks" that can
> help tuning your network, however, the details
> depend on your specific network so that we cannot
> give any general suggestions here.

I'm a network engineer - the network itself is tuned as good as it is going to get. :) I am well aware of the limitations of both the Powerline Ethernet and wireless connections that I have. I know for a fact that the problem is the network. But unfortunately I have no other option for connectivity. I cannot run cat-5e from the jukebox to the router.

That being said, I have to look for a way to buffer the data while the connection is performing properly. You say that the operating system is responsible for this - but the OS has no knowledge of the data stream aside from the TCP/IP network stack - to interface the application to the network stack. This stack only knows to send a request for data when it is told to do so, and to make sure that the data gets to the OS.

The OS has no network buffering capabilities that I know of (I'm not an MCSE). As far as I have always seen, the application is responsible for buffering data as needed. You seem to be saying that Silverjuke has no buffer capabilities, and that you would normally let the OS handle this. Can you provide any OS-level options to perform such a task?

[Service-Team]

Of course, files read are buffered, this is done at least by the C library. However, the buffers used here are not excessive and cannot bridge over network errors. And our LANs and WLANs just work fine here To the OS: Well, the OS should know little more than just TCP/IP, eg. by default we use normal file functions to access the data. However, maybe you know more details about the network stuff, or an other user has a tweak? We're just programmers here

Best regards,
Your Silverjuke-Team

[Dubious]

Service-Team wrote:
> We're just programmers here

I don't suppose you can program a drop-in script that would allocate ... 5megs or so ... of RAM or disc to buffer the data stream, rather than accessing the stream in real-time?

[SilverEagle]

Hi Dubious,

I know there exist read-ahead file-based caching software, seen something for it some years ago. Seeing your background, do you know what I'm talking about? It could be done on the local machine if you insert some sort of virtual filesystem layer which does a read-ahead on the actual filesystem - in your case a powerline remote one. (I wonder how much work it would be to write something like that from scratch, probably too much if it has to run on windows )

SilverEagle

[Dubious]

SilverEagle wrote:
> I know there exist read-ahead file-based caching
> software, seen something for it some years ago.
> Seeing your background, do you know what I'm
> talking about?

No - I know about the OSI model, fiber optics, Cisco IOS programming and working in the middle of the night. I don't do non-linear programming or virtual filesystems. If my landlord allowed me to punch 10-15 holes in his walls and cable this flat with ethernet cable I would be happy to do so, but instead I have my jukebox about 40m away from the router, through at least 5 walls that are made of metal studs and thick plaster.

I just thought that SJ had a buffer that it worked out of, in order to avoid situations where the data stream was interrupted for any reason. Apparently that is not the case. I am guessing that SJ access the data in near-real-time as a constant data stream rather than loading it from disc in "chunks" of a significant size as a CD player does.

[SilverEagle]

[Service-Team]