Specifications

Chapter 8: Storage and Disk Performance Enhancements 51
Chapter 8: Storage and Disk Performance
Enhancements
New Disk Engine
Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools 10 use a completely
new disk engine that greatly increases perfor-
mance for audio recording and playback. As a
consequence, the
DAE Playback Buffer Size set-
ting provided in the Playback Engine in lower
versions of Pro Tools is no longer necessary and
had been removed. Also, for Pro Tools software
only, the
Cache Size setting has been removed
as well.
Additionally, the
Open-Ended Record Allocation
settings provided in the Operation Preferences
in lower versions of Pro Tools are no longer nec-
essary and have been removed.
New Disk Cache Settings
(Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools with Complete
Production Toolkit Only)
Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools with Complete Pro-
duction Toolkit now let you load audio files used
in Pro Tools sessions into RAM for cached play-
back. Pro Tools prioritizes files closest to the
current playhead location. This way, when you
start playback, those files are already cached for
playback. This is especially useful when working
with shared media storage (such as with Avid
Unity MediaNetwork and ISIS shared storage
systems).
To determine the maximum amount of RAM
available for Disk Cache, Pro Tools polls the
computer for the amount of RAM installed and
subtracts 3 GB with Mac systems or 4 GB with
Windows systems.
For example, if your computer has 12 GB of
RAM installed, the total amount of RAM avail-
able for the Disk Cache will be 9 GB (Mac) or 8
GB (Windows).
Note that Windows systems reserve more RAM
for the system than Mac systems.
To set the amount of RAM for use by the Disk
Cache:
1 Choose Setup > Playback Engine.
2 From the Disk Cache selector, select the
amount of RAM you want to allocate for Disk
Cache.
3 Click OK.
You can use the Cache Meters in the System
Usage window to determine whether or not
to assign more or less RAM to the Disk Cache
for the current session.