Audiotool board archive

Hard disk access while interacting with the app

Jordi Moragues · started 2017-12-19 19:04 · updated 2017-12-21 06:47

I'm not sure where to post this because it's not a bug or a feature. I notice that every time I change the app's state and create a history event (changing values, moving devices, creating, editing or deleting events in the time-line) the hard disk is continuously accessed (written?) as long as the change takes place. For example, changing a knob or moving a device will access the disk continuously until the change or move finishes. Is this normal? Is it a browser behaviour? If data needs to be written, could it be cached and written asynchronously? The continuous disk access is a bit unsettling.

Comments (10)

2017-12-19 19:05 · 2017-12-19

normal, I think.

2017-12-19 19:05 · 2017-12-19

in the RAM or?

2017-12-19 19:05 · 2017-12-19

Maybe more appropriate for "Support > Help".

2017-12-19 19:05 · 2017-12-19

yeah probably

2017-12-19 20:13 · 2017-12-19

It seems excessive.

2017-12-19 20:28 · 2017-12-19

Edit. The heavy hard disk access seems to happen only when working on a local, unsaved track. Not on already saved drafts. So, I get it, the app is probably saving every change to a local cache. This seems to be confirmed by the relatively long time it takes to delete the track when it is discarded. Still, I wonder if it is necessary to access the disk continuously for every single interaction.

Martin Below · reply
2017-12-20 18:53 · 2017-12-20

Good observation. We indeed save each single modification done to track. Soon, we want to offer a feature that allows to step through the tracks history. This allows to create remixes of a track from any point of the track's history. You will also be able to "replay" these changes, which will feel like a video of how you created the track. This is already implemented, but unfortunately, we found it pretty hard to come up with a good user interface for this.

2017-12-21 01:04 · 2017-12-21

Thank you Martin. What bothers me is that the hard disk seems to be accessed -continuously- during a change, not just one time once the change has been completed. I don't understand why such a heavy access is necessary and I'm a bit concerned about my hard disk being used in this way (it sounds like the head is working like crazy). Is this safe?

Martin Below · reply
2017-12-21 06:43 · 2017-12-21

I do not have such an indicator on my machine, so I cannot verify this. It should only access the disk when you are actually modify something. Note that dragging a slider or moving a knob emits a series of changes (every mouse move is a value change). However, each command written to the disk is very tiny. Maybe we should buffer the commands and "flush" them in a batch periodically to disk, e.g. every 5 seconds.

Potasmic · reply
2017-12-21 06:47 · 2017-12-21

Buffering sounds good. Although, I'm quite surprise that the browser people hadn't complained about this. Or should that be done on the browser's end?