Disk Streaming

Goals: Load only a minimal amount of sample data from the disk on load, and then read in chunks just-in-time.
The following properties must be fulfilled:

• The memory usage should remain (relatively) constant during operation regardless of the number of samples played simultaneously.
• Look-ahead cannot be used. Everything must be real-time.
• The performance must not degrade to a point where it is compromising the audio quality.
• For live performance purposes, it should be possible to signify which channels should be dropped in case of overload (eg. the AMB channels may not be as important as the snare-top on a snare hit).
• The user should be able to tweak the preload memory usage as well as chunk sizes and other parameters.
• The user should be able to completely bypass the feature and read in all samples into memory.
• Presets with parameters matching different architectures/system types should be supplied (SSD, spinning disk, fast cpu/slow disk, fast disk/slow cpu, etc…)