Space lag and framerate spikes - RAMDisk Guide (Updated)

[Leebyn]

Running Audition from a RAM Disk
Originally by Weenie

I. Introduction

First off, this won't help you if your average fps is always low (slow video card), or you have network lag caused by a bad wireless network or isp (slow internet).

If you suffer from random 0 fps spikes or frame skipping it's typically because your hard drive isn't able to locate and run the sound files fast enough (a common issue especially among laptop drives). A paid solution would be to upgrade to a faster hard drive, but a free solution would be to install Audition directly into your RAM.

I'm just updating Weenie's RAMDisk guide. Audition's client file size has grown a lot over the years and we need to use a RAMDisk program without the 4GB limit.
Dataram RAMDisk is only 1 of many utilities that allow you to use your RAM as a drive in Windows.

I do NOT recommend using a RAMDisk for Audition unless you have at least 6GB of RAM. Audition as a program probably only uses 1GB of RAM but after using 4.6GB to store Audition client files on the RAMDisk, you do still need some for Windows operating system and any other processes you may be running.

II. What are our options?

Some motherboards actually have a built-in RAMdisk utility!
Examples

• ASRock has Xfast RAM which allows up to 8GB and this is integrated in the AsRock Extreme Tuning Utility, available on many boards.
• MSI has a RAMDisk utility built into the MSI Command Center, listed as unlimited. (It'll reserve a portion of your total RAM capacity for normal function but let you use the rest of it, so on 8192MB RAM it'll let you set 5792MB) It's available on many lower end motherboards.
• Asus higher end motherboards (RoG series) have an unlimited RAMDisk as well.

MSI Z87-G41 Example

(This the motherboard from my $300 budget Audition build btw.)

If you have one of these motherboards, I would recommend using them over other freeware utilities. Motherboard RAMDisk utilities might be easier to use, because the process of setting up a RAMDisk can start while your Windows is booting - so it takes less setup time, and you can configure the data to be restored upon reboot as needed.

If you don't have such hardware, no worries, we're going to use something called ImDisk.

III. Download from the original site

ImDisk is located here on ltr.data.se - by Olof Lagerkvist
Pick up the current stable version which should be a relatively small (under 500kb) file called imdiskinst.exe

IV. ImDisk Installation

1. Double click on the imdiskinst.exe executable which will open a prompt that says
   "This will install ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver with the imdisk.exe command line tool and a Control Panel applet. Continue?"
2. Click Yes.
3. You'll see a small window briefly appear and disappear in the top left corner and then a confirmation message.
   "Setup finished successfully. Open ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver applet in Control Panel or use imdisk command line to manage your virtual disks!"
4. And you're done!

V. Configuration

Pick either the GUI or command line instructions, you don't need to use both.

GUI version
longer method
You can read this one first to see what exactly we're doing, but I recommend the command line for routine use.

• Open your Control Panel and find the "ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver".
  • If you see the Category view, it might be easier to click "Large icons" or "Small icons" next to the "View by:" options.
• Opening up the ImDisk Virtual Disk Drive will show you this:

• You'll want to mount a new disk, so click on the "Mount new..." button, or File -> Mount new virtual disk, or type Alt+N.
  • You don't need to put anything for the image file.
  • Pick an appropriate "Drive letter" that isn't already in use by your other hard drives or optical drives. By default it should use the next letter available. If you use removable USB drives often, you might notice that those letters will get shifted to the next letter but usually it's not a big deal, just keep a mental note.
  • Size of virtual disk - type 4800 and pick the "Megabytes" radio button. This should be enough space for Audition (for 2015, at least.)
  • Leave Image file offset alone.
  • For "Device type" pick Harddisk volume.
• On the right column, pick the radio option "Create virtual disk in physical memory" and leave the rest as-is.
  • This step is crucial, if you use virtual memory instead of physical memory, it doesn't help you at all since it won't use your RAM.

It should look like this.

• Click OK when you're done.
• The ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver should have an entry now with a 4.688 GB drive.
• Windows should also find it and trigger a prompt that says:
  • "You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.
    Do you want to format it?"
    • with X: being whatever drive letter you picked in the previous steps.
• Click "Format disk" and you'll get the following window.

Here, you can leave things at default since Windows reads NTFS and FAT32 equally well.
I picked FAT32 and left the allocation size at default. For "Volume label" you can put whatever you want really - it's just the name that shows up when you look at it via "My Computer". (or "This Computer" on Windows 8)

• Click Start when you're done.
• It'll show you a warning
  "WARNING: Formatting will erase ALL data on this disk.
  To format the disk, click OK. To quit, click CANCEL."
  • Windows needs you to format disk drives before it can be used. Looks scary but just double check you're formatting the RAMDisk and not your other hard drives.
• Click OK, and it'll show a confirmation "Format complete." which you can just click OK and get rid of.
• Close the format window if that's still there.

Command line version
shorter method

Adapted from guru3d guide by k1net1cs

• Open a command prompt as administrator.
  • Search "cmd" at the start menu, right click on cmd.exe, and choose "Run as administrator".
• Type:
  

  imdisk -a -o awe -s 4800M -m X: -p "/fs:fat32 /q /y"

  • (you can copy the above line and right click in the cmd.exe window to paste it) and hit Enter.

• -o awe is to create the disk on physical memory (RAM) instead of virtual memory
• X: is the letter you want to assign to the RAMDisk drive. You can change this to whatever letter is convenient for you.
• 4800M can be adjusted to whatever size you want, e.g. 5000M for 5000 megabytes when Audition gets bigger
• fat32 can be changed to ntfs if you prefer that file system (read more about FAT32 vs NTFS)

Explanation from the guru3d thread

• -a initializes the virtual disk.
• -s 512M is the size, 512 MegaBytes.
• The full choices are b, k, m, g, t, K, M, G, or T.
• These denote a number of 512-byte blocks, thousand bytes, million bytes, billion bytes, trillion bytes, KB, MB, GB, and TB, respectively.
• -m X: sets up the mount point a.k.a. the drive letter, X:.
• -p "fs:ntfs /q /y" formats the drive.
• -p's parameters are actually for Windows' format program.
• So, if you want the RAM disk in a different filesystem, just change ntfs to fat (FAT16) or fat32 (FAT32).

You might be thinking "This is such a hassle to do every time I turn off or restart my computer" and yeah it would be inconvenient to seek out this guide every time you need to set up your RAMDisk.

What's nice is that you can save your command line in Notepad as a .bat file and just run it whenever you need.

• Copy
  

  imdisk -a -o awe -s 4800M -m X: -p "/fs:fat32 /q /y"

  into Notepad and Save. Remember you can change X to whatever letter you want the RAMdisk drive to have.
  • The Save As... window will show up and you can type ramdisk.bat or whatever file name you want ending in .bat
  • Be sure to change the "Save as type:" option to "All files (*.*)" or else the file will just be a .txt file lol.
• Save it to your desktop or somewhere easy to find
• All you need to do in the future is run that .bat file as administrator. (Right click on it and choose "Run as Administrator".)

Check your "My Computer" or "This Computer" on Windows 8+ and you should see the RAMDisk drive you just made.
If you open your Task Manager, you'll also notice that a lot more of your RAM is being used.



VI. Put Audition on it!

All you need to do now is copy your Audition folder to the new RAMDisk drive.
Usually Audition is installed at C:\Program Files (x86)\Redbana\Audition or C:\Program Files\Redbana\Audition for the Redbana client or C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Audition Online for the Steam client.
Be sure to COPY and not move or cut/paste. The RAMDisk drive is volatile, which means all the data on it will be deleted when you shut down or reboot.
The copying process should take only a few minutes.

After it's done copying, you need to run the patcher.exe from the RAMDisk drive folder, and it will launch Audition from the RAMDisk drive.

VII. Notes about RAMDisk

If you use these steps, you'll need to set up the RAMDisk every time you boot your computer.
Remember that all data on that drive is lost when you shut down/restart your computer, which includes any screenshots you take within Audition (with PrtSc key) and replay files, and even new patches. Be sure to move those files somewhere if you want to keep them.
ALWAYS patch your main Audition installation first before copying it over to the RAMDisk. If you apply patches when using the RAMDisk folder, you will need to repatch your main Audition folder the next time you reboot or create the RAMDisk.

Repatch instructions:

1. Run regedit
   (Windowskey+R, type "regedit", click OK)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Redbana\Audition
3. Right click on "VERSION" in the right pane and click "Modify..."
4. Change the radio option to Decimal and change the number back depending on which version you need to repatch
   For example, if we're on 10295, you might want to change it to 10291 to let it download and patch 10292-10295 again.
5. Click OK, then run the patcher.exe again.

[Leebyn]

VIII. For advanced users
Check out this guide by k1net1cs from the guru3d forums.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=356046
There are instructions to set up page files and to keep the RAMDisk across reboots (really handy!)

IX. Credits

Weenie and the original RAMDisk guide.
k1net1cs over at guru3d for older ImDisk guide before the GUI was implemented
David Rueter for the command line parameter for physical memory
Olof Lagerkvist for providing these open source utilities for everyone


Feel free to post any questions, suggestions, feedback, and corrections.

Changelog:
Posted 9 August 2015
fixed command line parameters d'oh~!
moar text

[Leebyn]

one more for me I guess

[Meigo]

Nice guide Andrew.
Now ship me 8GB+ RAM

[Leebyn]

Thanks Leo!

Actually DDR3 RAM prices are dropping a lot recently, here we can get 2x4GB for under $40 USD again, hopefully it'll go back to ~$25 like it was 2-3 years ago lol.

[HerBum]

The benefits of owning an SSD... no regrets..

[Myu]

yay thank you for this guide!

[Leebyn]

No problem! I'm still tweaking it a little bit but I promised I'd put it up for you :)