How does WireReady buffer audio playback?

WireReady has been designed to play audio in a manner that works reliably both with local drives and network based/shared file server configurations.

To avoid drop outs due to momentary pauses in the OS or network latency, the following buffer configuration is built in:

When a file begins, we load 4 buffers worth of audio before you hear anything. This typically happens in a few milliseconds. And the buffers are always limited to a maximum of 32 KB each. The buffer size is also limited to 1/2 second worth of audio data, so if 1/2 second of audio is less than 32KB, than we use the smaller value. So up to 128KB of audio is read in before you hear anything, however smaller sample rates require significantly less data than this.   As audio starts, we don't stop reading and loading data, we continue to fill 32 or more buffers based on a setting in your user INI.

What is controlled is the maximum number of audio buffers that we will allow to be allocated. This number can be 32, 64, 96, or 128. No other combination
is allowed. Any invalid value will default back down to 32 buffers.

The ini value
Audio
AudioBufferSizeinMB=1

is really translated into the number 32 KB buffers internally. 1MB = 32 buffers, 2MB = 64 buffers, 3MB = 96 buffers, and 4MB = 128 buffers.

Within a short time all the buffers are filled. In this fashion, even if a drive or network server drive times out for several seconds in the middle of
audio, there should be enough audio in our buffers to maintain glitch free playback giving the system time to catch up and refill the buffers. 1MB is the
default and is more than adequate for mono playback and commercial insertion. Music playback or stations doing a lot of simultaneous playback and recording should consider 2MB or more.

This page published by WebReady^TM, Powered by WireReadyŽ NSI