Hard-disk Recording and Editing of Digital Audio

Hard-disk recording of digital audio has moved from the domain of university research projects into the mainstream of commercial professional audio. This paper attempts to define a vocabulary for discussing the differences between different approaches to hard-disk recording, and to categorize these approaches. In the process of so doing, a number of related topics will be discussed. These include different techniques for applying amplitude envelopes, various disk scheduling algorithms, an analysis technique for disk scheduling algorithms, RAM buffering techniques and constraints, and the subject of sound file systems as different from computer file systems, the problem of hard-disk load and unload time, the possibility of background processing, optical disks, and others.