long-shot... buffering

As the title suggests, this is a long-shot. But does anyone have any tips for improving buffering speed -- that is, speeding up the loading of samples into a buffer~? My tests have shown that (obviously) reading only as much of the sample as I need, and making sure I give buffer~ a full pathname, seem to be the crucial factors. Beyond that, it seems to be in the hands of the Gods!

As I say, I really doubt there's anything else to be done, but there are a lot of clever people on here, so I thought I'd ask anyway!

cheers,

J.