hi guys. perhaps this is something I should already know, but just want hear some details.

when processing live audio such as pitch shifting and time stretching with multiple players, how much effect on performance does the actual processor have vs the read and write times of the hard drive?

for example, if the processor is fairly fast such as the ones in the new MacBook Pro, but the hard drive read and write times are double what they were in the previous model, how much will this effect performance? I guess this question would also apply to live video processing as well.

processing-speed

Hard drive speed is only a concern when stuff needs to get read from or written to it. So when loading samples for example, or writing rendered video. When reading files, once loaded, it resides in fast RAM memory and HD speed is no concern anymore. When RAM memory gets filled up data might get written to HD temporarily and then it comes into play again.

Synthesized audio/video that doesn't use files from HD is entirely dependent on the CPU/RAM speed.

processing speed