two unrelated questions (re: EQ/audio controls and Ram allocation)
 

1. RAM: is there some sort of utility out there that allows one to take direct control of RAM allocation? what I'd like to be able to do is to limit certain resource hogging programs from hogging all my limited (only 224mb) RAM. some specs: running winblows 98se on an Amd Athlon 750 mghz processor, two hard drives, ATI 7500 64mb vid card, cd burner and dvd player.

1a. my 224 mb of ram is in the form of one 32 mb card, one 64 mb, and a 128 mb. does it make a difference which slot each of these goes in? my mobo is an AOpen ak72.

2. The other night I downloaded "The Song Remains the Same," the Led Zeppelin concert film. Now, I expected the sound quality to be mediocre at best, as the original recordings werent the best to begin with. However, this was even worse than I had feared. So I got the bright idea that, since I have the winamp plugin that allows avi movie files to play thru winamp, Id do that and then use the EQ to tailor the sound more to my liking. After starting the file in winamp, which in and of itself did improve the sound, I found that the EQ had NO effect on the sound output of the file. So, I ask you serious audiophiles this: is there a program that does allow what I was trying to do? what about DVD's, can they be run through an EQ program of some sort?


thanks for the help

1. try cacheman http://www.outertech.com/ and also maxmem http://www.analogx.com they do different things
1a not typically.
2 cooledit or sound forge, http://www.syntrillium.com

1. you really don't want to do that, no matter how much you say you do. because MS uses an internal (and actually a holdover from dos) memory manager, your being sparred the nearly 2000 choices a second it makes. To tweak is one thing, but to attempt to dictate the action of the memory manager is only going to lead to byte curruption and increased use of the swap disk for compensation. In other words, Windows, even 98, are designed to not let you screw with them. For good reason to. Turn off norton or whatever is hogging memory, but don't try to change system resources for windows services.

2. your MB manual has a digram of the slot order. placing them in size order is recomended so that data chunks are not spread between two peices incase on fails. but really that doesn't mean anything unlesss your running the type of data survices that 98 would never sustian.

3.Protools can alter "flat file" audio, in other words audio that only was recorded on a single channel as you described (and as would fit with recording devices of the day) but that's way beyond all our price ranges.

HTH
Ps: please don't do the whole winblows thing. If a product does not suite your needs, than change products.

While W2K and XP give back ram when an app closes, Win 98 and ME do not. The are a number of utilities (shareware) available at download .com that can help with this. As far as memory hogs that use a ton when an app is open, like Office or Norton, you're sol.

I just checked and found that my ram cards were not slotted according to size. so I slotted them thusly: dimm1=128mb, dimm2=64mb, dimm3=32mb. then I rebooted. reboot seemed to go faster, as do application openings.

hopefully, that will alleviate some of my ram/resource troubles, until such time as I can afford some more ram. I'd like to get two more 128 cards.

1a. Actually, it *might* make a difference. It depends. If your RAM sticks are of different speeds, then order sometimes matters.

However, this is a rare concern. But just for your information, it's considered good engineering practice to place the largest stick of RAM in slot 1, and then taper down accordingly. 128 -> 64 -> 32

dumb question, but are you sure the EQ is ON? It's not on by default, so you can move the sliders w/ no effect.

Antagony: thats how I have them now, but not how they were before. also, the two smaller cards are pc100 and the bigger is pc133, for whatever difference that might make.

shakran: yes the EQ was on. I tried turning it off and on several times with no change in the sound.