The question of data organisation and table size is significant because
of the hope of minimising cache misses. Table size is important because
if they're too big (especially ones that are accessed every tick or so)
they won't all fit in caches (ok, the ones I've got so far would on most
devices, except the 256K pink noise table, but some *really* old devices
might still have problems), and would cause *thrashing*, which would suck.
Data organisation OTOH is important because of the "locality of reference"
property for making optimal use of cache.

See docs on E2:
locality of reference
cache (long, has interesting points on what causes problems in lay terms)
Cache-oblivious algorithms
splay tree (not quite related)
Amdahl's law (not quite related)