A method of applying user profiles at a set-top box device includes receiving data associated with each of a plurality of user profiles at the set-top box device, the plurality of user profiles including a default profile and a supplemental profile. The shaft has, in each instance, at least five axial regions A, B, C, D, and F, which are contiguous in the alphabetical order of the letters denoting them, and of which F has a greater outer diameter than A, B, andor C. The decoding unit is adapted to decode the encoded audio signal to obtain a decoded audio signal. Next, a vector read is performed, to read and store in a cache, each block identified by a block-identifier in the structure, and all the blocks that have been read are stored in the cache during a single function call.