Some actually believe that music from different drive types (SSD,HDD) or different SATA cables can sound different

[wheresmymoney]

From a few months ago:

Bit-identical playback CAN sound different

audiophilestyle.com

Thanks, I think I just had an aneurism reading that thread. But, it was worth it just to read this quote:

"The fact is, sadly, that you are the one who is wrong all over. This starts with not knowing anything about anything."

 

[Jarrett]

Hate to bump this, but has anyone out there measured playback performance on an SSD vs hard drive like ASR would? I'm curious if there are measurable benefits.

 

[Ricardus]

Hate to bump this, but has anyone out there measured playback performance on an SSD vs hard drive like ASR would? I'm curious if there are measurable benefits.

What kind of benefits are you thinking of?

 

[fpitas]

This proves that bits is bits and tits is tits.

All outstanding points!

 

[Doodski]

Hate to bump this, but has anyone out there measured playback performance on an SSD vs hard drive like ASR would? I'm curious if there are measurable benefits.

Like how many streams of music could a SSD drive sustain versus a old rotary drive? LoL.

 

[fpitas]

Like how many streams of music could a SSD drive sustain versus a old rotary drive? LoL.

The old hard drives have a vintage sound, I bet.

 

[wwenze]

It's sad that they don't even know how to change RAM or they would have invented audiophile RAM too.

The old hard drives have a vintage sound, I bet.

More well-rounded sound with higher velocity.

 

[Doodski]

The old hard drives have a vintage sound, I bet.

How couldn't they with all that refining and ageing occurring. I remember my first PCs that could just barely sustain music and click commands simultaneously.

 

[2ndHarm]

Hate to bump this, but has anyone out there measured playback performance on an SSD vs hard drive like ASR would? I'm curious if there are measurable benefits.

I stream music all the time from SSDs or even over WIFI to my NAS which uses commercial quality rotating hard drives without issue.
Honestly, the requirements for audio PCM transfer is so low compared to things like streaming video, that this shouldn't ever be an issue.
Now, a slow computer will have issues, buffering and drop outs were common on older machines. In those situations, an SSD would provide some benefit in faster access speeds - but no difference in "quality."

 

[Bob from Florida]

SSD's have some advantages in a music server. No vibrational noise - if you are close enough to hear it without music playing. Low power consumption during reads. Instant reads - no spin up time because the drive went to sleep. They are almost cheap enough to be first choice.

 

[JSmith]

There is actually an "audiophool" ssd...

Revelation Femto SSD | Zzyzx

Femto NVMe M2 SSD designed for audiophiles and music lovers

zzyzxphile.com

NVMe SSD designed for audiophiles

Almost a year in the making, the world's only NVMe M2 SSD designed for audiophiles and music lovers. Designed from ground up, co-develop with controller manufacturer using 3D NAND flash with pseudo SLC mode, external clock oscillator, 200% more PCB copper isolation, milspec PCB stiffness, 300% gr...

audiophilestyle.com

JSmith

 

[Jarrett]

What kind of benefits are you thinking of?

I didn't even really want to get in a conversation about it. I mean the kind of article Amir might post to dispel popular audiophile beliefs.

 

[MoreWatts]

There is actually an "audiophool" ssd...

Revelation Femto SSD | Zzyzx

Femto NVMe M2 SSD designed for audiophiles and music lovers

zzyzxphile.com

This thing is $999 BTW... Unclear if that is for 320 or 960 GB.

"zzyzxphile.com"

From Wikipedia:

Zzyzx (/ˈzaɪzɪks/ ZY-ziks), formerly Soda Springs, is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California, within the boundaries of the Mojave National Preserve, managed by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior, as public land. It is the former site of the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa[1] and now the site of the Desert Studies Center. The site is also the location of Lake Tuendae, originally part of the spa, and now a refuge habitat of the endangered Mohave tui chub.




Interstate 15 exit sign for Zzyzx Road

Zzyzx Road is a 4.5-mile-long (7.2 km), part paved and part dirt, rural collector road in the Mojave Desert. It runs from Interstate 15 generally south to the Zzyzx settlement.

The nearest populated area is the small town of Baker, California, 7 miles (11 km) north on Interstate 15. Las Vegas, Nevada, is the nearest major city, about 100 miles (160 km) northeast.

**Warranty claims will be handled by the nearest Mojave Tui Chub.**

The entrepeneur who started the spa claimed Zzyzx was the 'last word in the English language,' although in a business-practical sense it was supposed to be the last name listed in the old-school telephone book 'White Pages.'

 

[radix]

There is actually an "audiophool" ssd...

Revelation Femto SSD | Zzyzx

Femto NVMe M2 SSD designed for audiophiles and music lovers

zzyzxphile.com

NVMe SSD designed for audiophiles

Almost a year in the making, the world's only NVMe M2 SSD designed for audiophiles and music lovers. Designed from ground up, co-develop with controller manufacturer using 3D NAND flash with pseudo SLC mode, external clock oscillator, 200% more PCB copper isolation, milspec PCB stiffness, 300% gr...

audiophilestyle.com

JSmith

"the world's only NVMe M2 SSD designed for audiophiles and music lovers" because no one else is so stupid to think streaming kBps needs special technology.

 

[2ndHarm]

SSD's have some advantages in a music server. No vibrational noise - if you are close enough to hear it without music playing. Low power consumption during reads. Instant reads - no spin up time because the drive went to sleep. They are almost cheap enough to be first choice.

S'true. My NAS which is in another room elsewhere in the house makes a bit of noise while seeking which you can only hear when it's quiet. But, yes - the SSDs are silent. The best thing for music or video streaming from any kind of storage device is a good sized RAM buffer.

 

[Head_Unit]

Hate to bump this, but has anyone out there measured playback performance on an SSD vs hard drive like ASR would? I'm curious if there are measurable benefits.

What kind of benefits are you thinking of?

- It is easy to pooh-pooh this stuff, totally forgetting that the vast public is ignorant about how all this stuff works, so they have no reason to think cables or hard drives or whatever cannot make a difference. It's like the many people believing in COVID vaccine microchips-that's not possible at the current state of the (declassified) art, but most people aren't aware of that, and see amazing scientific miracles every day, so why shouldn't it be possible?
- Even if the best theory says X can't make a difference, it should still be tested. Sometimes unexpected things happen. Even John Atkinson at Stereophile once measured somewhat different noise or jitter or something which he was then "bothered" by because it shouldn't happen like that. And just now in their July 2023 issue, page 67 shows measurements of a really high quality streamer with different DACs compared to a PC. The results are NOT the same. Is that the bits? The tits? The nits? Maybe it's kind-of other stuff but I feel "bits are bits" gets conflated into "any crappy hardware is fine because it's all digital and therefore perfect"

 

[dasdoing]

So did any of these folks attempt to store the bits on good old magnetic tape?

 

[Philbo King]

Have they tried opening the drives and marking the edge of each platter with a Sharpie pen?

 

[2ndHarm]

So did any of these folks attempt to store the bits on good old magnetic tape?

We used to do that all the time. They were called tape backup drives and were the only way to store large amounts of data offline or near offline storage. I had a Sony Datcorder that saved music in digital form to tape that I used for years. The benefit of digital .wav files is that I could make instant and perfect copies - multiple backups, convert to other formats and burn to CDs. That was all we had until hard drives got large and fast enough to allow using them for storage.

 

[2ndHarm]

- It is easy to pooh-pooh this stuff, totally forgetting that the vast public is ignorant about how all this stuff works, so they have no reason to think cables or hard drives or whatever cannot make a difference. It's like the many people believing in COVID vaccine microchips-that's not possible at the current state of the (declassified) art, but most people aren't aware of that, and see amazing scientific miracles every day, so why shouldn't it be possible?
- Even if the best theory says X can't make a difference, it should still be tested. Sometimes unexpected things happen. Even John Atkinson at Stereophile once measured somewhat different noise or jitter or something which he was then "bothered" by because it shouldn't happen like that. And just now in their July 2023 issue, page 67 shows measurements of a really high quality streamer with different DACs compared to a PC. The results are NOT the same. Is that the bits? The tits? The nits? Maybe it's kind-of other stuff but I feel "bits are bits" gets conflated into "any crappy hardware is fine because it's all digital and therefore perfect"

I'm still trying to divine your thought processes here. Are you saying that there may be differences in the way data bits and bytes are stored on SSDs vs. HD drives that would make a difference in the sound when streamed to a DAC and converted to analog?

Further to your comment - comparing DACs of any kind to the audio output on a PC is not an apples to oranges comparison. The PC audio output is analog and therefore is fraught with all the RF noise, leakage from the power supply and data transfers cross talk that muddies the output. The best comparison on a PC would be with an external USB DAC that took the PCM data straight from the computer without conversion - leaving that to the outboard DAC that exists in a nice quiet setting.