solid state drive vs HD for audio

[wwenze]

Originally Posted by theAnonymous1

Any sound difference for me would come from the fact I always think I can hear the head moving on a spinning drive. Makes me crazy.

For a while I kept visualizing a human head on the platter spinning at a high RPM.

[kp93300]

i intend to use it as drive for the os.
I bought a CF to sata adapter and is in the mail.
A 8 Gig CF cost about US 30 here and tha adapter with the casing cost about US 9.
A 128gig SSd cost about US140.
Cost per gig is in favour of ssd.

With a 2.5 in spinning hard disc from Samsung. it is also very quiet.
To me the only justification for spending extra is sound .

I google and could not find any reviews about SQ difference if any between the 2 storage media.
Eagerly awaiting planet10 results.

BTW, I notice that Linux mint 10 installed in a HD sounds better when compared to Slacko puppy that is loaded into the RAM at start up. . I am aware of the different players in both os .
Linux mint 10 --64 bit version may be better than Linux mint 32 bit --I am still testing it now.
Have fun !

kp93300

[theAnonymous1]

That CF won't last very long being used as an SSD. :/

[i2k92]

Originally Posted by theAnonymous1

That CF won't last very long being used as an SSD. :/

I agree with you, especially if the OS does intensive random disk access like paging file operation in Windows. But the distro I use copied the whole OS to RAM during boot, so it won't hurt the CF that much.

[marce]

You are trading the HD's motor loading the PSU for the SSD's switching loading the PSU, its horses for courses, both add noise, but as PC's in general are noisy it dosn't make much difference. Isolating the audio playback galvonicly will.But using an SSD for operating system and software (I use CAD) is great, loads alot quicker.

[boris81]

I don't know how Linux handles SSDs but Windows7 was built to take full advantage of SSD features. Windows XP will run faster on an SSD than on an HDD but it will wear out the drive faster and not be as efficient as Windows7. There are WinXP tweaks which can help but it's not a great idea to run WinXP on an SSD when reliability is important.

As far as using SSD vs HDD for multimedia storage there shouldn't be any noticeable difference.

[owenhamburg]

I have now just bought my 4th SSD for home use. I am yet to have one fail (though one was stolen in a laptop). 3 out of the 4 where silent, and the thief has a silent one too.

I am a Linux programmer, so I can justify some sort of computer extravagance. I would recommend all home users who use their computers for more than an hour or two a day to upgrade to SSD based disks if they have the money. My experience suggest that any computer with SATA disk sockets (any built after 2008?) will feel much more responsive.

I am not a great believer that CPU upgrades are worth it most of the time (though I often recommend people upgrade their RAM is even just to reduce swap space based wear on SSD's), unless peopel are Gamers in which case you know more than me about performance desktops. SSD have provided noticable performance improvements noticibly boot time, and latency are the big noticiable changes. (xterm is supposed to appear and the shell started before you can think how to use it).

This said I have noticed the following pitfalls with SSD.

1. Some SSD's are silent some are not silent. The noise is in my opinion even more unpleasant than a spinning platter, maybe a little quieter, but no so much as to suggest it is preferable to loose the SSD performance advantage. Maybe only fan free computer (FFC would be a good acronym) users will have this issue though.
2. SSD's often need bios flashes, some times this requires windows which for me is a reason not to ever try Corsair SSD's again until they advertised policy changes. Especially since OCZ and other manufacturers released BIOS updates for their equipment which only required Freedos or MSDOS, as windows installation only to install a BIOS upgrade is a lot of work especially when you don't have a convenient machine that does not have a licence from work.
3. Linux is a little more transparent in its slowly evolving support for SSD's, so I cant compare with other OS's. With Linux kernel 3.2 and later, SSD's finally seem to be getting good enough, however this means operating systems like Debian “squeeze” Release, Redhat 5.X based releases are just using a SSD like a old fashioned HDD, and things like trim support is not well implemented even if available. Other SSD enhancements are coming, particularly in file systems like XFS and BTRFS.

You might be surprised how latency is effected, and is performance improvements are noticeable with newer generations from older generations of SSD. In my experience all resent first time users of SSD's say/ think "why did I not upgrade this sooner?"

If this is going to affect sound? Well I would be very surprised if it makes any difference and even more surprised if it makes it worse, unless their is something else wrong with your computer setup.

I suggest any sound card with a digital output (preferably supporting 24bit 192Khz approximately 20 Euro) into a dedicated DAC (from 30 Euro to what ever price you could not imagine) and running a virus free operating system, with no memory corruptions (run memtest86+ overnight to test for this, Its easy to install as it is available in all Debian based Distributions of Linux such as Ubuntu) , and I think under these situations even Windows can play music bit perfect since this was possible with Linux with a Pentium 200 MMX runnign MPD in 1997 and friends had it with 486 based computers (though we only talking CD resolution, so maybe a 200Mhz class machine is needed).

[owenhamburg]

Oh and in case your interested the noisy SSD was a Plextor PX-256M2S SSD.

I think playing sound accurately bit perfect is so easy for a computer, that in the digital domain only the software stack you use should be optimized even if you are a serious audiophile, your far better spending money on good amplification, (or if cheap replacing the capacitors on a classic amplifier from ebay like I have), and money spent on speakers.

Regards

Owen

[Boscoe]

I utterly cannot believe this!!! The only thing an SSD will do is make your sound come out faster! Who wants that!? Does an SSD change the colours on your screen? No because they have been designed to be those colours like the audio signal has been designed to be reproduced on the pc exactly the same way as a HDD as SSD.

No an SSD will make no difference to sound quality in anyway shape or form. If you think otherwise you are an idiot.

[kp93300]

Thanks owenhamburg and Boscoefor your views.


I have not bought any ssd yet and awaiting the view of planet10 in testing ssd vs HD.

Can you describe the noise from the ssd ? How does it arises?

The samsung HD that i have is very quiet in my fanless atom based pc.

BTW, since you are a linux programmer ,is there any reason for the 64 bit version of the Linux mint to sound better than the 32bit version?

thanks

kp93300