Internal drives vs thunderbolt

[barito7]

G'day

 

probably been asked a thousands times but what do people think has better performance for running itunes and your music library...a thunderbolt drive or an internal drive?

 

I'm running a mac mini and I think my firewire drive has come to the end of its days :-(

 

Cheers Charles

[CoolHand]

I can only give you my experience as a point of reference, running OSX 10.8.5 and Audirvana Plus 1.5.10 on a current 16G 2.3 Ghz i7 Mac Mini and having installed internally both a 256G Samsung 840 Pro SSD and a Western Digital Green 2TB.

 

I also use a Bus Powered external Thunderbolt drive with the same 2TB Western Digital Green HD, which is a clone of the internal 2TB music library with iTunes app (having the iTunes app and the actually music files residing on the same physical drive/s makes the 'entire library' readily portable)

 

The best sonics I have achieved thus far are when playing from the mac Mini internal 2TB music library.

 

I have also briefly compared this arrangement with my 8G 2 Ghz i7 Mac Book Air, using the same 2TB Thunderbolt bus powered library with either of the two Adc/Dacs I alternate between, which are used via their USB inputs (but powered from a high current battery), so this set up offers me a 100% Off The Grid source.

 

Initial observations strongly favoured the (more powerful, greater ram capacity) Mac Mini, which actually kinda surprised me, given that there is often sonic benefit to be gained by being entirely Off The Grid so to speak.

Thus the Mini quickly took over as the master 'juke box' for playback duties.

 

BUT, it's not quite that simple !!!

 

In the interim since that initial assessment there have been numerous updates to iTunes, Audirvana Plus & OSX, all of which have had large influences in one way or another.

 

The recent installation of OSX 10.9 has proven to be significantly more efficient in all regards to its operation on my Air, so until such time that I also install 10.9 on the Mini I shall have to reserve further opinion as to whether the Mini still sounds clearly better than the Air with an otherwise identical configuration as outlined above !

 

What I can say is that I am rather content with the present state of my 'sampled' sonics. Which unlike my vinyl rig (that remains precisely consistent until such times that I ELECT TO CHANGE something)... The digital sands of software coding are constantly shifting, and their tides ebbing, so although one can elect to stick with an antiquated system (I still have an ancient but awesomely still perfectly functional G4 Mac Book Pro/iTunes library which shall remain as a fixed reference point, of sorts) the goal posts keep moving, so if your curiosity is even slightly piqued...well let's just say it's a freakin' slippery slope :^)

[tranz]

The best sonics I have achieved thus far are when playing from the mac Mini internal 2TB music library.

 

Last weekend I was mucking about with externally powering the 'internal' SSD used for OS with very good results. My music is on a TBolt at the mo. However, I did see there is a second mini SATA connection on the mobo, so it would be possible to get a second 'internal' drive externally powered.

 

Intriguing that it sounded better. Perhaps the TBolt connection just transfers it to the SATA and in doing so increases the processing required.

 

Thanks for the feedback.