My deep dive into media storage interfaces: Musical differences heard between chipsets, Firewire 400/800, USB, SATA, flash drives, SD cards, and network shares (Warning: may cause seizures in the DBT crowd and flat earth naysayers)

[Superdad]

So Superdad how does one do an sd card in Windows? Would definitely like to try. All the over the counter card readers I have seen plug into a usb port. But it seems you recommend against this.

 

Well SD card is a sonic trick that works for Mac minis only because and when both of the following occur:

 

1) SDXC reader of the mini uses Broadcom controller chip that is right on the PCIe bus (same chip is shared with its Ethernet port, hence my other report about getting equivalent SQ via Ethernet for music storage if done right);

 

2) OS X is loaded on a decent SDHC card to boot (and preferably slimmed down), AND the internal SATA drive volumes are either removed or dismounted/ejected.

 

Since I have found the advantage is in not having the SATA bus going (combined with the simple and quiet interface of the SD card format), I believe that a computer whose only boot and internal storage is PCIe flash memory would equal SD card booting (and be many orders of magnitude faster!). But I don't mean an SSD connected via SATA interface. I mean the sort of PCIe Flash that Apple offers in the Mac Pro and the 2014 Mac mini. I am not sure what affordable PCIe flash boards are available for other motherboards, but you might check that out.

[alsterfan]

I believe that a computer whose only boot and internal storage is PCIe flash memory would equal SD card booting (and be many orders of magnitude faster!)

 

Hi Alex,

One big advantage of using an SD card is that you can deactivate internal storage media, as you have pointed out. If you go for 256 GB PCIe based flash storage for an iMac, you would create a small second partition for the Music OSX. Am I right that in the end you can´t compare the two solutions because you can only deactivate one partition but not the flash drive altogether? This however would be possible with your SD card trick. As to SQ wouldn´t this still speak in favour of the SD card?

 

Best wishes,

Uwe

[Superdad]

Hi Alex,

One big advantage of using an SD card is that you can deactivate internal storage media, as you have pointed out. If you go for 256 GB PCIe based flash storage for an iMac, you would create a small second partition for the Music OSX. Am I right that in the end you can´t compare the two solutions because you can only deactivate one partition but not the flash drive altogether? This however would be possible with your SD card trick. As to SQ wouldn´t this still speak in favour of the SD card?

 

Best wishes,

Uwe

 

Are you saying that if you had a 2014 mini with just the 256GB PCIe Flash and booted off an SD card you would not be able to completely dismount/eject the PCIe Flash? Why would that be?

And if so, one could still open the machine and unplug the PCIe entirely.

 

I may buy a 2014 mini this year just to compare it to my 2012. Would hand down to my wife or kids whichever lost in an SQ comparison.

[alsterfan]

Are you saying that if you had a 2014 mini with just the 256GB PCIe Flash and booted off an SD card you would not be able to completely dismount/eject the PCIe Flash? Why would that be?

 

Dear Alex,

My clumsy English...

What I wanted to ask is, if there would be a diifference in SQ

1. booting from SD card and deactivating PCIe based flash storage

or

2. not using SD card but creating a second partition on PCIe based flash storage, leaving me with one partition with native Yosemite and a second with my Music OS X.

One difference would be: Taking the first way I can deactivate internal flash storage as a whole. With the second possibility I can deactivate one partition only.

In my layman´s imagination it could result in electrical (and thus SQ-) differences.

Am I right?

 

All the best,

Uwe

[Paul R]

Are you saying that if you had a 2014 mini with just the 256GB PCIe Flash and booted off an SD card you would not be able to completely dismount/eject the PCIe Flash? Why would that be?

And if so, one could still open the machine and unplug the PCIe entirely.

 

I may buy a 2014 mini this year just to compare it to my 2012. Would hand down to my wife or kids whichever lost in an SQ comparison.

 

BY the entry level version if you can, that 1.4ghz machine sounds better than the higher end machines to my ancient ears.

[alsterfan]

BY the entry level version if you can, that 1.4ghz machine sounds better than the higher end machines to my ancient ears.

 

Hi Paul,

One drawback of your proposal however would be not having PCIe bound flash storage (in Germany anyway).

Regards,

Uwe

[Paul R]

Hi Paul,

One drawback of your proposal however would be not having PCIe bound flash storage (in Germany anyway).

Regards,

Uwe

 

This is quite true, but ... a Fusion drive comes with 128M of PCI Flash these days, and will give one most of the advantages of flash, while still allowing one to store large quantities of music files. Transparently.

 

One can also break the Fusion drive apart (logically, in software) and use the PCI Flash as a boot and OS drive exclusively.

 

Given that, I spent the extra $$ to put all flash into my new iMac, but that was because I could and because I use it mostly for programming and running numerous VMs.

 

-Paul

[alsterfan]

One can also break the Fusion drive apart (logically, in software) and use the PCI Flash as a boot and OS drive exclusively. -Paul

 

Having an iMac with fusion drive this interesting thought leads me to the question how this could be done, i.e. which software is needed and could the change be reversed?

Regards,

Uwe

[Paul R]

Having an iMac with fusion drive this interesting thought leads me to the question how this could be done, i.e. which software is needed and could the change be reversed?

Regards,

Uwe

 

You just need Disk Utility, and a few commands in a Terminal session. Very easy to do, and yes, easily reversed.

 

You can also build Fusion drives from any pair of SSD and Spinning drives you like. I built one in a small Thunderbolt array just the other day, using a Crucial 256GB MX200 and a Toshiba spinner from a laptop. Works great, and until you run out of SSD, gives me about 600MB/s read/write on the drive, just like any other SSD.

 

-Paul

 

How to split up a Fusion Drive - http://www.macworld.com/article/2015664/how-to-split-up-a-fusion-drive.html

 

How to build a Fusion Drive - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2014030311173257 (with recovery partition)

[Superdad]

If there are any sonic advantages to an internal flash drive, they come only with PCIe type that don't use the SATA bus.

Shutting down the SATA bus is where I hear improments. That, and using the more direct and simpler interfaces that you get with SDXC card and PCIe interfaces.

So I doubt that splitting a SATA-based Fusion drive will yeild any SQ benefit.

[sandyk]

Shutting down the SATA bus is where I hear improments.

 

Alex C

Do all your SATA devices use the shortest possible SATA 3 6GB/s cables with their 2 internal screened cables, instead of 7 wires side by side as in the generic (typically red) cables ? As others here have attested, SATA cables do matter.

 

Kind Regards

Alex K.

[Superdad]

Alex C

Do all your SATA devices use the shortest possible SATA 3 6GB/s cables with their 2 internal screened cables, instead of 7 wires side by side as in the generic (typically red) cables ?

 

Well the SATA cable in a Mac mini is just a less than 3" long FFC (flat flexible cable) with tiny specialized connectors.

 

But there is no cable like NO cable, and a PCIe flash drive eliminates the processing and noise of the SATA bus altogether.

[Daudio]

On 5/27/2015 at 0:36 PM, Superdad said:

If there are any sonic advantages to an internal flash drive, they come only with PCIe type that don't use the SATA bus.

Shutting down the SATA bus is where I hear improments. That, and using the more direct and simpler interfaces that you get with SDXC card and PCIe interfaces.

Alex, All,

 

Thought I'd bump this old thread up the list for those newer folks who haven't dug to the end of UpTones forum content.

Yeah , there's a lot in here, but checking out the first couple of pages, and then jumping around some, sampling the progression, make it not that hard or long to do. That is if, you can figure out what is up-or-down, first-or-last, black-or-white, in this Brave New World of CA 

 

Hint: There is one more big goodie like this at the bottom  of the list

[Liam]

All my listening these days is from Qobuz HI-FI (that's CD quality). For quite some time my practice is to download the tunes to a RAMdisk rather than stream live. I have found this to be the best sonically.  Just today I upgraded the RAM to 16GB from 8GB, as Qobuz uses up quite a bit of RAM and I would recommend that for anybody following in my footsteps for latitude.

 

I have tried two other options recently from reading this thread, thanks Superdad for launching it and for all your input.

 

My own preference is for RAMdisk over and above a Sandisk Extreme Pro 16GB 95MB/s and an old Sandisk Cruzer Blade USB Flash Drive. The latter's write speed is only about 5/6 MB/s as far as I have ascertained, and indeed it was unacceptably slow to load the tunes. It played ok though. I feed my AMR-777 SE dac via USB, so probably not the best option anyway. In any event it did not quite measure up to the RAMdisk. A little difficult to describe the difference.....not quite the smoothness when a tenor opened up. Not quite the musicality. The SD card was easier to distinguish, being less weighty than the RAMdisk, also somewhat harsh in the upper registers, and not as rich in tone/timbre throughout. This difference was along the lines of the difference between live streaming and  RAMdisk.....very transparent sounding and initially interesting, but not offering me the longterm satisfaction of RAMdisk.

 

My streaming configuration is outlined below, and obviously I can only state my own experience with this setup. What I can say though is that, for me, the differences between methods is akin to hardware changes and well worth the experimentation.