Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini

I agree Darrell

I began this thread by remarking >>I'm looking for experience-based thoughts and commentary <<

I thank all of those members who have shared their experiences here.

Experience-based commentary is what I'm after.

I tend to value Darrell's points because he has made the effort to test and compare, and he is putting his reputation and business on the line when he comments in threads such as these. Someone could easily replicate (SSD to HDD) and evaluate what he says and find out for themselves. If what he says is bogus based upon their experience, I'm sure we'd hear about it from those who have made efforts similar to his.

I tend to find the theory-based (not experienced-based) commentary to have very little value to "THE HOBBY OF LISTENING" and the enjoyment of music.

:) listening,

Ed

SSD may sound better than magnetic HD, but it's largely irrelevant today because there isn't any SSD large enough to store the music collection. I have 600GB+ of music from CD, DVD Audio, and HDTracks. It's not practical to build a disk array to store all the music. Even if I did, the disk array will be connected to the computer externally, further minimizing any effect it could have on the main computer. By the time 2TB SSD is available the SSD technology used will be vastly different from today's SSD anyways, so any comparison done today do not have a lot of practical implication.

The main advantage of using SSD is the SPEED, followed by less power consumption, less heat, and less audible noise. If SSD does sound better than HD, that's like a cherry on top. But that's not the reason why people buy SSD.

03-09-11: Jylee
SSD may sound better than magnetic HD, but it's largely irrelevant today because there isn't any SSD large enough to store the music collection. I have 600GB+ of music from CD, DVD Audio, and HDTracks. It's not practical to build a disk array to store all the music.

Jylee, your statement is all certainly true (a 1TB SSD costs around $3000 these days), except for the part about irrelevance. An aspect of the question about sonics that was addressed in my posts and some of those by Darrell concerned the possibility that sonic improvements might result from replacing the computer's relatively small internal drive with an SSD, while utilizing a large external HHD to store the music files.

As you have seen, Darrell described replacement of the internal HHD with an SSD as a "no brainer." And my comments provided technical rationale for why doing that MIGHT produce a sonic improvement. That rationale applies regardless of whether the music files are stored on the small internal SSD or on a large external HHD.

Regards,
-- Al

Here is an interesting take by someone saying SSDs cant improve sound. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Software-Hardware-Comparison?page=1

03-10-11: Perrew
Here is an interesting take by someone saying SSDs cant improve sound....

After reading it (the article on the lower half of the page) several times, I must say that I have very little idea of what he is saying :-)

I think that one of his main points, though, is essentially that noise produced as a result of activity of the cpu chip, under software control, is the predominant source of internally generated noise in the computer. The reason being that it draws more current than any other device in the computer, and rapid fluctuations in that current (which are primarily responsible for the noise generation) will be greater than for all of the other devices in the computer, including the digital chips in the SSD or HDD (an HDD has significant digital circuitry, in addition to the electromechanical stuff). He appears to conclude, therefore, that all internally generated noise that is not produced by the cpu chip, and all other effects that may be caused by the rapid switching of digital signals elsewhere in the computer, is insignificant.

As someone with extensive experience designing high speed digital circuits (not for audio), that all strikes me as meaningless oversimplification, of things that (due to their complexity) are inherently unpredictable apart from experimentation.

Regards,
-- Al