External HD Changing the quality of the sound?


Hi everyone! It's my first thread i start in this community and i'm willing to go far in the journey of Hi-Fi audio :)
So i was wondering, is it real that if you put your audio file in an external hd it lower the quality on the outline?
I still don't have dac to test it so i wanted to be sure before putting my library in it, since my external hd is a 2tb and the one i have in my imac is a 500gb and is full...
Also, is it true that the type of connection used for my hd is changing the quality (usb 2.0, usb 3.0, firewire800)?
I know how it could affect it, i just want to know if it is all true?
freb03
Adding an external HDD or RAID does one thing for sure: it adds yet another ground-loop to the system. This alone can cause SQ degradation if you are not careful. The power cords should be heavy and use the same outlet as the computer. Adding in power conditioners can help or hurt here depending in their design.

I have a Firewire RAID attached to my Mac Mini and it has no audible effect. Cheap firewire cable.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Thanks for the heads up, Steve. For better or worse, the Seagate external HD is USB powered. I am fumbling my way through these early stages and it's an accomplishment that I can actually copy a cd and play it back from the HD. Haven't yet done any critical listening comparing CDP to computer with or without BitPerfect running. Hope to give that a try this evening.
Ah, Ghosthouse. I get what you mean. BitPerfect just needs to know where iTunes keeps the music files the first time it loads up. The main options are just listed in the drop down menu.

If your DAC displays the sample rate, there is one way to check if it is running, Play some music files in 44.1 and in 96kHz. Without BP enabled, iTunes would resample everything to whatever you set in AudioMIDI setup for the audio device.

So if it is set to 96kHz, even yr 44.1kHz music would be resampled. With BitPerfect set to native mode, it would switch between different sample rates depending on which file you are playing.
If you intend to play hirez files, a higher connection speed is important for hardware protocols. In that case use the fastest hardware connection available (esata, firewire, etc). If you are using a network connection, speed is again important, hardwire Ethernet is faster than wireless.
Thanks DH - The V-DAC is pretty barebones...no display of sample rate, no display at all. I can try some other things messing with sample rate in MIDI to see what BitPerfect does, as you suggest. Davide - (if that was for me) no hires files yet.