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External hard drives and sound quality

I've just about filled up the internal hard drive on my Macbook with music files and am now looking at external hard drive options. Was wondering whether folks report any difference in sound quality when playing files from an external drive versus the internal?

I'm especially interested in hearing people's experiences using wireless hard drives. An Apple rep told me it would be no problem, as the hard drive wouldn't directly interface with the USB output, but I of course always like to be skeptical of anything an Apple rep says.
coverto
richard_stacy
686 posts
 
I have to agree with Johnss, in general. To me, there is a most certainly a difference in sound from different types of drives. Why this is, I do not know. What I am learning about computer audio is that so many things matter that we figured should not and I imagine this will continue to get more complicated as new digital sources mature. Personally, I decided not to get into trying to choose a drive based on sound and went with convenience and simplicity. The differences are subtle enough that it was not worth the effort.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,433 posts
 
Larry_s - I don't understand it either. If data is there the only difference could be jitter and it doesn't apply here since data is synchronous (clocked). In addition it goes thru disk cache buffers and output FIFO buffers. At first I thought it was about audible noise of device itself (HD vs. SSD) - this would make sense.
blindjim
3,092 posts
 

Cio52

There are similar tweaks that work well too. Mostly those we apply to the audio components themselves, as you pointed out.

Outboard drives, USB or NAS in my home respond to compliant footers by decreasing both vibration and it's inherent noise. yes. With Bright Star nodes and/or some other like affair, the actual noise of the drive diminishes or dies out. In my arrangement, all drives and gear are in a separate room so their vibrating - spinning noises are mostly inconsequential, although I feel there seems to be a slight improvment in Sound Quality or I’d like to think so. If there is it’s pretty small.

Additionally, exchanging the OEM power cords for better ones add audio gains too. Use of electrical conditioning filters - conditioners, are of still more help in keeping out the junk the pc puts off into the homes electrical service... it's just like a CDP. My tower resides in a OEM filled Sound anchor rack with compliant footers beneath it's shelf. it also uses a Voodoo Black Dragon or Nirvana pc. It's fed by a PSA UPC 200.

All outboard drives are fed via a PSA Duet supplied by a Python VX from another dedicated ckt on the same phase.

Merely removing the large access panel from the tower affords better cooling and oddly enough lowers vibration too while reducing heat. Gratefully, my Dell runs so quiet I almost can’t hear it run standing right next to it.. In fact I’ve accidentally had to restart it a couple times as I couldn’t hear it wind up following pushing the Start button on the tower..

Noise in the track associated with the drive itself?
I think that might be accouhnted for by the outlet, wires touching each other or in close proximity to one another somewhere, or junk on the power line more so than the resonance from the HDD.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,585 posts
 
some disk drives are physically noisier than others (fans, etc.). You might be able to hear them if in the listening room. Adding an external drive might add noise to that from the computer itself resulting in more background noise than otherwise. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me regarding the "sound" of disk drives. This has nothing to so with the digital bits or signal source per se.
larry_s
128 posts
 
Kijanki - The only reason why some people claim they a difference using different types of disks is because they know they changed something and had faulty recollection of what they heard previously. It's basically impossible for the disk type (local or NAS) to affect the sound. Even if somehow a few bits got flipped, it wouldn't be in such a way to uniformly change/shape the entire audio bit stream. Disk drives don't use S/PDIF to transfer data. :^) Again this assumes everything after the data read is working correctly.
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