Many years ago I knew an audiophile who got those crazy magazines and catalogues listing CD players for thousands of dollars and cables for hundreds.
One CD player that stood out had all sorts of sales-speak that was obviously bullpoop. For example, it said the CD player "bathes the underside of the CD in blue laser light" to make the data laser work better. There were plenty of other silly voodoo technologies this player offered.
It took a while, but I explained to my friend that bits are bits. If a bit is a one, it's a one. There's no such thing as a "fancy", audiophiles-pay-more-and-get-a-better-version of one. Same with zero.
I told him the bits could be written in crayon, sent across a desert on camelback, and reassembled a year later, and those same bits would still be the same bits
If there are scratches and a player has to correct and guess, that's different, but if your CDs are clean and your clock is good, and you're sending bits digitally to your D/A & amp, there's literally no difference between one player and another. None. Zero.
After an hour and a dozen examples, something clicked in his head and he finally understood. It was very interesting to hear how I blew his mind, and how he'd never see all the sales speak BS the same way again.
As for SSDs, I can see how plenty of cheap computers have noisy electronics which can lead to noisy audio, and how power usage fluctuations can cause noise, but if putting caps on your SSD makes that better, then there are bigger problems.
Yeah on the digital side, it doesn't matter much. It's when you get to the analogue side where quality matters. Although this is not mentioning the fact that past a certain point of quality, human ears can't discern the difference and it becomes more of a placebo.
And money buys higher quality to a point, but when you get into boutique stuff you can end up fighting the fact that the volume simply isn't there to support a high-end engineering effort. That's why you can spend $2000 on a CD player and end up with something that has inferior audio quality to a launch-model PlayStation.
Sometimes the USB cable which connects my iPhone to my Honda Civic degrades. I have to replace it every 6 months or so.
It doesn't kill the connection, but audio quality goes down very noticeably. Replacing it with a new one seems to fix it for the next half-year. Is this real? Whats the mechanism behind it?
Likely the cable gets physically damaged, which degrades the signal integrity on the cable. Basically if the cable is cut there will not be any signal anymore, but there can also be states somewhere in between.
With reduced integrity the chance of data loss or corruption during transmission increases. There are typically low level integrity checks and forward error correction used to compensate for some of that on serial links, but they can only do so much. If data is detected lost its pretty much up to the upper level protocol on what to do next: One could retransmit, do nothing, or just use the corrupted data. Since retransmission would not help audio protocols they likely will use the other options, and so you get degraded sound.
Cars are terrible environments for electronics, the temperatures in there range from freezing to sweltering and you can be sure that the tiny gauge wire in most cheap usb cables will pay the price from the constant expansion/contraction cycle day by day.
This can cause resistance pockets in the wire itself especially when since it's probably continuously moved around every time you plug in the phone, further stressing the wires.
Lastly condensation inside the car can corrode contacts slowly causing further signal degradation.
Your best bet would be a thicker gauge wire usb cable with gold contacts.
Most "gold" contacts have thin gold plating (10 micrometres or thinner) which is wiped off with a few insertion/removal cycles.
The gold is added by the manufacturer to prevent corrosion of the contacts during transport and storage of the cable/device prior to first use.
Contacts corrode on exposure to oxidants. They can be re-made by disconnecting and reconnecting, which (if the contacts are properly designed) wipes their surfaces.
I have never heard of "resistance pockets" in wire, but I suppose that could be one way of describing broken conductors inside the cable that only continue to work because the end pieces are still making contact. Until the ends corrode or the wire is flexed in a way that pulls the ends apart.
I would have preferred a review that wasn’t quite as dismissive. SSDs have periodic higher read latency that could impact audio playback if the host buffers aren’t large enough. The flash translation layer periodically reshuffles data, even when the workload is just reads. I expect this drive is duplicating the data internally, and pivoting back and forth between the two copies, targeting one which is not performing garbage collection at that time. This mechanism would result in more consistent, lower latency read performance. It might even be more advanced than that - triple mirroring the data - hardening the data to two copies first, while serving the non impacted read blocks from the third copy. Although the other SSD claims do sound ridiculous, consistent read performance is a nice feature. This type of capability is expected in enterprise storage, it may have some use in consumer class storage applications, besides just audio.
For pure listening, latency is totally irrelevant as long as the buffers are large enough, and that's a software thing. Heck, one complete audio CD fits uncompressed in one GB of RAM...
I think your mental model of how SSDs work is a bit inaccurate. Read operations will not trigger wear leveling during normal use. Reads will only cause the SSD to start moving data around if there's a correctable ECC error with the read, prompting the drive to write a fresh and corrected copy. Correctable read errors can crop up from data degradation over time, or from read disturb errors (analogous to DRAM rowhammer). Neither of those causes are even remotely likely unless you have a highly atypical workload that does not at all fit an audio use case. The probability of a latency spike due to these causes leading to an audible glitch is small enough that it should be entirely ignored.
If you're worried about read latency on a scale that could affect an audio workload, the only change to the SSD that might be relevant would be disabling the low-power idle modes, which can take a while to wake up from. Enterprise SSDs have other measures to manage QoS targets that are tighter than what an audio use case requires, and those features are only necessary when dealing with a workload that includes a heavy volume of write operations—not relevant to audiophiles. And enterprise drives definitely don't need to duplicate all your data as a way of avoiding high read latency; it's possible to suspend write operations in order to service a read request that needs to access the same physical block.
That's the kind of internal information that is seldom disclosed by SSD manufacturers. Toward the end of the planar NAND era there were several notable cases of vendors having to add background reads/scrubbing because data retention was quite poor with tiny planar TLC cells, and there were measurable performance losses when reading stale data due to the extra ECC required to recover the original data. There are also some enterprise drives or array appliances that have documented behavior where after a long period of being unpowered, they'll operate with reduced performance for a while while a scrub is done.
But for normal use cases, you're either writing enough data that everything on the drive ends up refreshed at least once or twice per year, or you're writing so little data that your flash is basically not getting worn out at all and the retention times will be extremely long, so you're left worrying about read disturb errors which are pretty unlikely to grow into uncorrectable errors without a rowhammer-like workload.
I'm pretty sure most consumer SSDs are not doing full-drive scrubs after every power loss, both because I've never seen evidence of that while measuring SSD power consumption and because it would be insane to do given that it is common for the SSD to be completely powered off every time you close the lid of your laptop.
You write that reads will not trigger wear leveling, and then you go on to explain multiple scenarios in which reads will trigger rewrites. Those rewrites can cause elevated read latency. I have done SSD code reviews with multiple SSD vendors, and there are some which will trigger wear leveling after a set number of reads, instead of waiting for elevated bit error rates. And yes, the elevated read latency should be in the order of 5ms, which shouldn’t impact a properly buffered audio application, but the world is full of incorrectly designed applications.
As for enterprise drives, there are dozens of tricks to ensure lower latency. Reading from other members in an erasure code, read prioritization over writes. It all depends upon how low of latency you’re trying to achieve, and with what level of consistency.
My point was that this drive may be using some innovative techniques to achieve consistently low read latencies in a “consumer” class drive. Possibly novel.
> but the world is full of incorrectly designed applications.
No it's not. This particular kind of incorrectly-designed application cannot be prevalent if the kind of hardware it requires to function at all is still new and rare.
Minor audio glitches due to read latency never happen? My assertion is that there exist audio applications which incorrectly utilize buffers, which would then be improved by more consistent read latency.
> SSDs have periodic higher read latency that could impact audio playback if the host buffers aren’t large enough.
Buffering sufficient to deal with a CD reader losing tracking and needing to reacquire it, which takes an order of magnitude longer than all but the most pathological flash management scenarios, has been an utterly boring consumer-grade feature since the late 90s.
Would you expect them to take measurements or do a double blind test if I was selling invisible pink dragons to improve audio quality and they were reporting on it? If anything, I thought the article was too tame.
That's not fair at all! At least not to the major audiophile magazines, here in Germany, or such a prestigious publication like "The Stereophile". Just two examples:
I did not overlook the devaluation of the product in the title, which can only be a result: "Snake Oil". This is why I said: "No measurements AND no experience." But he came to a conclusion: It's snake-oil. Unprofessional.
I'm pretty sure you don't honestly believe that even the most outlandish claims from the least credible sources deserve rigorous testing before they can be dismissed. The only people who aren't willing to draw a line somewhere and conclude from the manufacturer's lack of convincing explanations for their implausible claims that it really is bullshit, are people engaged in the same kind of scamming and trolling.
No honest, reasonable assessment of this "product" and its marketing can conclude that the manufacturer appears to be on the level. Expecting journalists to wade through literally infinite bullshit from people not acting in good faith before reaching a conclusion is absurd. Your perverted idea of what journalism should be is far more harmful than any journalistic laziness that may be on display here.
This is my favourite BS argument by audiophiles when defending some impossible claim or other: you have to listen to it. Not measure it or pay any attention to how the item actually works.
They claim they can hear digital cables, ethernet cables and now storage devices. Its plainly ridiculous but somehow they manage to find each other and reinforce this nonsense en-masse, ruining online forums with garbage and confusing noobs with half understood technical terms like jitter.
Then the next step is always some disparaging remark that you can't hear the difference because your system isn't "high enough resolution".
Audiophiles have become more insufferable as systems improved.
> This is my favourite BS argument by audiophiles when defending some impossible claim or other: you have to listen to it.
Just like a lot of engineers will tell you, that having studied a topic on university/college doesn't make up for "field experience".
> Then the next step is always some disparaging remark that you can't hear the difference because your system isn't "high enough resolution".
It's true. Just like there is differences in quality of measuring instruments (cheap china multimeter vs. Agilent or the like) there is difference in electronic components for audio reproduction.
I have one other disparaging remark for you: Not only is your system not resolving enough, your ears are not trained enough to hear the difference ;-).
> Audiophiles have become more insufferable as systems improved.
Well, that just proves audiophiles from the 1980's were right: They told us, that there can be better systems. It's just, that those developments, back then, were expensive and new, which resulted in high product prices, while today they are common main stream.
Audiophiles don't make systems, engineers do. The only thing that audiophiles produce is consistently is nonsense: green pens for CDs, audible jitter, validating the snake oil merchants who sell them magic boxes of dirt, special resonance stones, pyramids, digital cables that can't possibly do what is claimed.
That much vaunted "training" is a special form of self delusion. Try asking any self respecting audiophile whether they can pass a double blind test in picking out the difference between good old RCA cables and all you get is a long, copy pasted diatribe of how flawed testing is. That tells you they spend all their time telling themselves what they want to hear.
Put this this hard drive in a normal computer, and you won't hear a difference. That would be ridiculous. It would be put in a $3000-$6,000 audiophile music server that has a custom clean purpose built OS, and an audiophile DC linear power supply. Everything is optimized for clean power and clean signal.
This harddrive seeks to solve a VERY REAL problem in the audiophile world: computers are super D super noisy.
There are many ways to reduce noise. The best way is to isolate the computer entirely. I use a Sonore OpticalRendu and opticalmodule deluxe. Duel Femto clocks on each side to eliminate jitter, and fiberoptic cable in between to physically isolate the electronics from one another. The computer sends the file wirelessly to the router, where it then gets turned into a light signal to keep all the nasty electrical noise and timing errors out of the signal. (and yes, every single piece of equipment connects to the wall from a single socket, with a distributor, and then 2 power conditioners for different equipment, similar to isolation, I've at least made a solid solid effort)
This is $2300 for a piece of equipment that isn't needed if I just plug my computer into my DAC.
It works miracles. Night and day. So yes, some things may seem and look frivolous, and many are. Most are also extremely expensive.
It's like racing. That last 1% performance is ultra expensive, but makes all the difference.
Anyone here driving a race car will never notice all the attention to detail that allows one racecars to beat another.
31 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 83.7 ms ] threadOne CD player that stood out had all sorts of sales-speak that was obviously bullpoop. For example, it said the CD player "bathes the underside of the CD in blue laser light" to make the data laser work better. There were plenty of other silly voodoo technologies this player offered.
It took a while, but I explained to my friend that bits are bits. If a bit is a one, it's a one. There's no such thing as a "fancy", audiophiles-pay-more-and-get-a-better-version of one. Same with zero.
I told him the bits could be written in crayon, sent across a desert on camelback, and reassembled a year later, and those same bits would still be the same bits
If there are scratches and a player has to correct and guess, that's different, but if your CDs are clean and your clock is good, and you're sending bits digitally to your D/A & amp, there's literally no difference between one player and another. None. Zero.
After an hour and a dozen examples, something clicked in his head and he finally understood. It was very interesting to hear how I blew his mind, and how he'd never see all the sales speak BS the same way again.
As for SSDs, I can see how plenty of cheap computers have noisy electronics which can lead to noisy audio, and how power usage fluctuations can cause noise, but if putting caps on your SSD makes that better, then there are bigger problems.
It doesn't kill the connection, but audio quality goes down very noticeably. Replacing it with a new one seems to fix it for the next half-year. Is this real? Whats the mechanism behind it?
With reduced integrity the chance of data loss or corruption during transmission increases. There are typically low level integrity checks and forward error correction used to compensate for some of that on serial links, but they can only do so much. If data is detected lost its pretty much up to the upper level protocol on what to do next: One could retransmit, do nothing, or just use the corrupted data. Since retransmission would not help audio protocols they likely will use the other options, and so you get degraded sound.
This can cause resistance pockets in the wire itself especially when since it's probably continuously moved around every time you plug in the phone, further stressing the wires.
Lastly condensation inside the car can corrode contacts slowly causing further signal degradation.
Your best bet would be a thicker gauge wire usb cable with gold contacts.
The gold is added by the manufacturer to prevent corrosion of the contacts during transport and storage of the cable/device prior to first use.
Contacts corrode on exposure to oxidants. They can be re-made by disconnecting and reconnecting, which (if the contacts are properly designed) wipes their surfaces.
I have never heard of "resistance pockets" in wire, but I suppose that could be one way of describing broken conductors inside the cable that only continue to work because the end pieces are still making contact. Until the ends corrode or the wire is flexed in a way that pulls the ends apart.
If you're worried about read latency on a scale that could affect an audio workload, the only change to the SSD that might be relevant would be disabling the low-power idle modes, which can take a while to wake up from. Enterprise SSDs have other measures to manage QoS targets that are tighter than what an audio use case requires, and those features are only necessary when dealing with a workload that includes a heavy volume of write operations—not relevant to audiophiles. And enterprise drives definitely don't need to duplicate all your data as a way of avoiding high read latency; it's possible to suspend write operations in order to service a read request that needs to access the same physical block.
But for normal use cases, you're either writing enough data that everything on the drive ends up refreshed at least once or twice per year, or you're writing so little data that your flash is basically not getting worn out at all and the retention times will be extremely long, so you're left worrying about read disturb errors which are pretty unlikely to grow into uncorrectable errors without a rowhammer-like workload.
I'm pretty sure most consumer SSDs are not doing full-drive scrubs after every power loss, both because I've never seen evidence of that while measuring SSD power consumption and because it would be insane to do given that it is common for the SSD to be completely powered off every time you close the lid of your laptop.
https://storageswiss.com/2019/04/18/not-achieving-the-ssd-pe...
As for enterprise drives, there are dozens of tricks to ensure lower latency. Reading from other members in an erasure code, read prioritization over writes. It all depends upon how low of latency you’re trying to achieve, and with what level of consistency.
My point was that this drive may be using some innovative techniques to achieve consistently low read latencies in a “consumer” class drive. Possibly novel.
No it's not. This particular kind of incorrectly-designed application cannot be prevalent if the kind of hardware it requires to function at all is still new and rare.
In what scenario is audio streamed direct from an ssd rather than memory?
Buffering sufficient to deal with a CD reader losing tracking and needing to reacquire it, which takes an order of magnitude longer than all but the most pathological flash management scenarios, has been an utterly boring consumer-grade feature since the late 90s.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-diamond-s...
or
https://www.stereo.de/hifi-test/produkt/aavik-d-180-2058 (see "Messergebnisse" and "Messwerte").
No honest, reasonable assessment of this "product" and its marketing can conclude that the manufacturer appears to be on the level. Expecting journalists to wade through literally infinite bullshit from people not acting in good faith before reaching a conclusion is absurd. Your perverted idea of what journalism should be is far more harmful than any journalistic laziness that may be on display here.
They claim they can hear digital cables, ethernet cables and now storage devices. Its plainly ridiculous but somehow they manage to find each other and reinforce this nonsense en-masse, ruining online forums with garbage and confusing noobs with half understood technical terms like jitter.
Then the next step is always some disparaging remark that you can't hear the difference because your system isn't "high enough resolution".
Audiophiles have become more insufferable as systems improved.
Just like a lot of engineers will tell you, that having studied a topic on university/college doesn't make up for "field experience".
> Then the next step is always some disparaging remark that you can't hear the difference because your system isn't "high enough resolution".
It's true. Just like there is differences in quality of measuring instruments (cheap china multimeter vs. Agilent or the like) there is difference in electronic components for audio reproduction.
I have one other disparaging remark for you: Not only is your system not resolving enough, your ears are not trained enough to hear the difference ;-).
> Audiophiles have become more insufferable as systems improved.
Well, that just proves audiophiles from the 1980's were right: They told us, that there can be better systems. It's just, that those developments, back then, were expensive and new, which resulted in high product prices, while today they are common main stream.
That much vaunted "training" is a special form of self delusion. Try asking any self respecting audiophile whether they can pass a double blind test in picking out the difference between good old RCA cables and all you get is a long, copy pasted diatribe of how flawed testing is. That tells you they spend all their time telling themselves what they want to hear.
This harddrive seeks to solve a VERY REAL problem in the audiophile world: computers are super D super noisy.
There are many ways to reduce noise. The best way is to isolate the computer entirely. I use a Sonore OpticalRendu and opticalmodule deluxe. Duel Femto clocks on each side to eliminate jitter, and fiberoptic cable in between to physically isolate the electronics from one another. The computer sends the file wirelessly to the router, where it then gets turned into a light signal to keep all the nasty electrical noise and timing errors out of the signal. (and yes, every single piece of equipment connects to the wall from a single socket, with a distributor, and then 2 power conditioners for different equipment, similar to isolation, I've at least made a solid solid effort)
This is $2300 for a piece of equipment that isn't needed if I just plug my computer into my DAC.
It works miracles. Night and day. So yes, some things may seem and look frivolous, and many are. Most are also extremely expensive.
It's like racing. That last 1% performance is ultra expensive, but makes all the difference.
Anyone here driving a race car will never notice all the attention to detail that allows one racecars to beat another.