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Post by stellabagpuss on Sept 9, 2022 23:48:08 GMT
 SSD TEST TAS by Damien Read, on Flickr Who remembers not being able to afford a SSD drive ? How times have changed, and thankfully prices. I have always run my PC music storage files from conventional Mechnical Hard Drives, simply due to cost. Over the past few months, small capicity SSD Drives have been coming down,and I have actually manage to gather a few on the cheap. These days I use a SSD for my PC's Window 10 OS and Music Programs Jriver etc. The idea of testing some SSD drives came after reading various forums, that different makes,sound different. Armed with 4 SSD drives, I used a low noise psu to a TECKNET hard drive holder using USB3, this was because it was faster, and personally I'd use SATA3 if it was permanant. 1st up .....Crucial MX500 1TB SSD Well this was simply not good, certain aspects where clean, soundwise, but the soundstage, lower end was just vague, a disapointing start. 2nd .... Kingston SSD Now 300V 60GB You would have to be deaf, if you couldn't hear a difference between the Kingston and the Crusial SSD drives, soundstage had opened, and what was noticable, it had a cleaner sound compaired to my mechnical drive, better..hmmm different.I actually run this drive as a 120GB format in my current PC set up for my PC WIndow OS. 3rd .... Samsung 860 Pro 250GB I actually purchased this in error, meaning to get the 860 EVO, which apparantly is better than the pro. Straight off the blocks, wow...that is impressive, cleaner, wider soundstage, and better midrange air, and faster speed, lower frequencies not as deep as my mechnical drive, that could be that it's cleaner? 4th .... Samsung 860 EVO 250GB Now this drive seems to be the one that audiophiles like, so much so, they claim it's sounds better, and the Pro is not as good. Well imagine my surprise, when I tried it out it had a simliar signature the the 860 pro, perhaps slightly better vocal clarity, however the sound as a whole was better on the 860 Pro, the Evo sounded slighty softer in high frequencies, midrange guitars slightly lost, intruments merge together more,with less separation in the mix, don't get me wrong, it's a close contest, and I had to swap this two drives back and forth,for my own sanity! There you have it, I think I will be using the 860 Pro for my next SSD OS drive. Very interesting that my Seagate 8TB drive seems to have warmer low end, compared to all of the SSD drives, but the SSD drives are simply cleaner and sound more acturate,well at least the Samsung's. The Crucial MX500, was a real let down. Further tests will be done using SATA 3 cables, sheilded outside the PC, but thats on ICE for the time being, waiting on cables. So looks like the future will be SSD for music storage in future. Damien |
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Post by John on Sept 10, 2022 7:18:10 GMT
Thanks for sharing
Just goes to show everything matters when it comes to digital audio.
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Post by petea on Sept 10, 2022 7:38:10 GMT
Thanks indeed, and what an interesting test. I use the 860 Pro drives in laptops and for the OS in the desktop machines, but not for their music serving capabilities, but it is interesting to know.
I use an Fidata HFAS1-XS20U server for music both in the UK and Germany and they are populated with 4 Samsung Evo drives each. Looking at the pictures on the Fidata website they have grey squares on them and so I assume they are the non-pro versions, but they are arranged in their X-Cluster arrangement and the whole device is optimised for music playback and so I assume they chose the drives for a reason. Certainly files served from the Fidata sound significantly better than from the Synology NAS units when streamed through a common source.
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Post by HD Music & Test on Sept 10, 2022 7:47:02 GMT
Damien, give me a call later and I will give you another tip on how to improve matters busy this morning
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SSD Test
Sept 10, 2022 8:00:11 GMT
via mobile
Post by stellabagpuss on Sept 10, 2022 8:00:11 GMT
l have to PM Tony, in work now, got a few things this weekend,sons birthday, Newport tomorrow, so l try to catch via PM in between things.
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Post by stellabagpuss on Sept 10, 2022 8:05:20 GMT
Thanks indeed, and what an interesting test. I use the 860 Pro drives in laptops and for the OS in the desktop machines, but not for their music serving capabilities, but it is interesting to know. I use an Fidata HFAS1-XS20U server for music both in the UK and Germany and they are populated with 4 Samsung Evo drives each. Looking at the pictures on the Fidata website they have grey squares on them and so I assume they are the non-pro versions, but they are arranged in their X-Cluster arrangement and the whole device is optimised for music playback and so I assume they chose the drives for a reason. Certainly files served from the Fidata sound significantly better than from the Synology NAS units when streamed through a common source. Thanks for your kind comments, l guess l thought it would nice to pass on my findings, as flawed as they may be to the forum. And hopefully, somebody enjoys the rambling 😆 Damien |
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Post by MikeMusic on Sept 10, 2022 8:42:55 GMT
Brilliant Damien
Thanks for posting
If asked I would have said different drives wouldn't make that much difference
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Post by HD Music & Test on Sept 10, 2022 9:10:27 GMT
I remember demonstrating this exact effect to John around 10 years on Saturday afternoon, its pretty basic stuff honestly and plenty more like that to find as well
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Post by MartinT on Sept 10, 2022 9:59:28 GMT
Interesting. I select SSDs for performance as I don't use a file server. Even so, my choices correlate well with Samsung 870 Evo being the best for older laptops and PCs, and 980 Pro M.2 being the best for up to date machines like my mini PC.
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Post by stellabagpuss on Sept 11, 2022 8:23:51 GMT
Interesting. I select SSDs for performance as I don't use a file server. Even so, my choices correlate well with Samsung 870 Evo being the best for older laptops and PCs, and 980 Pro M.2 being the best for up to date machines like my mini PC. It's a bit of a dark art Martin, but it seems, Samsung is the go to manufacturer, the 860 Pro and Evo sound similar, however just released a flaw in my test 🤔 The Pro is a used drive, the Evo was brand new, do SSD need to be burnt in? And could this been the reason, l had to double check drives a few times. Interesting stuff, and of course Subjective to personal taste. Damien |
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Post by MartinT on Sept 11, 2022 9:28:15 GMT
As an SSD gets used, over time the data becomes fragmented across the volume. In the old rotating HD days, the drive would gradually get slower due to all the fetches across the disk surface, entailing a lot of head movement and latency as the surface spins around to the correct point. You would then defragment the drive to put all the files back in order to allow sequential reads which were much faster. This is why regular defragmenting was built into operating systems so as to keep the computer running efficiently.
An SSD has no head and can easily read randomised data by just changing the row/column addressing inside the memory. However, it's not quite the same as sequential reading as there will be more spikes in switching the row/column addressing to reassemble the data. You never defragment an SSD because it has a set life of maximum writes and you will wear it out.
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