SSD Precautions

[furio]

Probably this will have little importance when the user powers a PC with a power supply (and combined power conditioner) causing a system noise-ripple greater than 5-10mV.

Be careful with SSDs because they corrupt (distort) the stream with magnetic fields and noise. A SATA-Filter will only protect the noise ripple caused by SSD at the "output". A separation filter to stop interaction with the PSU must also be installed. A regulator from 12V to 5V can be used at the "input", preferably LDO combined with 1A transistors or more... for high digital performances such as those for DACs.

A powerful magnetic shield will be essential to block 60cm or more radiation from the drive. However, as a precaution, place a shielded and isolated SSD at the maximum distance from the RAM and CPU. Use only SATA 6Gbps cable because it has two extra shielded wires.

PDF file with measurements:
https://audiophilestyle.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=64024

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[Sven]

1st April was on monday!

[furio]

[furio]

If anyone can give advice for best HDD. I haven't bought them in ~15 years. If I were to get a new HDD, I would get a "18 TB WD ULTRASTAR DC HC550 WUH721818ALE6L4 Enterprise". New converters/transmitters under construction will be at home in the next few months with still some additional costs. You will have to be patient to save money on an HDD... (after having shielded and isolated the SSD) with double or triple USB isolators (JLSounds dot com reclock & HiFiMe cable) it has become impossible to listen to many (almost all) modern PCM 24 and 32 bit. So Vinile-RIP and Studio Masters. You can only listen to DSD because it is recorded without computer noise. Engineers with computerized analog mastering have done big cultural damage. It's all to be thrown away. I will record again only with HDD and normal low-cost SATA filter. No more SSDs.

At the beginning, historical HD digitizations were made at 96 and 192 kHz. The first studio masters production should be good if a computer was not used. Lately it was fashionable to do the DAW 24-96 remix. Because it is vinyl it can only be printed at 24-96 with the old technology already in operation. And because online streaming at 96... on platforms costs half. Avoid all digital vinyl... and platforms. Every platform normalizes and equalizes a character with crude/automatic software and crappy quality. The masters are already destroyed before the internet stream. It is superficiality and global rampant ignorance.

Build Full Range Monitors with no acoustic filters and crossovers and mastering grade headphone amplifiers. It is cheap. Definition and consciousness will be extreme.

The sound engineers also made a mistake in making direct and convenient DAW playback. DAWs always have prelisten quality and must be exported to a multi-channel file for state-of-the-art playback. If the converter chips are native DSD. The export should be converted to DSD to bypass SRC inside the DAC chip.

However, in any home studio it will be very important to implement some USB cable isolators... https://hifimediy.com/product/hifime-high-speed-usb-isolator-v2/

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data-sheet-ultrastar-dc-hc550.pdf
Description:	14-16-18 TB WD ULTRASTAR DC HC550	Download (listen)
Filename:	data-sheet-ultrastar-dc-hc550.pdf
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[Airlock]

I found that simply wrapping some foil around the SSD of a cheap laptop made a huge difference in heat transference. Fortunately the hat I was wearing had plenty of foil.

Pro tip: electric guitars are capable of introducing an incredible amount of noise into ANY audio system.

[furio]

Laptops, compact machines but also many motherboards and small boards have noise problems caused by switching regulators. This corrupts the stream regardless of the storage type. All routers and 99.999% of switches corrupt the stream on the network. A linear power supply can only reduce problems but it is a compensation. In the studio it is convenient to avoid laptops and iMacs or similar. Many people notice that by removing the laptop battery the sound improves because the noisier switching stage is isolated. In the laptop the user is prevented from filtering even the fans. That's analog noise played by the DAC as easy to hear as the hard disk without a filter.

This is just my first personal impression. There is no scientific basis. SSD noise streaming contamination would seem to nullify the neurological medicinal effect of music. Since SSD was isolated, the psychiatrist believes that the patient is cured.

Extreme power strategies are only possible with PC and RPi or perhaps some other small board capable of bypassing the onboard power supply by powering through the bus.

20mV noise ripple caused by the PSU will be enough to destroy a natural and musical streaming. We will also need to record more supersonic content for the highest possible transient resolution to understand this. So 96 kHz and multiples. Scrap/modify DACs and monitors with active filters because they blur the possibility of mental concentration with miserable feedback blurred by magnetic and mechanical problems of resistors and narrow band op amps. Avoid superficial listening to CDs because they will all be blurred by aliasing.

The opamp specifically designed for ADC by TI is 180 MHz. The rest is all obsolete for this use. In monitoring and listening DACs I can completely remove the active output stage and replace it with two transformers and no filters. To obtain extreme resolution and naturalness the transformers must be made of Japanese OCC copper (purity 99.999999% or better), otherwise they will create a wadding/compression effect and a capacitor will sound better.

We could create a section in the forum for DIY ideas and discussions State of the art converters and digital transport.

* Observe the famous low-frequency sampling squeezed pulse response problem. It's hard work to get a PC running decently at 96 kHz and it's also the beginning of being able to keep the musical energy attached personally. At 44-48 kHz the energy slips due to the absence of vibrational grip.

** the key thing is USB-Host must be separated from motherboard for audio. With Linux in the past the best streaming chips were "5Mbps" Buffalo and NEC. In recent years the best performances have been achieved with ASMEDIA "20Mbps".

*** 2X RAM Filter is a very important component because when the motherboard extremely cleans the RAM power, the CPU noise cleaning effect improves (CPU must be low power, preferable AMD to halve the latency)

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[furio]

So we understood what SD-Card & SSD Terra Noise and Ambient Radiation does to music. With a modern ~20TB HDD 270 MB/s like this '23 version by WD or Toshiba and so on. You also need to be sure it will be possible to disable the non-volatile cache memory in case it causes the same problems. To save time and money we first tested an 10TB old-stock (2019 product) with a 5-year warranty and 2,500,000 MTBF hours. Just 99.90 euros including shipping from Germany. Volatile cache and 237 MB/sec declared in datasheets but realistic only for gigantic media. We achieved a real transfer speed of 180 MB/s with various Audio and 190 MB/s Video. With text and image files ~100 MB/sec.

Secure audio recording appears to be ~165 MB/sec. That is, 7 stereo pairs channels 23 MB/s x7 (14 DSD256 channels). For more SSD-like performance, it would be better to configure two HDDs in Raid0. So you will get ~320 MB/sec guaranteed for recording.

With HDD-Stream the crossover tends to work more correctly. Tweeter and mid/bass sound coherently united, deep, relaxed. So truly HiFi. SSD-Noise-Stream pierces the crossover and makes the two drivers sound detached and stressed. With SD/SSD/USB-Stick the tweeter transposes the frequency response very high and comes away sounding very sick. People who have SSDs can only use full range monitors without crossovers or headphones with decent DACs and amps to start waking up. Scrap active monitors because they are blurry and I will sleep in front.

* Old but new Datacenter 10TB HDD works better than expected. It appears capable of transferring 44-48 kHz files at 211 MB/sec while running a DSD128 stream at 11-12 MB/sec. So at least 223 MB/s can do them. The trick is to partition the root system (/) and home directories (/home) separately. With Archinstall and linux-lqx kernel compiled with paru you get this performance. The tested WM seems very bulky but is liquid. Budgie WM is declared by the developers as OSX-inspired technology. Being young over time it will be optimized and improved. In the system there is the minimal installation of archinstall daemons by default and it starts by consuming 600 MB of RAM with Budgie or under 300 MB of RAM with iceWM. So the same 2023 technology modernized by WD Deskstar 18TB should be able to achieve ~270 MB/sec... note that with the Bass Trap overhead and SSD-Stream the two-way monitors only worked at low volume (all frequency response was distorted by SSD-noise and rolled the bass). With HDD-Streaming however at low volume everything is more in focus, easy to focus and you can fire 70W audiophile. Pipewire has become installed even if not required and is automatically bypassed with PCM-Jack and PCM/DSD-ALSA. AV-Liquid-Streaming like never before, as extreme digital HiFi.

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[furio]

** pay attention to the non-volatile cache /// we don't know if it destroys sound and stream /// 20TB Toshiba 24/7 with the same MTBF Datacenter category, specifies exactly in the datasheet how to deactivate the non-volatile cache and costs ~50 euros less than 18TB WD (formerly HGST)