ATTENTION Current Mac mini/A+ users: Boot Mavericks from an SD card, load a RAMdisk, dismount your internal SATA drives, and pour a drink for the musicians walking out of your speakers!

[Le Concombre Masqué]

You're talking about the OS or music?

 

On my MBP the SD card is on the USB bus, same as my DAC. Seems to me I'd rather have the OS on the internal SSD and off the USB bus, though I haven't tried the OS on an SD card.

on the mbpr 15 mid 2012 the sd card is not on the usb bus

[PhilipAC]

I suspect each of us has a different view as to what is "practicable", and of course we all have different systems.

 

For my part, I have a MBPro with an SSD drive, and about 2.5Tb of music. I have found that putting my music on SD cards, rather than a WD external spinning HD connected by FW800 produces a big improvement. Faffing about with OS and/or A+ on RAM disks or on each SD card is not for me!

 

Assuming that I speak for a number of people who want to leave their OS and A+ on their HD or SSD for convenience reasons, and who have a big store of music files, the question is this: would shifting from an external HD connected by FW to an external HD connected by TB make as big a difference as putting the music on SD cards? It would obviously be more convenient! I speak as someone who has just bought 17 128 Gb SD cards, but if a TB solution is as good or better, so be it!

 

Philip

[Superdad]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9455[/ATTACH]

on the mbpr 15 mid 2012 the sd card is not on the usb bus

 

You are correct about the SDXC of the mid-2012 MBP not being on the USB bus, but the screen shot you posted is the wrong one to prove it. The correct way to prove it is to go into the USB tab and to NOT see the SD card listed in the USB bus tree.

 

Jud's machine is earlier than yours.

 

Apple moved the SD card reader off the USB bus when it wanted to go for the faster speeds. In the specs for MacBook Pros (on Evermac Solutions - Web Development, Visual Foxpro, Spam Filtering, Remote Backup is the easiest) you can tell when they changed by noting if the slot is referred to as SDXC or just SD. Those machines listed as having an SDXC card reader have it on a faster bus handled by a PCIe controller chip.

[Superdad]

I suspect each of us has a different view as to what is "practicable", and of course we all have different systems.

 

For my part, I have a MBPro with an SSD drive, and about 2.5Tb of music. I have found that putting my music on SD cards, rather than a WD external spinning HD connected by FW800 produces a big improvement. Faffing about with OS and/or A+ on RAM disks or on each SD card is not for me!

 

Assuming that I speak for a number of people who want to leave their OS and A+ on their HD or SSD for convenience reasons, and who have a big store of music files, the question is this: would shifting from an external HD connected by FW to an external HD connected by TB make as big a difference as putting the music on SD cards? It would obviously be more convenient! I speak as someone who has just bought 17 128 Gb SD cards, but if a TB solution is as good or better, so be it!

 

Philip

 

Hi Philip: Your experience and questions are certainly consistent with mine. Tranz and Roch have come the closest to answering exactly within the last day regarding Thunderbolt (you might have to check one of the other 3 threads, I lose track).

 

As you know, I have not auditioned TB at all, and I temporarily solved the storage dilemma via custom Ethernet connection and settings (see my other report). It works for since: a) I operate the music mini headless from another mini; b) I already have plenty of FW drive storage; c) most importantly, I find the Ethernet of the 2010/11/12 minis can, if configured carefully (no going through a switch!), equal the SD cards in SQ because they use the same controller chip. I never expect this to be the case, but with a great Ethernet cable and Jumbo frames, it is sounding fantastic.

 

Still, I'd like to try a Thunderbolt drive when I my wallet recovers from the holidays. It certainly would be a less fiddly arrangement!

[Le Concombre Masqué]

You are correct about the SDXC of the mid-2012 MBP not being on the USB bus, but the screen shot you posted is the wrong one to prove it. The correct way to prove it is to go into the USB tab and to NOT see the SD card listed in the USB bus tree.

 

Jud's machine is earlier than yours.

 

Apple moved the SD card reader off the USB bus when it wanted to go for the faster speeds. In the specs for MacBook Pros (on Evermac Solutions - Web Development, Visual Foxpro, Spam Filtering, Remote Backup is the easiest) you can tell when they changed by noting if the slot is referred to as SDXC or just SD. Those machines listed as having an SDXC card reader have it on a faster bus handled by a PCIe controller chip.

 

interesting as usual ; for i never saw the sd card listed under the usb tab i would have never thought of showing it ! btw Alex,before you document your trimming of the os, could you, please, just provide some screenshots or a list of your remaining launch daemons?

[tranz]

A few more test rounds further, and this is what I found on my setup. Just another data point for those curious. By the way my mobo is also externally powered by an LPSU.

 

1. OS on externally powered SSD has less listening fatigue then SSD internally powered by the MacMini mobo.

 

2. OS on externally powered SSD has less listening fatigue and slightly clearer sound then using an SDXC card for OS

 

3. Using Amarra in Cache mode ( it loads songs into RAM before playback) sounded best in my setup with externally powered Thunderbolt drives.

 

4. Using a ramdisk or an SDXC card for music files only did not seem that different. With the SDXC card unplugged physically, the ramdisk seemed slight less fatiguing. This was with TBolt unplugged and externally powered SSD for OS.

 

Perhaps there is a bias formed in my head, but I feel like lowering anything that draws power or fluctuates power on the MacMini's mobo improves the sound by lowering listening fatigue/noise floor. Externally powering everything and reducing the amount of background processes is key. SSD is 5v, the SD is 3.3v with fewer parts so I could see how SD would sound better than SSD if internally powered.

 

The one piece which eludes me still is the externally powering and filtering of the USB port for the Mac instead of using the Mobo #1 or #3 USB socket.

 

None of these tests were done using an oscilloscope as I do not have the tool nor the knowledge, but my guess is it would show differing results for any changes done upstream.

 

Cheers

[Superdad]

Nice reporting Tranz, thanks.

[Jud]

A few more test rounds further, and this is what I found on my setup. Just another data point for those curious. By the way my mobo is also externally powered by an LPSU.

 

1. OS on externally powered SSD has less listening fatigue then SSD internally powered by the MacMini mobo.

 

Makes sense, but I've got a laptop, so for me at least the SSD will stay internal.

 

4. Using a ramdisk or an SDXC card for music files only did not seem that different. With the SDXC card unplugged physically, the ramdisk seemed slight less fatiguing. This was with TBolt unplugged and externally powered SSD for OS.

 

 

I also have thought, through inadvertent "blind testing" where I've once or twice forgotten to remove the SD card after unmounting it, that physically removing the SD card very slightly improves the sound quality of music files played from RAMdisk. I can't be sure of this, though it doesn't really matter to me, since it is my usual routine to physically remove the SD card.

 

The one piece which eludes me still is the externally powering and filtering of the USB port for the Mac instead of using the Mobo #1 or #3 USB socket.

 

Cheers

 

I have read both positive and negative remarks regarding filtered USB ports. I suppose it depends on the filter.

[wappinghigh]

Just stumbled on this thread. Amazing. I confess I haven't read it all. Can I just say this was precisely why I have suggested Damien write into A+ the ability to mount a uPnP library straight into Audirvana's standalone mode. So a large library could be streamed into A+ rather than needing access from a USB attached drive. But I got shot down in flames for this suggestion. Now I believe its rumoured he's working on full library suppport (which still needs to be via a usb drive...if the library is large) This is fantastic...but still leaves the direct attached usb drive problem for large library users.... Well until we get 2Gb SSD or even SD cards! Oh well. I tried on the uPnp front ...I thought my uPnP suggestion would help.

[Le Concombre Masqué]

Just stumbled on this thread. Amazing. I confess I haven't read it all. Can I just say this was precisely why I have suggested Damien write into A+ the ability to mount a uPnP library straight into Audirvana's standalone mode. So a large library could be streamed into A+ rather than needing access from a USB attached drive. But I got shot down in flames for this suggestion. Now I believe its rumoured he's working on full library suppport (which still needs to be via a usb drive...if the library is large) This is fantastic...but still leaves the direct attached usb drive problem for large library users.... Well until we get 2Gb SSD or even SD cards! Oh well. I tried on the uPnp front ...I thought my uPnP suggestion would help.

 

I advocate Time Capsule

[wappinghigh]

^ what do you mean?

[Superdad]

Just stumbled on this thread. Amazing. I confess I haven't read it all. Can I just say this was precisely why I have suggested Damien write into A+ the ability to mount a uPnP library straight into Audirvana's standalone mode. So a large library could be streamed into A+ rather than needing access from a USB attached drive. But I got shot down in flames for this suggestion. Now I believe its rumoured he's working on full library suppport (which still needs to be via a usb drive...if the library is large) This is fantastic...but still leaves the direct attached usb drive problem for large library users.... Well until we get 2Gb SSD or even SD cards! Oh well. I tried on the uPnp front ...I thought my uPnP suggestion would help.

 

Hi Wappinghigh: You mention USB attached drives. Those are the absolute worst when running into a USB DAC. Did you read my first report about interfaces?: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/my-deep-dive-media-storage-interfaces-musical-differences-heard-between-chipsets-firewire-400-800-universal-serial-bus-industry-standard-cables-connectors-and-communications-protocols-between-computers-and-electronic-devices-sata-flash-drives-sd-cards-and-network-shares-warning-may-cause-seizures-dbt-crowd-and-flat-earth-naysayers-18108/

 

But since you are interested in network access, you should definitely read this:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/uh-oh-i-beat-my-sd-card-trick%3B-bypass-your-ethernet-switch-and-make-your-external-drives-sound-close-ram-disk-using-apple-thunderbolt-ethernet-adaptor-and-second-network-connection-18475/#post277280

 

I still stand by what I and others have said: UPnP/DLNA is a mess that I hope stays away from Audirvana Plus. There are a number of other ways to share a big drive on a network, and the solutions for music players should get more elegant with time.

 

Cheers and Happy New Year,

Alex C.

[gsquared]

First of all, I want to give a BIG thank you to Superdad for taking the time to explore various media storage interfaces and test the different iterations and publish his findings here. I've read all three of the related threads (plus the OS X optimization thread) and I finally got around to doing my own testing.

 

I'm at the early stages of my tests and I'm experiencing some flakyness (freezing up) from my semi-optimized version of Mavericks that I installed on a SDHC card. I bought one of the faster cards (95MB/s) and only did the following optimizations to it via Terminal:

 

Turned off automatic termination daemon

Disable dashboard

Added a quit option to the finder

Disabled mission control

Disabled spotlight

Turned off Time Machine

Turned off window zooming

Turned off finder animations

Turned off animate effect

Turned off genie effect

Turn off Doc animation

Turned off sleep mode

Disabled hibernate

Disabled software update checks

Turned off notification center

 

And finally, unchecked App Nap for A+

 

Booting from the SD Card, I'm getting by far the best sound I've ever had from that particular Macbook Pro. But before I move on to some real testing, I wanted to ask if anyone else is experiencing freezing up of the OS and A+ when running via an SD card?

 

I'm able to play music without any issues, but it seems that when I leave the machine on without playing music for an extended period of time (1/2 hour +), when I come back and try to click any of the A+ buttons, I get a spinning beachball and the only way to stop it is to do a forced shutdown (hold down the power button).

 

Every time I played via the SD Card, I unmounted the internal HD but I did not close the finder.

 

If anyone has experienced this or has any suggestions, I would appreciate it.

[wappinghigh]

Hi Wappinghigh: You mention USB attached drives. Those are the absolute worst when running into a USB DAC. Did you read my first report about interfaces?: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/my-deep-dive-media-storage-interfaces-musical-differences-heard-between-chipsets-firewire-400-800-universal-serial-bus-industry-standard-cables-connectors-and-communications-protocols-between-computers-and-electronic-devices-sata-flash-drives-sd-cards-and-network-shares-warning-may-cause-seizures-dbt-crowd-and-flat-earth-naysayers-18108/

 

But since you are interested in network access, you should definitely read this:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/uh-oh-i-beat-my-sd-card-trick%3B-bypass-your-ethernet-switch-and-make-your-external-drives-sound-close-ram-disk-using-apple-thunderbolt-ethernet-adaptor-and-second-network-connection-18475/#post277280

 

I still stand by what I and others have said: UPnP/DLNA is a mess that I hope stays away from Audirvana Plus. There are a number of other ways to share a big drive on a network, and the solutions for music players should get more elegant with time.

 

Cheers and Happy New Year,

Alex C.

 

Hi Alex. I have tried to follow what you are doing and think it's incredible! And thanks for all the posts and solving " the quest. ". Somewhere along the quest we need to combine the benefits of SSD or SD playback by solving it's current drawbacks (limited storage space.). I'd venture to guess most CA's libraries would be more than 1TB. Mine is 1.3TB...most are probably in the 1-4TB range I guess.. so yes obviously NAS or DAS storage is the only way to go. Now if that's to be mounted via Ethernet (to avoid your well pointed out USB problems), then yes: on OSX it's SMB or AFP.. because as we all know uPnP is so difficult in OSX. Now hopefully when the new A+ comes out with it's own dedicated full library format in standalone mode, we will be able to drag our entire SMB or AFP "share" into A+, then use Damien's new library setup he is working on to then search, sort thru then play any track within an entire NAS share. That's what I'm hoping. I'd settle for SMB sharing for sure if this is what can be achieved but it remains to be seen. Though I still like using uPnP and MinimServer for my other networked devices (Linn and the Oppo and maybe even the next Auralic Lightning device or one of Jesus's streamers into my Invicta...via either USB or SPDIF (when the Invicta supports DSD via DoP via SPDIF.). SO I guess I'm still exploring the possibilities of uPnP because it would tie in so well with all my other gear.. Cheers. And Happy New year to you as well.

[Booster MPS]

Gsquared not sure of the vintage of your macbook pro but I will confirm that running the OS off of a SD card or thumb drive is extremely slow. It works but it is slow. The benefits of un-mounting the computer internal drive (unless you have an SSD) are undeniable.

[Superdad]

Gsquared not sure of the vintage of your macbook pro but I will confirm that running the OS off of a SD card or thumb drive is extremely slow. It works but it is slow. The benefits of un-mounting the computer internal drive (unless you have an SSD) are undeniable.

 

I know it is tough to get just right (I keep back-ups of of best working SD boot drives for when something goes wrong), but my 8GB 2010 Core 2 Duo with Mavericks boot SD (just a cheap 22MB/sec SDHC) is quite snappy. 45 seconds from power-on chime to desktop with dock; iTunes, Finder, and A+ perform with no lag or delay--most of the time one would be hard pressed to even know that no HD/SSD is being used. But of course I am only using the machine for music playback.

 

Gary, I wish I knew what to tell you about your MBP freezing up on you. I thought that maybe the recent Mavericks update listed something about fixing app waking problem, but you are not letting your machine sleep anyway, and my lookup on Apple support does not list that as an issue.

[Superdad]

I'd venture to guess most CA's libraries would be more than 1TB. Mine is 1.3TB...most are probably in the 1-4TB range I guess.. so yes obviously NAS or DAS storage is the only way to go. Now if that's to be mounted via Ethernet (to avoid your well pointed out USB problems), then yes: on OSX it's SMB or AFP.

 

Thanks for your thoughts Wapp. My music library is also well over 1TB now, and I too want to cruise it and play without having to think about compromised SQ of storage location. That's why I am totally delighted that my direct, Mac-to-Mac Ethernet (bypassing switch, and running up the frame size to Jumbo 9000) is sounding so good. I am also experimenting with more efficient file protocols like UDP (over NFS), and will also try to get an iSCSI SAN to work (I think Paul R. is doing so with his NAS).

 

Indeed, what we are all hoping for is for Damien to turn A+ into a full-fledged, library manager (ore at least a good front end that we don't mind loading an entire iTunes library into). The current Playlist mode is very primitive and restricts me from easily exploring my collection in full fidelity.

I don't do any multi-room, and I don't mind putting some party tracks on another machine if I want to play something from the AppleTV in the living room (hooked to a modest DAC and integrated amp). So while I appreciate the flexible trappings of DLNA and other set ups, I don't feel compelled to pursue them.

 

Ciao,

AJC

[Le Concombre Masqué]

^ what do you mean?

 

I have a close to 2TB library on a Apple's Time Capsule (could be up to 4 and even whatever since you can plug a hub or external hdd to it). The router part allows a connection in the 5Ghz band which is fast enough for me (fills a RAM Disk at more than 1 GB/minute speed) whenever in want to listen to a specific tack/album. At the moment I reboot my mbp anytime I want to listen with osx on a sd card and then go pick the files created when the machine is booted normally; for those with a dedicated computer, The Time capsule is a nice way to exchange files between the machines

[Le Concombre Masqué]

First of all, I want to give a BIG thank you to Superdad for taking the time to explore various media storage interfaces and test the different iterations and publish his findings here. I've read all three of the related threads (plus the OS X optimization thread) and I finally got around to doing my own testing.

 

I'm at the early stages of my tests and I'm experiencing some flakyness (freezing up) from my semi-optimized version of Mavericks that I installed on a SDHC card. I bought one of the faster cards (95MB/s) and only did the following optimizations to it via Terminal:

 

Turned off automatic termination daemon

Disable dashboard

Added a quit option to the finder

Disabled mission control

Disabled spotlight

Turned off Time Machine

Turned off window zooming

Turned off finder animations

Turned off animate effect

Turned off genie effect

Turn off Doc animation

Turned off sleep mode

Disabled hibernate

Disabled software update checks

Turned off notification center

 

And finally, unchecked App Nap for A+

 

Booting from the SD Card, I'm getting by far the best sound I've ever had from that particular Macbook Pro. But before I move on to some real testing, I wanted to ask if anyone else is experiencing freezing up of the OS and A+ when running via an SD card?

 

I'm able to play music without any issues, but it seems that when I leave the machine on without playing music for an extended period of time (1/2 hour +), when I come back and try to click any of the A+ buttons, I get a spinning beachball and the only way to stop it is to do a forced shutdown (hold down the power button).

 

Every time I played via the SD Card, I unmounted the internal HD but I did not close the finder.

 

If anyone has experienced this or has any suggestions, I would appreciate it.

 

we have to learn to be patient when using this trick ; somewhere ahead in this tread i posted a script based on Souptin's that first thing unmounts the inner hdd (well, pay attention, unmounts any drive but the one bearing the os, that is the sd card). Not only is it convenient but I think that it can help prevent the system to go make a mix of sd based/inner drive based files that would (the latter) later miss causing issues. And don't forget to repair the permissions !!

[gsquared]

Gsquared not sure of the vintage of your macbook pro but I will confirm that running the OS off of a SD card or thumb drive is extremely slow. It works but it is slow. The benefits of un-mounting the computer internal drive (unless you have an SSD) are undeniable.

 

For my initial testing, I'm using my early 2011 MBP with 16 GB of RAM. The startup time is super fast. Right around 25 seconds. It's just that when I play music for a period of time then pause the music for a period of time, it hangs up with the spinning beach ball.

 

I have a new late 2013 MBP also with 16 GB of RAM. I'll do some testing with that machine this weekend to isolate if it's related to the older MBP or the software.

[gsquared]

I know it is tough to get just right (I keep back-ups of of best working SD boot drives for when something goes wrong), but my 8GB 2010 Core 2 Duo with Mavericks boot SD (just a cheap 22MB/sec SDHC) is quite snappy. 45 seconds from power-on chime to desktop with dock; iTunes, Finder, and A+ perform with no lag or delay--most of the time one would be hard pressed to even know that no HD/SSD is being used. But of course I am only using the machine for music playback.

 

Gary, I wish I knew what to tell you about your MBP freezing up on you. I thought that maybe the recent Mavericks update listed something about fixing app waking problem, but you are not letting your machine sleep anyway, and my lookup on Apple support does not list that as an issue.

 

I noticed that the screen saver was turning on... maybe that had something to do with the freezing problem. I'll have to look at the CAD Optimization script to see if there's a terminal command for disabling screensaver.

 

The good news is, I have the same optimized version installed on a separate partition on my new late 2013 MBP, so I can easily un-do any optimizations and start over if I need to.

[gsquared]

we have to learn to be patient when using this trick ; somewhere ahead in this tread i posted a script based on Souptin's that first thing unmounts the inner hdd (well, pay attention, unmounts any drive but the one bearing the os, that is the sd card). Not only is it convenient but I think that it can help prevent the system to go make a mix of sd based/inner drive based files that would (the latter) later miss causing issues. And don't forget to repair the permissions !!

 

Excellent. Thanks for the heads up about your script and repairing permissions. I'll try those and see if makes a difference.

[wwaldmanfan]

I know it is tough to get just right (I keep back-ups of of best working SD boot drives for when something goes wrong), but my 8GB 2010 Core 2 Duo with Mavericks boot SD (just a cheap 22MB/sec SDHC) is quite snappy. 45 seconds from power-on chime to desktop with dock; iTunes, Finder, and A+ perform with no lag or delay--most of the time one would be hard pressed to even know that no HD/SSD is being used. But of course I am only using the machine for music playback.

 

@ Alex--

I don't get it. When I attempt to run my 8Gb 13" 2012 MBP i5 from a 30Mb/sec SanDisk SDXC card with optimized Mavericks installed, it slows the computer to a crawl. Over 2-1/2 minutes to boot up. Simple operations like opening and closing windows, scrolling, etc. have ridiculous lags which make using it in this configuration extremely difficult. My first 68040 Mac with 8 MEGAbytes of RAM, 20 years ago, was faster. I'm not even running iTunes, just Finder and Audirvana. What is wrong with my computer?

Instead, I run the optimized OSX and A+ from the internal 120Gb SSD, copying the music files from my external FireWire 800 drive into a 4Gb RAMdisk, then dragging them into the A+ playlist window for playback. Of course, with a RAMdisk, you can't quit the Finder, not that that makes a difference in SQ on my system anyway.

Mike

[alcarp]

I have the same problem with a mac mini 2011 with 8GB memory - boot time is 5 mins no matter what I tried. OSX is Mavericks optimized. I'm using a Sony 32MB SDHC card and Mavericks is trimmed down to about 9GB.

 

Once booted up, though, operations are reasonably fast.

[Jud]

@ Alex--

I don't get it. When I attempt to run my 8Gb 13" 2012 MBP i5 from a 30Mb/sec SanDisk SDXC card with optimized Mavericks installed, it slows the computer to a crawl. Over 2-1/2 minutes to boot up. Simple operations like opening and closing windows, scrolling, etc. have ridiculous lags which make using it in this configuration extremely difficult. My first 68040 Mac with 8 MEGAbytes of RAM, 20 years ago, was faster. I'm not even running iTunes, just Finder and Audirvana. What is wrong with my computer?

Instead, I run the optimized OSX and A+ from the internal 120Gb SSD, copying the music files from my external FireWire 800 drive into a 4Gb RAMdisk, then dragging them into the A+ playlist window for playback. Of course, with a RAMdisk, you can't quit the Finder, not that that makes a difference in SQ on my system anyway.

Mike

 

Mike -

 

- Is there a big sound quality difference between boot from an SD and boot from SSD?

 

- You can quit Finder if you copy over the music first.