rMBP 15", SD or SSD?

[pofonso]

First of all I would like to thank people in this forum for their contributions, very helpful indeed. Second, I would like to question about the use of the sd card or the internal ssd in a 15" Macbook Pro Retina (Late 2013). There are many threads about this, but a few comments about this model. I really couldn't notice the huge difference reported with the Mac mini, possibly due to my equipment, but trying to get the best (such subtle) sound of it. The use of the sd is less operative too.

 

Thank you very much in advance, and sorry about my english.

 

Best Regards.

[wwaldmanfan]

First of all I would like to thank people in this forum for their contributions, very helpful indeed. Second, I would like to question about the use of the sd card or the internal ssd in a 15" Macbook Pro Retina (Late 2013). There are many threads about this, but a few comments about this model. I really couldn't notice the huge difference reported with the Mac mini, possibly due to my equipment, but trying to get the best (such subtle) sound of it. The use of the sd is less operative too.

 

Thank you very much in advance, and sorry about my english.

 

Best Regards.

 

This has been a wildly debated subject here. One of the smartest contributors here came up with the idea to boot your OSX from an SD card rather than the internal drive, then unboot the internal drive, presumably to avoid any noise from the SATA cables. That person insisted that this improved the SQ of his system. Many here have tried this technique with different brands, speeds, and capacity SD cards, with vastly differing results.

My personal experience, using a SanDisk Ultra 64GB/10mbs card in my 2012 i5 MacBook Pro, was that boot times went from 12 seconds with the 120GB internal Kingston SSD to almost 3 minutes with the SD, and all other operations, inc. opening/closing windows, folders, etc. slowed to a glacial crawl not experienced since the days of my first 68040 Mac twenty years ago. Obviously, this idea was a monumental failure for me.

 

On your machine, run the OSX and the music player from the SSD. Load your music library from an external Thunderbolt drive, if you are outputting the signal to your DAC via USB. Disable all unused system preference options, especially Time Machine and Notification Center. Turn off wifi, blutooth, and IR receiver. If running off the battery, set the display to shut off a few seconds after you start play to conserve power.