NVMe SSD designed for audiophiles

[MarcelNL]

9 hours ago, damian101 said:

Oh no, that is a very different case, as I think I have already explained. It is always a good idea to power the DAC with a separate high quality power supply to make sure other devices sharing the same power supply don't produce electric noise strong enough to not be cleaned sufficiently and cause audible noise in your DAC's analog output.
If you already use a DAC powered by its own power supply, reducing electric noise in components sharing another power supply won't make a difference.

Did you ever listen to the impact of what drive you' re using, or listen to a RAM buffer, or the differences between acrappy PSU and a really well designed PSU feeding te digital chain? Or add a stretch of fiberoptics in the network of which you stream? Tinker with latency settings in your OS? 

The theory that 0s and 1s are just that and nothing matters is something that keeps the engineers happy, ears tell a different tale. 

Find a good pair of speakers capable of great resolution and a decent amp without too many frills and try, you'll be amazed how many things have an effect on how the 0s and 1s flowing into your DAC and what differences come out of it.

[MarcelNL]

+1 on the ignore list, I get too tired of beating dead horses about this.

[MarcelNL]

Do you plan to use copper? (I hope so as it works magically when compared to aluminium somehow)

 

Looking at the NVME; something like this may serve ad interim?

https://www.amazon.nl/Alphacool-17427-Copper-Heatsinks-14x14mm/dp/B077VM8FJW/ref=asc_df_B077VM8FJW/?tag=nlshogostdde-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=454710028251&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14170650322459426872&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9064720&hvtargid=pla-527969856407&psc=1

[MarcelNL]

I thought it was me, rereading info, viewing the infomercials...

[MarcelNL]

thanks for explaining! I thought I gathered as much but could not cut through the specialistic tech lingo!

[MarcelNL]

I want that one....but now with the femto SSD mounted!

[MarcelNL]

looks like they forgot to update the max website traffic volume, or the disc is very slow ;-)

 

[MarcelNL]

That one might just work, why not give it a go? if the NVME does not work when the 4pin Molex is not connected you have cracked the code and made a great find!

[MarcelNL]

I just installed a Samsung 990 pro, with reportedly quite low jitter spec (a.o.) and must say it's worthwile improvement over the 970 Evo plus I had installed for file storage previously (all files played from RAM)

[MarcelNL]

To be clear, it's no competition to the femto drive...yet that has more impact as OS drive than as file storage drive. YMMV

[MarcelNL]

I do not see what version it was, pSLC or TLC, and an Sbooster is IMO not a worthwile upgrade for external power...this thing starts to sing with a great PSU, but even so on internal power it outperformed Optane and all NVME I had in stock easily when used as file storage disc but even more clearly when used as OS disc.

What the 'alpha Audio streamer consists of is not clear to me, you need a pretty good system to benefit from different NVME discs IME...

 

break in is not mentioned, that takes a good week or so...I'm happy to take it off their hands ;-)

[MarcelNL]

let's not revisit the objectivist - subjectivist discussion here please, there are loads of similar effects described by plenty people on various digital components...there is a thread for that discussion

 

[MarcelNL]

indeed, and there is clear effect even when you power this drive from the motherboard, and that is even more clear using a good external LPS.

There also is no clear reason why listening to the same file coming from RAM, loaded from SSD or NVME SSD or a USB stick should sound different...yet it does.

[MarcelNL]

the limitations of what we can measure do not limit what we can hear

 

please PLEASE take that discussion to the objectivist thread...you'll find agreement there

[MarcelNL]

3 minutes ago, Ghmi said:

What we can hear doesn't even come close to what can be measured nowadays, in terms of signal AND noise. Human senses are nothing to write home about. If you can hear that some sounds are noisy or distorted, it WILL show up on even an entry level spectrum analyzer.

 

And you can trust me on that : measuring small signals which are unaccessible to our senses is a huge part of my job as a researcher. From measurements down to ADC conversion.

I totally believe you can measure small signals, trust me, in the objectivist thread they'll agree, I however disagree that you can define what we can hear with your measurements and you seem to limit what we can hear to what you can measure...

 

not only that; this discussion adds nothing to the topic as I reckon you did not measure anything of the sound produced from the disk at hand and you seem to ignore the more important bit about the TYPE of memory cell that is important.

 

please feel free to start a topic here;

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/forum/13-music-analysis-objective-subjective/

 

 

[MarcelNL]

I have two hints...read up on the topic, and counting bits is not the answer.

As much as using a different network card, network switch, putting a LPSU on computer, SSD, switch, router matters for sound it's NOT changing one bit...and that point we all agree

Rather than excluding the possibility that HDD RAM and CPU matter I'd suggest start reading here (beware, it's long but packed with information)

 

 

[MarcelNL]

11 minutes ago, darkfrank said:

I stopped reading when someone said he couldn't distinguish any SQ difference between a Mac and an enterprise server, lol.

some folks would not hear any difference between a live violin and one reproduced off a recording...

[MarcelNL]

3 hours ago, Rsmaximasr said:

“Have always been on the fence about running OS in RAM vs off the Optane drive... RAM was more incisive but Optane was smoother.“

 

You do know that the OS executes from ram not any kind of disk, maybe you don’t. Just like all music files, they are read from storage or maybe some cache then loaded into memory before output thru some Ethernet/pcie/usb/other protocol.

This is why the theory of making a nvme/ssd “audiophile” quality is bogus. What is an audiophile device/ssd/nvme going to do for you when that data (OS, file, data) is read into memory? Now somebody will think they have to make audiophile quality memory sticks!!!
 

you know that dogma's are mostly bogus too? It's kondof sad that you seem to be able to decide about something without any trying or testing. There is a more appropriate thread for your kind of discussion; something with 'objectivist' in it 

[MarcelNL]

28 minutes ago, Ghmi said:

 

How computer hardware and software works isn't really all that "subjective". You can just check your OS documentation and see how RAM and virtual memory are handled. That's how it's done, not through some wildly unreliable "testing".

Spoiler : unless you're using a very exotic OS, all of the data goes through the RAM before being ultimately handled by the CPU.

 

How the music sounds to you is subjective, sure. How a computer works, not so much.

I'll kindly point you to the 'objectivist' topic, all computers handle data in a predefined way yet that does not explain the huge differences in sound quality on one and the same platform. 

[MarcelNL]

here we go again...the fact that you are unable to measure something does not mean it does not exist.

[MarcelNL]

4 hours ago, Rsmaximasr said:

I worked at 1 of the leading solid state technology manufacturers in the world (pcie, ssd, nvme: all enterprise grade components, not your cheap stuff we use in our computers), and I will ask some of these engineers if the tested any of their products for audio sound quality. Since the same firm is the largest hard drive manufacturer, I’ll ask the same question about their hard drives. I ran into an audiophile manufacturer at an audio show that told me this was the best sounding hard drive in his testing and only used these in his products. I asked him which drives he tested. I told him who I worked for and some of the disk drives were the same exact drive, just different labels on them. We made drives that others rebranded with their logos. There is only a few manufacturers that make hard drives but there are dozens of manufacturers labels on them.

I work as freelancer for one of the leading pharma companies, actually all those white round pills they sell are the same and are made by just one contract manufacturer, they just put a different label on them and insert a suitably altered package insert to go with it. FDA EMA and PMDA are in on this scam.

 

Did you at all read ANY part of the background on this topic?

[MarcelNL]

Let's continue with some ON Topic;  when using the dual Xeon Sage MB ,how do folks use the femto drive for OS? stuck on a PCIe adapter or on the M.2 slot that is only connected via the chipset?

 

I have the Asus Hyper card on the way so I can try both, but I'm lazy ;-)

[MarcelNL]

37 minutes ago, NewOldman said:

OS on Pci-e adapter in slot 2,

Delock Products 89370 Delock PCI Express x4 Card > 1 x internal NVMe M.2 Key M 80 mm - Low Profile Form Factor

And ASUS Hyper-x card  for music in slot 6

 

and dont forget to settings Pci-e settings in Bios as Data under pci-e slot settings

 

thanks for THAT pointer!

 

I have not even begun to go trough the many BIOS optios so it probably would have taken a day or two to figure that out!

 

 

[MarcelNL]

it's not as if we can change a lot inside the memory cache of a CPU but we can select CPU's for sonic merit and we do, same with RAM memory.

It's not until a system gets to a fairly high spec that the differences between hard drives etc become apparent, switching to NVME and switching off SATA controllers or even adding an external LPSU to an SSD can be heard fairly soon in the process.

 

 

[MarcelNL]

On 1/5/2024 at 8:56 PM, NewOldman said:

OS on Pci-e adapter in slot 2,

Delock Products 89370 Delock PCI Express x4 Card > 1 x internal NVMe M.2 Key M 80 mm - Low Profile Form Factor

And ASUS Hyper-x card  for music in slot 6

 

and dont forget to settings Pci-e settings in Bios as Data under pci-e slot settings

 

Now that I got everything working I'm wondering why you's put the OS and data NVME's in the slots for CPU2 ?

Do you run OS on CPU 2 and the player program on CPU1 (so the output PCIe card comes in slot 3 or 5 ?