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Article: USB 4.0 Is A No-Go, For Now


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I bet that we should have realized all three brands were coming from the same country, maybe in some cases someone over there could feel very so free to claim just about anything without the burden of proof?

Heck, Yottamaster turned out to be nothing more than a trademark of Orico to begin with

 

https://trademarks.justia.com/877/93/yottamaster-87793446.html

 

In other words, we've gotta know what the deal is by now.

 

BTW, the stringent requirements of USB 4.0 turned out to require some kinda certification / compliance etc. in order to achieve 40Gbps for real

 

https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/D2T1-2 - USB4 Compliance and Certification.pdf

https://www.techadvisor.com/test-centre/accessories/best-thunderbolt-4-usb4-cables-3802567/

 

Or maybe only the cables would require that certification from Intel or something?

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NOTE:  ALL ANECDOTAL...NO SPEED TESTING PERFORMED.

 

I salvaged a couple of 512GB Samsung NVME OEM drives from a laptop that could not withstand a quick shower.  I put them in different housings (I can look them up if need be) and have USB-C connectors.  Off the top of my head...I have no idea of the specifications they "adhere" to...but they seem pretty quick.  Quick enough that I use my myriad of spinning drives (1.5 TB to 4 TB) to store stuff I may never see or use again.

 

No surprise to me that the USB 4 spec is out with no hardware available.  If the chip shortage is sidelining F150s no one wants spend fab space on geeky stuff.

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Ouch, I forgot to ask if Chris were having any Thunderbolt 3 cables so that switching to JHL7440 might give us an idea of how close one could get to that 2,800MB/sec (theoretical) limit

 

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/68484-thunderbolt-on-the-m1-mac-mini/

Quote

Wow, that’s unlike any other Thunderbolt-equipped Mac I’ve ever used. System Report indicates that there are two Thunderbolt buses, one for each of the Thunderbolt ports!! This means that each port has its own dedicated bus and doesn’t have to share its bandwidth with any other port. Each one will have 2,800 MB/sec all to itself. I was a bit skeptical and wanted to test this to be certain.

 

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52 minutes ago, jcbenten said:

NOTE:  ALL ANECDOTAL...NO SPEED TESTING PERFORMED.

 

I salvaged a couple of 512GB Samsung NVME OEM drives from a laptop that could not withstand a quick shower.  I put them in different housings (I can look them up if need be) and have USB-C connectors.  Off the top of my head...I have no idea of the specifications they "adhere" to...but they seem pretty quick.  Quick enough that I use my myriad of spinning drives (1.5 TB to 4 TB) to store stuff I may never see or use again.

 

No surprise to me that the USB 4 spec is out with no hardware available.  If the chip shortage is sidelining F150s no one wants spend fab space on geeky stuff.

There is some USB 4 hardware out there, but not much.  OWC sells a couple of Docking station things.  I am sure there are others.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, bobfa said:

I am using the  OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 as a DAS.  I have a 2TB NVME drive in one of the top bays and an 18TB Spinner in the lower bay.  Now the spinner is SATA so that is the bottleneck.  Note that the NVME in my ThunderBay is a two year old drive from the Samsung external T5 drive case.

 

NOTE I changed the fan in the ThunderBay to something a lot quieter.  Still hear the HD tick !!!

IMG_0954.thumb.jpeg.2c0f26d907c20fbb17884955112eab8f.jpeg

 

 

The M1 Mac mini has two Thunderbolt Ports and busses Each port is USB 4 with Thunderbolt 4 that can split out into two busses each.  I have one hooked to my 4k Display and the other to the ThunderBay.:

994206050_ScreenShot2021-08-05at11_35_34AM.thumb.png.e3402881b7513c39e038dc53c4b87d26.png1564591917_ScreenShot2021-08-05at11_35_41AM.thumb.png.34c359c655afbee4abb988ecd84b261d.png

 

 

 

This is the internal drive:

924581073_ScreenShot2021-08-05at11_29_42AM.thumb.png.fdc76873b963a85699700f95727c4e7a.png

This is the NVME in the Thunderbay:

310350052_ScreenShot2021-08-05at11_30_29AM.thumb.png.6464f4386a0db13756461e446564b637.png

 

This is the NAS spinner in the Thunderbay:

172193664_ScreenShot2021-08-05at11_31_17AM.thumb.png.720260b14d63a890051ab00f374daf12.png

 

 

Bob, can I use this as an excuse to buy this for when my SO asks why I need it?  

 

But honey, Bob has one!

No electron left behind.

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Simpler thing to do....

 

USB 3.0 hot swap cradle - SATA to USB. I have one and tested the transfer rate at 5 GB/S with a SATA 6 8 TB Spinning HD.

 

 

Thermaltake BlacX Duet - HDD docking station - SATA 6Gb/s - USB 3.0

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Perhaps I missed how long this has been a problem, but does windows index a drive similarly to the way MAC OS does? If so, could that be the problem? Otherwise, I am guessing it's Roon scanning the drive constantly as it watches for new files.

 

I just ordered one of these with 4 spinning drives for my Mac mini , the 16TB enterprise drive version because that's the smallest.  https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3SRE16.0S/

 

Thunderbolt should be fast enough.

 

edit: and I just realized your CAPS motherboard has thunderbolt connectors!

No electron left behind.

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2 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

Perhaps I missed how long this has been a problem, but does windows index a drive similarly to the way MAC OS does? If so, could that be the problem? Otherwise, I am guessing it's Roon scanning the drive constantly as it watches for new files.


Windows and Mac differ in how they index a drive, so what you’re thinking about is a possibility. If you were talking about a backup program there would be settings allowing the changes made by both file systems to remain intact so you wouldn’t be constantly adding Windows changes and subtracting MacOS changes, and vice versa. I have no idea what the Roon settings are “under the hood.”

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

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On 8/5/2021 at 10:38 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

At first I thought you were referring to the concept of using an optical USB4 cable for DAC isolation 😝

 

In the storage space for super high speed external NVME NAS we are seeing new NVME storage arrays connected by 100Gbe fiber for ... breathtaking speed

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46 minutes ago, Jud said:


Windows and Mac differ in how they index a drive, so what you’re thinking about is a possibility. If you were talking about a backup program there would be settings allowing the changes made by both file systems to remain intact so you wouldn’t be constantly adding Windows changes and subtracting MacOS changes, and vice versa. I have no idea what the Roon settings are “under the hood.”

 

I am only referring to what Mac OS does with Spotlight to enable search of files and such on the drives. I don't know anything much about windows and how it works.

No electron left behind.

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7 hours ago, jabbr said:

In the storage space for super high speed external NVME NAS we are seeing new NVME storage arrays connected by 100Gbe fiber for ... breathtaking speed

It make sense for a corporate environment, where many (maybe thousands) users need to access data, but I really don’t thing that this can be useful for an home environment where you access one file at a time … it seems like to buy a McLaren Senna to run around in courtyard …

Stefano

 

My audio system

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13 hours ago, stefano_mbp said:

It make sense for a corporate environment, where many (maybe thousands) users need to access data, but I really don’t thing that this can be useful for an home environment where you access one file at a time … it seems like to buy a McLaren Senna to run around in courtyard …

 

Well on one hand ... sure. On the other hand I've never been fond of the USB interface to store a music library, or for a storage array.

 

NVME has become popular for hanging fast storage on the PCIe bus and NVMEoF is extending the PCIe bus over the network ...

The reason this discussion is apropos to this thread is that Thunderbolt was envisioned as a way to extend the PCIe bus over a wire -- that's essentially the protocol. USB4 has merged thunderbolt and USB ... Thunderbolt has had disappointing motherboard support and really hasn't caught on ... 100Gbe NICs are already yesterday's news so I'm discussing two competing visions of how to extend the PCIe bus out of the box.

 

Sure, you can still just put your storage on a 1Tb USB thumbdrive and years ago no one could imagine that a home would need 1Tb or storage ... regarding speed, think virtualization, VR, holographics etc and why not at home?

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TLDR USB 3.1 USB C external drives with 2.5" SSDs can work quite well as a music store without lag using Roon. 

 

I recently moved my Roon Core install from my main PC (which is a beast) to an older Dell Workstation I had around (about 7 years old, but a Core i7 with 16GB). My music drive is a 4TB 2.5" Samsung 860 SSD.   I tried Ubuntu first, and that worked with the drive inside the machine on the SATA bus.   But I couldn't get my Windows machines to connect to drives I've shared from Ubuntu.  So instead I installed Roon server to make it a Rock, or Mock.  I was surprised that this worked perfectly without any customization or fiddling. And the shared drives show on every one of my devices without an issue (though the network paths are kind of convoluted and you can't change the name of the music directory to something easier).

 

I tried the SSD drive as both internal SATA and with a USB 3.1 USB C enclosure (connected to PC with USB A 3.1 cable to USB C into enclosure) There was no delay starting music tracks to my ears with either configuration.  I setup the SSD internally.  I have a houseguest staying with me that is a non-audiophile techie.  He without prompting told me he liked the sound better with the new setup. It was smoother and more relaxed.  I heard the same.   Since I use some Parametric EQ in Roon and I play a lot of higher rez files, there has always been a slight delay when starting and stopping tracks while that processing kicks in.  With the Mock, it is actually substantially decreased to be almost unnoticeable. That was a surprise.

 

I then setup a used 2TB Western Digital Blue SSD 2.5" drive in the USB C enclosure to be my video network drive.  This also works flawlessly with less lag than my previous PC internal hard drive.

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I'm a little confused by this article because the speed of the interface is not the source of the problem it's the spinning media.

 

If you put 16TB of Flash memory inside a USB 2.0 (480Mbps) enclosure you would see a massive speed up of your music library.

 

Spinning disks are orders of magnitude slower than Flash memory in terms of access time and latency.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thermal Throttling:  SSDs often slow down after writing some amount of continuous data because they overheat, which triggers their firmware to slow down the transfer rate.  To observe this, you can let the SSD speed test run for several minutes.  It's easy to do that with the Blackmagic app, which simply repeats the 5GB write and read tests until you stop it.

 

My Oyen Helix Dura 2TB external drive has 950 MB/s write speed for the first 3 minutes, then drops to about half that.  I just ordered from Costco a similar SanDisk drive that, according to reviews, suffers less thermal throttling.  I'll find out.  Both are USB 3.2 Gen 2.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

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