will transfering your data over esata improve sound??

music: probably not, the transfer speed of usb should be sufficient for most music files.

hd video: maybe in rare cases where the video is of a very large size and quality such that it would be choppy over usb, i've never run into one before though.

no on both - esata is the powered version of the internal sata

usb2 is fast enough for music and BR video, if you lag in BR its just the processing side, not the data transfer

I could see choppy video happening with a USB connection as it is transferred to the RAM... happens to me some times, takes a few seconds for my PC to figure it out.

Increasing picture or sound quality: No, I don't think so, as digital content is all transferred completely ie: nothing is lost by using a different cable, unless there is a short somewhere, in which case it probably wouldn't work at all.

eSATA can handle HD video, even 1080i and 1080p. That's why it's use for DVR. But for music, the transfer rate of USB 2.0 is good enough. There is buffering involved. Neither should affect the quality of audio.

if you're willing to believe in voodoo magic, the idea is that a spinning HDD will increase the EMI/RFI within the computer case and will also increase the PSU ripple and get its ground dirtier...than say a NAS or a SSD. These are easily verifiable facts, but how much they affect a S/PDIF signal is debatable.

if you wanna get into the tin foil rabbit hole, here's a great PDF: http://photos.imageevent.com/cics/v03theartofbuildingcomputertrnsp/The%20art%20of%20building%20Computer%20Transports%20v0.3.pdf

you choose how extreme you wanna go, I personally enjoyed a lot of his fantastic advices...but sometimes he's really over the top, hah.

Glad its working better - from a transfer rate - esata stomps usb2 all over the place and leaves it broken and confused...its just not widely supported so I tend to dump things on a usb stick.

Technically USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 are capable of handling up to 200 channels of red book CD quality audio audio simultaneously.

Even allowing for  50%  margin of error they will easily cope with 25 channels at 192/24. Which co-incidently is what the leading products from the likes of RME, MOTU and Focusrite are designed to handle.

If you are experiencing problems handling regular stereo I/O (even on old USB 1.1 devices ) then you need to look at other possible causes. Perhaps your PC is incorrectly set up or has been poorly maintained.

If you need to transfer very high volume of audio or video data over medium to long distances Ethernet is best because the spec demends both ends are electronically decoupled from one another - although again science says that's not an issue unless something is already broken anyway.

Nothing wrong with using eSATA if you want though. Won't do any harm.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RockinCannoisseur 

i would have thought this, but since ive been using esata i havent had choppy  hd video, go figure,
and data transfer has been so much faster. thanks
 

very kool lee

thanks
 

I watch full 1080p movies on my CinemaTube media player, connected to a Seagate Black Armor external HDD via USB2.0 cable. Absolutely zero issues. No digital artifacts, no lag, no problems whatsoever.

If you want definitive improvements, replace your gear or improve your source (i.e. higher bit rate files). "Improvement" through cables, especially a digital one, are if anything, sidesteps and flavor changers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

if you're willing to believe in voodoo magic, the idea is that a spinning HDD will increase the EMI/RFI within the computer case and will also increase the PSU ripple and get its ground dirtier...than say a NAS or a SSD. These are easily verifiable facts, but how much they affect a S/PDIF signal is debatable

I can't say for sure which factors are involved, but when I took the hard drive out of my computer case and put everything on external e-SATA drive, powered by its own external power supply, sound quality improved to such a dramatic degree, it was quite remarkable.  The degree of difference was like going from a Sovtek 6922/6DJ8 to Amperex 7316PQ.

One of the points that was made over in computeraudiophile.com is to have your data streams separated from each other. Example being if you are running a USB DAC to use a different interface with your external music storage device (Firewire, Ethernet or eSata)  Many look for a micro ATX board with eSata, or add an eSata card to their systems just to have the speed of the eSata, and to have it separate from their DAC.

On my speaker system, I will have my NAS via wired ethernet from a Drobo server fed to a MacPro, then USB to a W4S Dac2 when it arrives next week.

Further plans will be for a MacMini music server with an attatched firewire storage device (backed up to the NAS), controlled with remote desktop and using either Remote on a iPod Touch, or yTrack on an iPad.  Either that or I will go back into the DIY PC scene again, and make a PC based server in a small fanless case.  I could get eSata in that, and be able to build to order better than with a MacMini.

Many comments that any additional speed given to data transfer "can" improve sound quality.  I personally believe in getting your music files out of the computer, and using the fastest interface you can use for that, as well as not "crossing the streams" to use an old Ghostbuster's term.