[bixby]

  Okay, I might be going craze. I just noticed this out of nowhere on my two Apple devices.
 
1) iMac Late 2009 - Lion - spinning hard drive 1 TB
 
2) Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2012 - solid state 500 GB
 
Both running the same Audirvana Plus 1.5.10 via the same setup, cables, phones etc. I had music on both their internal memory and avoided my external drives for both.
 
I swear music sounds cleaner through my Macbook pro. The iMac sounded almost blurred and noisy. I'm not sure if it's because it's Lion vs. Mountain Lion, or music stored on a spinning hard drive vs solid state, or maybe something else?
 
Anyone else experience this or have an explanation for it (besides me going crazy)?

My experience is that Mountain Lion was a noticeable upgrade in sound vs Lion.  Also the SS drive should sound a bit better than the internal standard HD.  I have found through extensive experimentation that playing music via an external drive hooked up via ethernet to an airport extreme USB drive to give the "best" sound in  my system.
 
And no I will not respond to anyone who says it cannot be, it does sound better in my system.  Link 

 

[tagosaku]

  My experience is that Mountain Lion was a noticeable upgrade in sound vs Lion.  Also the SS drive should sound a bit better than the internal standard HD.  I have found through extensive experimentation that playing music via an external drive hooked up via ethernet to an airport extreme USB drive to give the "best" sound in  my system.
 
And no I will not respond to anyone who says it cannot be, it does sound better in my system.  Link 

does this mean that your external HD is read via Wi-Fi then fed into external DAC via USB cable? 
And it sounds better than both external HD and DAC connected to MAC via USB cables? 
 
And thanks a lot for the link, it is way beyond me but was still fun to try follow

 

[bixby]

  does this mean that your external HD is read via Wi-Fi then fed into external DAC via USB cable? 
And it sounds better than both external HD and DAC connected to MAC via USB cables? 
 
And thanks a lot for the link, it is way beyond me but was still fun to try follow

I'll try to explain.  Wifi and Bluetooth are off in the mac mini as it causes noise in the system.  The hard drive is 2TB and is hooked up to the USB port of the Airport Extreme router.  The music flows from the external USB drive to the Airport Extreme router then over Ethernet to the Mac Mini via a 30 foot CAT 6 ethernet cable.  No latency issues since the track is read very quickly into memory of the music player on the Mac.  (Currently J River which I am testing but previously Audirvana Plus.)
 
This solution is noticeably better sounding in my system than either Firewire or USB drives directly connected to the Mini.  And much better than files played from the spinning drive in the mini.
 
hope that helps.

 

[Zoom25]

Hmmm, what about using SD cards or USB flash drives connected directly to Macbook pro, instead of hard disk drives?

 

[tagosaku]

bixby,
 
thanks, yes I can picture it now. But can't say I understand. Very interesting though
 
Zoom,
 
if you ever do that experiment, please post result.
 
So far I prefer Tohisba external HD to U32 Shadow - both 1T version - have not tried other types of storage. 

 

[Zoom25]

I'll definitely report back. I have a 64 GB flash drive on me atm. I have two portable USB 3.0 hard drives. One of them being a 750 GB Hitachi and the other is a 2TB Western Digital.
 
I was connecting the Source directly to one of the Macbook pro's USB port. The other two hard drives are connected to a 4 slot USB 3.0 hub. Then that hub is connected to the other USB port of the Macbook pro. The hub also runs on it's own power supply via wall wart.
 
The only thing I don't have at the moment is a SD card. I am looking to get a USB flash drive or preferably a SD card (so I can keep it stored inside the Macbook pro without it protruding out). Looking at a high performance 128 GB or 256 GB solution.
 
I'll try out the various combination and report them.

 

[bixby]

  Hmmm, what about using SD cards or USB flash drives connected directly to Macbook pro, instead of hard disk drives?

slightly worse sounding than external hard drives in my experience with the mini

 

[Zoom25]

  slightly worse sounding than external hard drives in my experience with the mini

Wow. I was expecting the SD card at least to sound better than hard drives consider it's so small and shouldn't use much power.

 

[tagosaku]

Maybe this should be moved to something like 'storage rolling' thread
And it might actually belong to 'dedicated source' forum....

 

[bixby]

  Wow. I was expecting the SD card at least to sound better than hard drives consider it's so small and shouldn't use much power.

that is what I would have expected but it sounded thin and a bit hard by comparison to the external firewire drive I compared.

 

[NinjaHamster]

If we are going to start "rolling" Hard-Drives, the ones made in the 1940's,50's and 60's should sound best ... I'm off to look for a Telefunken SSD ... 

 

[65535]

Can we get some empirical data on any of these claims, or more information about perceived differences?

 

[Lohb]

How about an SSD in a Mac mini ? That was my next source system.
 
Any ETA on A+ V2 ?

 

[Zoom25]

  Can we get some empirical data on any of these claims, or more information about perceived differences?

 
I would love to get some as well or even explanations. In my case I have at least three different variables between iMac and Macbook Pro acting at the same time, so it's hard to do it in a  controlled setting. Not to mention I don't have any devices to record what I'm noticing.
 
1) SSD vs HDD
 
2) Power supply differences
 
3) Lion vs. Mountain Lion
 
Regarding sound differences I personally noticed, it sounds cleaner and a bit more laid back because there's less going in (less noise?) which results in less fatigue and more dynamics. The more dynamics and punch could make sense as there's less auditory masking. As far as running signal detection experiments, it might not be the easiest to setup due to it's nature of taking a long time to fully realize the fatiguing effects (or lack of) of the two systems.

 

[Zoom25]

  How about an SSD in a Mac mini ? That was my next source system.
 
Any ETA on A+ V2 ?

Having recently added a DC-1 under my TV stand for home theatre, I was also considering adding a Mac Mini to finally finish it off as a standalone. I remember hearing something about upgrading power supply. I was recently reading Paul Gowan's (PS Audio) take on how to build a system around Mac Mini as a music server. He also talks a bit about this and I do remember him mentioning something about power supplies and the Mac Mini not having the best power supply (maybe that last part was from another article).
 
A+ 2.0 is still in testing. Damien hasn't released a date yet. Can't wait till it comes out though, it's been long overdue.