[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

There are a few people in this thread that are trying to help you troubleshoot the problem which you are simply ignoring.

Stop being so angry and start with the troubleshooting ***.

 

[gabe-kai]

@Joe Bloggs offer is a good one, and may lead you to an overall boost to the performance of not just your audio, but your entire computer.
 
The difference you are describing is most likely coming from the connection between the external hard drive array and the computer itself, and if it's such a huge difference it is very likely that you're seeing degraded performance in many areas related to data transfers from that external drive array.
 
If the drive array connects to your computer by USB, it could be getting some interference from other USB devices (or really any current) on the same bus, or from any high powered electronics or radio equipment nearby to the cable itself. When your computer copies a file from the external hard drive to any other storage device it does some error checking, and will ask the hard drive to keep sending the file until the destination is sure it has it perfect. Sending this data repeatedly can take a lot of extra time. However, when that data is going directly to a program such as your audio player that error checking is not necessarily enforced by the computer's operating system and it's possible that many more data errors get through.
 
This can easily mean degraded sound quality.
More importantly, it can mean degraded quality in pretty much every application that uses data from that drive array.
It's possible that a better-shielded data cable (or at least higher quality connectors) can make a significant difference to the drive's operation performance.
 
Good cable management (keeping your various power and data cables neatly coiled and separated as much as possible, not tangled around each other) makes a measurable difference in network and USB data transfers.
If you become interested in testing it look up "drive benchmark tool" on google to find several tools that can help you test this.

 

[jiiteepee]

It's easy task to check if there is any data loss/change in transfer no matter was it USB or Network (or any) path in question.

 

[willowbrook]

I thought this was an April fools thread

 

[Fabithierry]

Some hardcore audiophiles say that they can hear differences between moving and not moving the mouse. So...

 

[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

Didn't that happen in the P2\P3 era?

You would move your mouse and you heard a squeal\buzzing through the onboard sound?

 

[XenHeadFi]

Didn't that happen in the P2\P3 era?

You would move your mouse and you heard a squeal\buzzing through the onboard sound?

Still happens now due to not enough isolation of the analog audio outputs. I can hear one of my computers "working" through the headphone jacks, but not another even though their motherboards are siblings. Switching to USB or Digital/SPDIF eliminates that kind of noise.

 

[jiiteepee]

Some hardcore audiophiles say that they can hear differences between moving and not moving the mouse. So...

 
 

Didn't that happen in the P2\P3 era?

You would move your mouse and you heard a squeal\buzzing through the onboard sound?

 
 

  Still happens now due to not enough isolation of the analog audio outputs. I can hear one of my computers "working" through the headphone jacks, but not another even though their motherboards are siblings. Switching to USB or Digital/SPDIF eliminates that kind of noise.

 
These are common issues but something else an what OP writes of.

 

[StrikeFreedom]

If you heard differences when switch hard drive from internal to external even changing brand or model.

It could be various reason.

First, most of the time, it's placebo. 

For external enclosure, if you insisted that some **** happened and you heard it, there are several cases that could make it actually happened. Such as;

- Ground (Earth) loops/No ground at all. This problem happened a lot in past but unlikely to happened in desktop these days. However, this **** happened a lot in Macbook/mini system. When it happened, you could heard god knows what noise from your speakers. It could be hum, static noise, motor noise or read head seeking noise. Some stupid audiophile or greedy audio shop would suggest you buy new hard drive that rotate at higher RPM so the motor makes noise at higher frequency and it's more inaudible.
- Introduce devices that has no/bad grounding to your system. It would cause ground loop. If you add devices using 2 prong power cord, you should test it by Volt meter. Disconnect your Raid enclosure USB cable from your desktop keep your desktop and Raid enclosure running and check if there are any differences in voltage between ground of your desktop and raid enclosure. If both are properly ground it should be around zero volt. A few volts "might" be tolerable. 
- Your RAID enclosure or some where in your connection are so ****ed up. For an example, poor ventilate cause hard drive to overheat, no vibration damping, using poor quality parts (eg., crystal oscillator, and so on.), or poor manufacturing (got defective one; cold soldering, and such). For USB, contaminate USB power could effect devices connect to its, too. However, these shouldn't happened in nowadays mobo.
- One or more of your device has stray voltage. FYI, in some system, using 2 prong power cord can cause this problem. And stray voltage can be as high as 78 Volts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7YUaYvcirU

For some enclosures that have poor ventilation, if they're using passive crystal which accuracy degraded when temperature raise, it's likely to have more jitter and "might" make sound slightly warmer and cloudier. 

For people who're using NAS, they're unlikely to have this problem because RJ-45 connector has built-in isolate transformer as its specification requires so.

P.S.
I don't heard any **** differences when playing songs from hard drive plug into USB3 dock. However, in my acquaintance MacBook system has similar problem. You should know why by watching video clip, I posted. 

 

[ajreynol]

The only difference I've ever noticed when playing music on internal vs external drives was popping and crackling caused by lag/insufficient buffer. Which can be a thing depending on the speed of your external drive (RPM) and the connection it's using to connect to your PC.
 
I'd definitely trouble shoot because something isn't right. Otherwise, sugar pills are stronk.

 

[StrikeFreedom]

  The only difference I've ever noticed when playing music on internal vs external drives was popping and crackling caused by lag/insufficient buffer. Which can be a thing depending on the speed of your external drive (RPM) and the connection it's using to connect to your PC.
 
I'd definitely trouble shoot because something isn't right. Otherwise, sugar pills are stronk.

My acquaintance, whom I mentioned, also had that problem. Instead of adjust buffer size in Music player (He using Audirvana), he said USB is not good/fast enough for Music playback so he upgraded to Thunderbolt enclosure to suffer from ground loop. Then, HDD motor started to leak noise to speakers. And here come a weird idea, each brand or model of HDD have different sound. Therefore, upgraded normal HDD to 10,000 rpm WD VelociRaptor to fix the problem.

And he claimed that 10,000 rpm WD VelociRaptor is the best HDD for Audiophile. I wonder what would happened if he have a chance to try 15K RPM SAS HDD. 

I would say that he is physical manifestation of Dunning-Kruger effect and I would rather let he wasting more money for his stupidity than give him an explanation. Because he wouldn't listen anyway.
 

 

[Duncan]

You guys would have a brilliant time with my setup...

1 x M2, 2 x SSD, 1 x WD Black, 1 x Seagate internal, 1 x WD external and 3 x different sized / specced Seagate externals...