bgentry
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2014
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I've been wondering for a while about what would happen if you put a USB DAC on the same hub with one or more hard drives and then did heavy reads and writes with the drive or drives. I tried this recently with my Macbook Pro, with USB2 ports and a Sound Blaster external "sound card". After a minute or two, I got a complete disconnect of the DAC. With repeated experiments I was always able to make the DAC disconnect (no sound) but sometimes it would come back after I stopped the drive activity.
Fast forward a little bit and I've been investigating USB 3 options for my Macbook Pro (2011 model that only has two USB 2.0 ports and ZERO USB 3 ports). I've found a Thunderbolt to USB 3 (and ESATA) adapter from Kanex that gets good reviews, so I ordered one and started playing with it today.
I've been using this adapter (it only has one USB 3 port) plugged into a USB 3 hub (by Anker), along with 3 external drives. One of the drives has been copying files to and from itself for many many hours now, chugging along at a pretty good speed. The other drives have variously been read and written with large files for dozens of gigabytes at a time. I've also used a drive speed testing utility (Black Magic Design Disk Test) to hit all three drives at different times.
For several hours now I've been listening to a Schiit Modi 2 plugged into that same USB hub with no audio issues at all!
A few minutes ago I realized that I've been using only USB 3 drives. So I just plugged in an older USB 2 drive and started doing a large transfer to that drive. Meanwhile the other drive continues it's mega huge copy. Then I fired up the disk testing program and aimed it at the third drive. Still the audio plays with no problems at all.
Audio continues playing as we speak with two drives doing copies at the same time. I'm satisfied.
This configuration is pretty rock solid. Great transfer speeds and no audio issues, all on the same port.
I just thought someone here might want to know about some combination of this hardware. I tried researching it before I bought the adapter, but I couldn't really find a definitive test, even an informal one like this.
Brian.
Fast forward a little bit and I've been investigating USB 3 options for my Macbook Pro (2011 model that only has two USB 2.0 ports and ZERO USB 3 ports). I've found a Thunderbolt to USB 3 (and ESATA) adapter from Kanex that gets good reviews, so I ordered one and started playing with it today.
I've been using this adapter (it only has one USB 3 port) plugged into a USB 3 hub (by Anker), along with 3 external drives. One of the drives has been copying files to and from itself for many many hours now, chugging along at a pretty good speed. The other drives have variously been read and written with large files for dozens of gigabytes at a time. I've also used a drive speed testing utility (Black Magic Design Disk Test) to hit all three drives at different times.
For several hours now I've been listening to a Schiit Modi 2 plugged into that same USB hub with no audio issues at all!
A few minutes ago I realized that I've been using only USB 3 drives. So I just plugged in an older USB 2 drive and started doing a large transfer to that drive. Meanwhile the other drive continues it's mega huge copy. Then I fired up the disk testing program and aimed it at the third drive. Still the audio plays with no problems at all.
Audio continues playing as we speak with two drives doing copies at the same time. I'm satisfied.
This configuration is pretty rock solid. Great transfer speeds and no audio issues, all on the same port. I just thought someone here might want to know about some combination of this hardware. I tried researching it before I bought the adapter, but I couldn't really find a definitive test, even an informal one like this.
Brian.
