Playback drive drive

[stefanobilliani]

Hi all ,

Would be of any interest or somehow good to "build" a music disk , formatted in the more convenient mode , with the files by the Playback Drive copied from time to time ? Then play them as "conventional" music files , not giving the work to XXHighEnd at each playlist load  ?



stefano

[PeterSt]

Okay, at least I don't understand.
Maybe rewrite this in a complete different fashion ?
haha

PS: When this is about the time needed for XXHighEnd to prepare things … that would be maybe 5 seconds for an album. Say 10.
Worth the trouble ? (whatever it is you exactly mean)

[manisandher]

Yep, I'm also confused by what Stefano posted.

But FWIW, I'm hoping to try the 'Playback Drive' feature later this week, comparing a 'fast' HDD vs. a 'very fast' SSD as the playback drive.

No one should underestimate the importance of this feature. I believe once more people use it, it will prove once and for all that the location of the music files is of utmost importance in SQ. 'Copy to XX drive' already shows this, but I think using a dedicated playback drive to provide more consistent results.

Mani.

[stefanobilliani]

Yes that is a bit confusing . I should just have asked ( out of curiosity ) if the files that goes into the "playback drive " are exactly the same as the ones from the music disk. But I am not sure I want to know , since I like what I hear now ( that my PC is rebuilded ) . And I like the feature .

:-)

stefano

[PeterSt]

Any file which is to be converted is not the same anyway of course. But no difference there regarding the "Copy to XXDrive" feature. This Playback Drive though, indeed like Mani suggests, also implies the same location. This is not just "that disk" because quite some more has to be arranged for before that happens (can happen). So this is all in there.

Don't confuse this with the fact that the Playback Drive - as a physical medium - can also have a sound on its own. So the feature is two-folded :
1. Same location;
2. You can chose what you like best, up to an microflash card etc. Once you (eh, we !) found the best, the sound should be consistent.

Regards,
Peter

[manisandher]

... I'm hoping to try the 'Playback Drive' feature later this week, comparing a 'fast' HDD vs. a 'very fast' SSD as the playback drive.

I've just installed two new drives into Le Monster - an OCZ Vertex 4 and an old HDD I had lying around. I've just initialized both volumes (GPT and 64K) and am in the process of creating two simple volumes & formatting. Once this is all done (in next 30 minutes or so) I'll start comparing them. I'll report findings later this evening...

(I may throw a USB pendrive into the mix if I can be bothered.)

(Incidentally, I have two fanless power supplies fitted in Le Monster. One is dedicated to the mobo & CPU, the other to the  HDDs, the SSD and the optical drive. When I have the inclination, I might try powering the whole PC from just one PS and see if there is any degradation in SQ.)

Mani.

[Scroobius]

For what its worth for the playback drive I tried a USB stick first and now I using a dedicated drive on one of my SATA discs that also happens to have all the music on it but of course on another dedicated drive of the same disc. The SQ is better than with the USB stick on this system (and the music loads quicker) - I will try other combinations at some point.

P

[manisandher]

OK, I've just compared a few different scenarios and here are my initial thoughts.

Drives:

C: 2.5 inch 300GB 15000rpm Raptor SATA II HDD (with W7 and XX)
E: two 3.5 inch 2TB 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda SATA III HDDs (3.7TB striped volume) with music
F: 2.5 inch 128GB Vertex 4 Sata III SSD
G: 3.5 inch 720GB 7200rpm Hitachi SATA II HDD

I had to use the command line to format the playback drives, F: and G: (as described in the XX online manual), otherwise they would not work.

Sound Quality:

My order of preference is:

1. playback drive G:
This really surprised me because this is just an old Hitachi drive I had lying around - nothing special about it at all. There is a sweetness to the sound that the others don't have. Instruments 'ring' and 'resonate' just as they do in real life.

2. music drive E:
Doesn't have quite the solidity or the sweetness of 1. A little 'harder' sounding. But otherwise very good.

3. W7/XX drive C: (copy to XX drive)
Very close in SQ to 2. Maybe a tad flatter.

4. playback drive F:
Another big surprise. Much flatter sounding than 1,2 and 3. Instruments/voices are no longer separated. It's one homogeneous wall of sound. Hard to follow the music and really 'get into it'.

I'm quite disappointed. I have loads of SSDs lying around and bought this one specifically for playback duties. I'm beginning to think that SSDs just don't have any role in high-end audio. So my advice to everyone is to get hold of a cheap HDD and give 'playback drive' a go.

Mani.

[juanpmar]

I had to use the command line to format the playback drives, F: and G: (as described in the XX online manual), otherwise they would not work.

Hey Mani, I´m going to format my drives to see if this way I can avoid the stops I have now playing with Allow Phase Alignment and SFS 2. Now I have my drives formated as NTFS but with blocksize of 4096 bytes. Peter recommends NTFS with 64 KB blocksize.

I don´t understand the way explained in the manual, so far I formated the drives with a right click in the drive => Format and there I can choose the file system and the blocksize. Is it not valid this way to format the drive?.

Do I have to format all the drives, I mean the one with the OS and XX plus the ones with music, or just the ones with the music files?

Best regards, Juan

[PeterSt]

I don´t understand the way explained in the manual, so far I formated the drives with a right click in the drive => Format and there I can choose the file system and the blocksize. Is it not valid this way to format the drive?.

Yea, but I don't understand what problem you are trying to describe. Unless you meant "can not choose" (see bold text in quote).
I don't know myself whether you can denote the block size by means of the way you described;
I always go to Rightclick on Computer (in Explorer), Manage, and then Storage - Disk Management.
In there you can do all (you can destroy all as well ).

Regards,
Peter


PS: I added a section "Blocksize" to that piece of manual.

[juanpmar]

I don´t understand the way explained in the manual, so far I formated the drives with a right click in the drive => Format and there I can choose the file system and the blocksize. Is it not valid this way to format the drive?.

Yea, but I don't understand what problem you are trying to describe. Unless you meant "can not choose" (see bold text in quote).

What I don´t understand is the way to format the disk as it is explained in How to let XXHighEnd format a Volume (more advanced) http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2086.0

What I said is that I always format the drives the way I have described in the post. As in this way to format doesn´t appear those Hidden Folders I wasn´t sure if I was formatting the drive correctly.

What I also wanted to know is if I must format with NTFS 64Kb blocksize also the drive where the OS and XX are (now it is NTFS 4096 bytes). Of course in this case I´ll have to make a new installation of both, the OS and XX.

Regards,
Juan

[PeterSt]

Juan,

What I also wanted to know is if I must format with NTFS 64Kb blocksize also the drive where the OS and XX are.

No. But didn't you read that (new) section ? Edit : So the answer is NO.

NOTICE that this is all totally unrelated to how the Playback Drive is formatted. So, the formatting you might apply to that as the solution to it containing hidden files with no rights to is, is only to make it accessible by XXHighEnd. So no worries there.


Lastly keep in mind :
It is you and only you who wants the glitchless playback outside the usage of the Playback Drive. This is all right of course, but personally I wouldn't bother and certainly would not be obsessed about it. And honestly, most probably I too may get "glitches" when not using the Playback Drive. So, I do for maybe half a year now, and this was before Phase Alignment was developed. I never even tried without Playback Drive.
So, there may be something in it that when you have all right (glitchless - and one sample missing is not that), that SQ might improve. But to reformat all my music disks and all the copying an stuff ? not for me (easy to say while I already have that OK  ).


You should concentrate on the "plops" at Start/Stop ! And that is totally unrelated to the glitches you receive without Playback Drive. That is buffer size stuff in combination with the SFS.

Kind regards,
Peter

[manisandher]

Hi Juan, I think you should try to format the playback drive in the way you describe first. And then try it. It may work fine.

If it hasn't been formatted the way XX wants, you'll just get an error. In this case, you will have to use the command line and input format E: /fs:exFAT /q (taking E: as an example drive). BUT... I found that I had to run the command line in Administrator mode. To do this, I did a search for 'cmd.exe' in the Start menu and then created a shortcut for it on the desktop. I think went into Properties for the shortcut and set 'run as Administrator'. The format then seemed to work fine.

I have no idea what block size is created when you format from the command line but the drive definitely works OK as a playback drive.

Peter may have his own views, but quite honestly, I wouldn't go to the bother of reformatting the OS/XX drive just for a bigger block size if using playback drive solves any playback problems you currently have. If it doesn't, then maybe consider it.

HTH.

[PeterSt]

One more thing :

You said you also hear ticks at changing the volume. Now careful :

These fairly small ticks are a bug in the program IF you hear them later than the volume changes. Actually they happen on SFS boundaries. So, that is unavoidable. BUT :
When you hear them at Start and Stop, it is logic (to me) that you hear them at the exact volume change point as well. So in that case you will hear two anomalies : one time at exact volume change which will be a somewhat louder plop, and after that (can be 10 seconds or more later easily) a less loud more "tick".

Peter

[manisandher]

Peter, is there any theoretical reason that a faster playback drive (e.g. 10K SATA III vs. 7.2K SATA II) should sound better?

My super fast new SSD sounds bad, and my old Hitachi HDD very good and I just wondered whether I should think about getting a faster HDD for playback drive duties.

Mani.