Quick(?) Playback Drive Question

[Jud]

I've been playing with XXHE running on Boot Camped Win7 on a MacBook Pro laptop in my main system.  Though I have a RAMdisk as Playback Drive in my desktop system, the laptop is limited to 8GB RAM, so I don't think a RAMdisk is a viable alternative. 

The music is on an external drive.  I use it as a Firewire Drive in OSX, but unfortunately Win7 refuses to recognize it over that connection, so it's hooked up as USB2.  (Though Boot Camp will run Win8, this particular mid-2009 MBP is limited to Win7.  And from experience with the desktop system, I doubt Win8 would do any better with Firewire anyway.  USB3 is out because - you guessed it - the MBP is limited to USB2.)

I am wondering whether setting up a partition on the MBP's internal SSD as a Playback Drive would make things better or worse?  If they might be better, is 10GB a reasonable size, or is there any reason it may need to be larger?

Thanks,

Jud

[PeterSt]

Jud,

Any Plaback Drive implies his own sound anyway, and trying it on the SSD might just as well work out for the better as for the worse. It is just for you to try out.
What's important though is the understanding that it is actually unrelated to your question. So, you can create a Playback Drive anywhere, as long as it is just that.

So ... create a partition on the SSD for it and have it a go.

But :

I think chances are fair it won't work at all. That is, if I understand it correctly that this is actually your OSX boot disk. I have, by accident, a same situation here, but it really needed tweaking to get it done. This is about
a. the Win partion on an OSX disk while the OSX disk won't let itself expand after all has been setup with Bootcamp (and sure not from the Windows side);
b. you can get it done through exFAT formatting IIRC which is compatible with Playback Drive usage.

Besides you can expect all sorts of problems with using it from XXHighEnd (you see soon enough whether it goes or not), it always hinders you during daily usage. Not every day maybe, but something can be the matter, and repairing it ... you will find yourself quite alone because nobody does these things, and when they try they fail to begin with.

So I wouldn't do it for these reasons ...
Peter


PS: But I never saw any problems with OSX.

PPS: What about a small USB hub ? that should work.

[Jud]

Jud,

Any Plaback Drive implies his own sound anyway, and trying it on the SSD might just as well work out for the better as for the worse. It is just for you to try out.
What's important though is the understanding that it is actually unrelated to your question. So, you can create a Playback Drive anywhere, as long as it is just that.

So ... create a partition on the SSD for it and have it a go.

But :

I think chances are fair it won't work at all. That is, if I understand it correctly that this is actually your OSX boot disk. I have, by accident, a same situation here, but it really needed tweaking to get it done. This is about
a. the Win partion on an OSX disk while the OSX disk won't let itself expand after all has been setup with Bootcamp (and sure not from the Windows side);
b. you can get it done through exFAT formatting IIRC which is compatible with Playback Drive usage.

I'll see whether I can't shrink the OSX partition a bit (there's quite a bit of unused room there, but I'd like to leave plenty of spare, which is why I asked the 10GB question) and install a new NTFS partition in the spare space.  Otherwise may use exFAT, though I could also experiment with making it another OSX partition - I've got a proggy installed from Paragon that allows Win7 RW access to OSX volumes, and perhaps it would allow XXHE to see an OSX partition as a viable playback drive?

PPS: What about a small USB hub ? that should work.

USB hub for better sound with USB2?  B/c my impression at least was the 2009 MBP has no ports that will do USB3 on a hardware level.  Or did you mean something else?

[PeterSt]

You can't predict in advance how anything will sound. Can be USB2 just the same. It will be more slow though.

I forgot to answer the 10GB question :
Think how large an album can be, or better : how large all the tracks of your Playlist Area will be when played in one go, in expanded form (! - thus WAV).
10GB is then a little overdone, although a couple of 192KHz hires albums will imply that.

Peter

[Jud]

I forgot to answer the 10GB question :
Think how large an album can be, or better : how large all the tracks of your Playlist Area will be when played in one go, in expanded form (! - thus WAV).
10GB is then a little overdone, although a couple of 192KHz hires albums will imply that.

Peter

I do have the Avison Ensemble's Vivaldi Concerti Opus 8 (includes The Four Seasons), 36 tracks in 192/24, so maybe 15-20GB?!  I have the space anyway....