Yep! I have my music on a NAS, but I host it as an NFS share and rsync music library from the NAS to an NVMe drive on my Roon Server and the performance is great.
You can play music off a CD, which must be slowest storage device on any computer that doesn't still have an antique floppy drive.
On the other hand, having one's OS and programs on an SSD makes a huge difference. And I keep my current photos on it too for speed of access/saving when post-processing. But music: no.
...
... OK, so I am using WD Black, which is nippy for HDDs. But only, really, Why-because-I-could. And my root filesystem was on one before I went SSD for that.
Even with a top of the line consumer HDD, you're most likely to achieve a max transfer of 120 MB/s, and slower with DB I/O. SSDs on SATA can reach ~550 MB/s. NVMe drives can vary a lot, but modern drives of mine are ~3000 MB/s.
Doesn't a garden variety FLAC actually play at less than the stated bitrate, at around 900 kbps on avg?
Honestly wondering why an SSD would sound better, or does this have to do with the tech of platter drives?
Or something more akin to the recent speakers thread about more power (past the threshold even of the speakers top rating) equaling better sound sometimes?
It isn't about the sound quality for me, but is more related to performance of accessing Roons DB for a smoother experience. The DB and app I/O is what benefits.
I don't see any sound quality or performance differences if I keep the DB and app on an SSD and just add my spinning disk NAS locations to Roon for the music.
I let my NAS disks sleep most of the time, and don't want to wake the spinning disk if it is not needed, so that's why I rsync my library to the Roon server.
Technically, all content from storage devices is loaded into RAM before it is worked on by any software, so the actual playing or streaming will always be done from the RAM, not from the disk.
As spinning disks are known for generating lots of electrical noise, I could imagine a benefit in SQ, though, if the DAC is directly connected to the Roon core.
Really, I think "imagine" is the right word there.
Mind you, old HDDs used to make a noticeable amount of physical noise.
But in the depths of the machine (or the internet) it really is all data. Just data. I know some audiophools just hate the idea of just ones and zeros. Tough shit.
Bitrates, electrical noise, and physical noise aside, the performance drop I noticed right away is library management. Thousands of albums and their metadata need faster I/O than playing lossless content.
Read these "rules" AND introduce
yourself before your first post
Being true to what the artists intended
(opinion / entertainment piece)
Comments on Profile Post by dubharmonic