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Inferior sound from USB external drive?

166.147.104.165
Posted on October 20, 2014 at 09:12:07
bean
 A while ago, I repurposed an old Dell XP desktop as a music server. Added a Juli@ card for SPDIF coax out and installed JRiver. Trimmed down processes running on the PC. Sound was fine, and I was satisfied for my relatively modest system. BUT the old PC had a tiny HDD. No big deal, I added an external 1TB drive and created my library there blissfully ripping CDs

Soon, I was no longer satisfied. There was a glare/fog I just could not overcome. So, I either spun discs or used my laptop, which was better - but not great.

I tried one last time this weekend. I experimented with moving some files to the internal HDD. Eureka! A/B testing PC vs CD, no difference. Laptop with junked up operating system came in third. I am adding an internal drive to the PC - a bit convoluted with an adapter adding a SATA drive to an IDE board.

So, in my specific example, the external drive via USB degraded sound quality. Who knows why - maybe related to the age of the PC - but it did.

Go figure

(System = Marantz SA8004-> HH Scott 355-> DIY PP6B4G-> DIY JBL based horns)

 

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RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 20, 2014 at 10:37:22
audioengr
Manufacturer

Posts: 6017
Location: Oregon
Joined: April 12, 2001
 Dells are notorious for having poor I/O infrastructure. This is how they make them so cheap. They usually are the worst sounding of the computers for this reason IME.

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 20, 2014 at 10:58:46
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 I had an older XP machine with PCI slots and wanted to expand the number of internal hard drives. I got a new SATA to PCI card, but it turned out it was incompatible with my motherboard, due to different versions of PCI. Also, on older machines there may be problems with the BIOS ability to handle large drives. This is definitely the case if you try to go beyond 2 TB drives. My machine was a dead-end, no way to add more drives without a new controller and no way to add bigger drives without a new controller and no suitable controller that would work with the machine.

Hopefully, your machine isn't that ancient, but something to keep in mind. Good luck!

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 20, 2014 at 11:38:04
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 Can you add the drive thru a Sata, eSata, or IDE connector? Worth trying.

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 20, 2014 at 12:05:58
bean
 I am going to try an adapter that fits on the back of the SATA drive - see link below. Avoids the PCI card controller; will see how it works.

Going to use a 1TB Western Digital blue for now; it's cheap. Haven't got that much ripped yet.

Machine is old enough that I'll have to remove the floppy drive to get a free IDE slot

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 20, 2014 at 12:32:38
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 I am assuming that the existing hard drive on your old computer is small. You may well have problems with the BIOS that limit your use of the new hard drive. These may possibly even create the impression that the entire storage capacity is usable, leading to potential future data corruption when exceeding the actual limit. (It's been a few years since I investigated this situation, so I don't recall the details. But I know there's are real problems with some older gear and there are various size thresholds that, when crossed, can create problems. These may include drive size and volume size.)

Before loading any good files on your new drive, I would do some serious testing. First, I would do a full format, not a quick format. Second, if this succeeds, I would put lots of large files on the drive, enough to run out of space and verify that these write correctly without corruption. If these tests pass, then I would reformat the drive and start over. Alternatively, I would research the situation thoroughly, as there may be information about your specific configuration available or there may be quick diagnostic tests you can run to see what will happens.

In the end, I junked my machine. I even had to pay to junk it. :-( I didn't feel too bad, as the machine was truly ancient, having started out running Windows 98.

Another older Windows XP from 2001 had a hard drive failure and I replaced the hard drive with a much larger disk. It turned out that the BIOS for this machine would not support a single volume the size of the new drive, so I had to format two volumes. This machine still runs Windows XP, but ever slower due to application bloat. However, I have yet to get it to run a modern Linux distro. There seems to be a graphics driver problem...

Be prepared to junk your old machine and definitely be pleasantly surprised if you can get it to work.



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

*New* computers that already support SATA, posted on October 20, 2014 at 12:51:10
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37673
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 can be had dirt cheaply today. I retired a 2002 XP box four years ago with an i7-860 based box that screams. I just replaced the original 750 GB drive with a 2 TB drive that cost me the princely sum of $90. And I bought a second identical one for ghosting purposes.

I use a family of USB hard drives for backup purposes, but the transfer rate from them isn't nearly that of an internal SATA drive.

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 20, 2014 at 14:30:07
cfraser
Audiophile

Posts: 3208
Location: Pickering, Ontario
Joined: April 30, 2000
 Funny you posted this, I was going to ask a similar question here (re external USB drives possibly degrading SQ ?) but for a completely different type of infrastructure.

I am typing now on my oldest regularly-used PC, an '02/03 Dell XP box. I keep it in service because it has been flawless since new, and XP suits my taste for tinkering and is stable. I like Win7 on my other PCs and Win10 looks like it may be to my taste too.

Dell boxes typically make you jump through massive and time-consuming but not technically difficult hoops for anything that takes them away from their as-shipped config. Software is even worse re that than H/W is. IME.

My box has 2 SATA ports hidden away and totally unidentified in any Dell documentation I received. I recall noticing on the web that many of these old Dell XP box owners had no idea they had SATA ports, but most from ~'02 onwards do. Buried under cables probably. SATA I only, but the drives don't care, still 2-3 times faster than IDE in the same box typically (and many times faster than USB, even much more than the spec ratings would suggest).

You may need to update the BIOS (flashed in DOS IIRC) to use SATA drives properly if you have the ports. They are correct that 2TB will probably be your limit regardless.

I also recently bought some IDE<->SATA adapters that you can either plug into the back of the drives or into the IDE cable connector on the Mobo, depending which way you're going. Haven't needed or even tried them yet. They are supposedly good for at least 2TB drives, my/our limit anyway. I got them to convert a DVD writer to IDE so I could free up a mobo SATA port. Also got one of those USB->IDE/SATA adapters JIC the box fails or for playing around with with spare drives. Makes a raw drive into an (ugly) USB backup drive.

Still don't know about the SQ affect, but more (especially external, like for USB) adapters and cables and crap *can't* help with SQ, can they? That would be my guess...

 

RE: yeah, a new cheapo PC is my backup plan, posted on October 20, 2014 at 17:21:43
bean
 but by the time I added either a GOOD USB-SPDIF converter or a PCIe Juli@ card (the one I have is PCI), it's approaching $500. Need coax out to get 192/24 to the Marantz, USB only does 96.

$500 out of my already spent for the year audio budget. vs $60 out of the household budget to tweak the Dell

worth a shot

 

I find it difficult to believe , posted on October 20, 2014 at 17:42:35
JeffH
Audiophile

Posts: 4574
Location: Orange County, So Cal
Joined: April 5, 2000
 that it's solely because the USB HD. My USB HD sounds no different from my internal drive on my laptop. My system sounds super. Me thinks it's time for a new laptop and toss the old pc.

 

RE: I find it difficult to believe , posted on October 20, 2014 at 17:52:20
cfraser
Audiophile

Posts: 3208
Location: Pickering, Ontario
Joined: April 30, 2000
 Not sure there. IME, which is hardly all-encompassing, is that it's much easier to make a desktop sound good than a laptop. Or I could say: the typical desktop sounds better than the typical laptop. But I don't truly think that's a hard fact, just a limited observation. It's really hard to compare these things, they are all so specific to the individual setups, H/W and S/W, even packaging and internal physical layout make a diff (I think this latter is a big factor for the DT>LT thing). Just a thought...

However, for my particular "infrastructure", which I never did get around to mentioning since it's not my query: there is no audible diff to me between an external USB drive and an internal SATA drive. [I did the test rather than ask the Q, like I originally had in mind before just trying it.]

 

RE: I find it difficult to believe , posted on October 21, 2014 at 03:26:17
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 It is this kind of post that hinders discussion on better audio from PCs. You system is not his and so why not address possible causes and cures instead of just a blanket statement that you don't want to 'believe' it..

It is well known that Dells don't have good usbs. Why can't you take this in and accept this at face value?

 

RE: I find it difficult to believe , posted on October 21, 2014 at 07:57:25
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 > It is this kind of post that hinders discussion on better audio from
> PCs. You system is not his and so why not address possible causes
> and cures instead of just a blanket statement that you don't want to
> 'believe' it..

No. It's one person stating that in his system, it makes no difference. It does NOT hinder discussion. It's another viewpoint. Looks like cfraser, in the post before yours, says exactly the same thing.

That _is_ the discussion. Blindly accepting what you or someone else claims to be a known fact, is what hinders discussion.

 

RE: I find it difficult to believe , posted on October 21, 2014 at 08:49:18
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 What is it about this forum that a few inmates simply will not take another ones's post at face value?

What is blind about helping this guy instead of telling him that you don't believe him?

 

RE: I find it difficult to believe , posted on October 21, 2014 at 09:04:52
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 No, what is it about this forum that a few inmates get so rattled by anyone who dares to state a contrary viewpoint?

 

.No Rattling, posted on October 21, 2014 at 09:36:17
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 the guy says he doesn't believe it because he can't hear it in his system. So what?

I, and others, can and do hear differences and there are rational reasons for this.

What's your problem? and why should you want to deter guys like the original poster from seeking help?

 

Problem, posted on October 21, 2014 at 09:56:17
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 I see no deterrent to seeking help in any of the replies to the original poster.

Personally, I have no experience with USB hard drives' effects on SQ, but I certainly don't doubt your opinion. I can understand how it might affect sound quality in a PC based music server.

What I'm genuinely sorry about is that you and some others get so upset by anyone with a different opinion or different experiences than your own. That is a problem.

 

Let's get back on the topic of helping the OP fix his stuff...*, posted on October 21, 2014 at 10:01:49
Chris Garrett
Bored Member

Posts: 16675
Location: Miami, Florida
Joined: October 9, 1999
Contributor
  Since: June 19, 2000
 *



 

RE: yeah, a new cheapo PC is my backup plan, posted on October 21, 2014 at 10:31:44
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 PCI slots are still common on many motherboards, so it shouldn't be difficult to find one that can accept your existing card.

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 21, 2014 at 10:46:33
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 The WD Blue drives are 7200 RPM. If you haven't purchased the drive yet, you might be better off with a WD Green drive. At 5400 RPM, it will be both quieter and cooler.

You might also just take the drive you have out of its external enclosure. If it's a Western Digital, it's mostly likely a Green drive. Then again, if you don't have a backup of your music library, you can use that external drive for your backups.

If I'm not mistaken, you won't be able to place a hard drive on a floppy drive cable/header. IDE floppy headers and hard drive headers are two different animals, with different pin counts. But you should be able to place up to two drives on each IDE hard drive header (and on the same cable). Typically, most older computers had two such headers, so could handle up to four hard drives.

I've never used a SATA to IDE adapter, so don't know if it will cause issues here, as one drive on each IDE header has to be designated as a master, and the other as a slave. Back in the day, this was done via jumper on the drive itself.

 

RE: I figured this one would kick the beehive , posted on October 21, 2014 at 10:49:48
bean
 I didn't believe it could effect the sound either. But it does - ON MY OLD CRAPPY PC. I tossed it out there for comments, similar experiences and resolutions (or not), deep theological discussions, etc

Parts arrive Wednesday, I will report back on results by the weekend. Work permitting.

BTW, I have been here off and on at the asylum (under a monicker I deleted after an incident with a troll from Outside) since the earliest days in the late 90's. Learned a lot and built a nice system cheap. But nothing here bothers or surprises me anymore. I know what to expect. If I'm full of it, let me know.

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 21, 2014 at 11:04:16
bean
 Thanks for the tips. I counted three headers; one each for HD, floppy, and optical. I am pretty sure the new version of the adapter has a switch, so I could probably put it on the HD header

I could pull the optical drive instead if needed. I don't rip on this machine

PC is stuffed in a vintage console, fan/drive sound not an issue

 

RE: I figured this one would kick the beehive , posted on October 21, 2014 at 12:16:50
Old Listener
Audiophile

Posts: 2090
Location: SF Bay area
Joined: February 6, 2005
 It is certainly not a universal observation that playing music from an external drive produces quite different sound.

> I didn't believe it could effect the sound either.
> But it does - ON MY OLD CRAPPY PC.

So tell us some details about your "OLD CRAPPY PC".

PC Make and model for a start.
CPU make and model.
amount of RAM.
size of hard drive.
OS and version (for example Windows XP SP2)




my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/

 

Good Thread For Me, posted on October 21, 2014 at 17:31:29
Awe-d-o-file
Dealer

Posts: 21037
Location: 50 miles west of DC
Joined: January 10, 2004
 My SB server died as I posted. I'm going to find a new to me few year old machine w/7 and SATA drives. I'll ghost or back up to something either internal or USB. I guess internal will be cheaper and easier.


ET
ET

"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936

 

RE: Good Thread For Me, posted on October 21, 2014 at 17:49:00
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 > My SB server died as I posted. I'm going to find a new to me few year
> old machine w/7 and SATA drives. I'll ghost or back up to something
> either internal or USB. I guess internal will be cheaper and easier.

Yes, a bare internal drive will generally be a little cheaper, although probably not by a lot. External USB drives are are a popular consumer item and frequently on sale.

Easier? Not necessarily, as it entails opening up and installing the drive. That's pretty easy for many people, but not everyone. Attaching an external drive to a USB port is easy for anyone.

For backup purposes, though, using an internal drive in the same computer isn't a good idea. Something that goes terribly wrong in that computer and damages or wipes out the main copy of your library, could also wipe out your backup copy at the same time. Using an external drive and leaving it powered down (or better, unattached) between backups is a better solution. You could also backup your library across your network to disk space on another computer. Best practice, though, is to keep at least two backups, preferably one of them off site to guard against things like fire and theft.

Using Ghost or other imaging software to backup data isn't necessary, and my just make your backups very slow. You don't need an exact copy of the hard drive itself, just the files on the drive. A better solution may be to use file syncing software such as SyncBack or Robocopy (command-line) or SyncToy (GUI) from Microsoft.

 

RE: Good Thread For Me, posted on October 21, 2014 at 17:55:52
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37673
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 You don't need an exact copy of the hard drive itself, just the files on the drive.

Unless of course you want to spend the next eight hours reloading the operating system, downloading all the updates and restoring all your applications and finally all your data.

Not I, thank you. I ghost the OS. And used it the week before last when I moved from the original 750 GB drive to a new 2 TB drive. I didn't have to deal with any of that time consuming crap.

Your choice. :)

 

RE: Good Thread For Me, posted on October 21, 2014 at 18:06:47
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 >> You don't need an exact copy of the hard drive itself, just the files
>> on the drive.
>
> Unless of course you want to spend the next eight hours reloading
> the operating system, downloading all the updates and restoring all
> your applications and finally all your data.
>
> Not I, thank you. I ghost the OS. And used it the week before last
> when I moved from the original 750 GB drive to a new 2 TB drive. I
> didn't have to deal with any of that time consuming crap.
>
> Your choice. :)

Yes, drive mirroring is a good backup approach for the system disk. I was assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that he was speaking of keeping the library on a separate drive. I would never keep my media files on the same drive as the operating system unless the server was strictly limited to a single disk drive.

 

One other thought, posted on October 21, 2014 at 21:56:04
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 Have you tried different usb cables? Some of the 'free' ones are really crappy.

 

I would start from the OS selection, posted on October 22, 2014 at 00:06:22
beppe61
Audiophile

Posts: 4705
Joined: January 29, 2004
 Hi and sorry to be basic but a PC without OS is just a piece of metal.
The OS is the core of a pc.
So i followed with great interest all the discussions on different OSs
without understanding much
Then i decided for win 7 because it is very common and also because is a good OS i think
When you have decided the OS then you should select an HW able to run it well
A good MB, a good pcu, at least 4 GB of fast RAM and a 120 GB SSD
around this you can build the rest
My feeling is the OS selection is key ... but Linus scares me (too complicated) but maybe it is even better than Win 7
But it needs a lot of knowledge
Maybe Apple could be a good choice, but it is a closed world
Just think that they have started to solder the ram to the MB
If you use an old OS like XP maybe you will not able to find drivers
Good luck !

Kind regards,
bg

 

FWIW, I find coax out of a PC very noisy..., posted on October 22, 2014 at 03:02:44
Tom Schuman
Audiophile

Posts: 2632
Location: Bremen
Joined: October 22, 2003
 ...but that doesn't appear to have been your problem.

you might want to try setting the priority of the USB slot to highest or always on, and see if that makes a difference. the settings are in system->hardware, find the correct usb slot and make sure the energy and priority settings are as high as possible. it might also depend on the player. play with the latency settingy in jriver?

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 22, 2014 at 05:29:13
PAR
 Gosh, just read this before I jumped for a new Dell machine. If Dell are not so good in this respect have you a brand that you could recommend to me? Or is it simply a case of "anything but..."?

 

just make your backups very slow, posted on October 22, 2014 at 05:43:51
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 My Acronis software backs up a W8.1 W7 dual boot computer in 5 minutes and restores in less than 10 using a boot disk.

 

Sorry if I missed it..., posted on October 22, 2014 at 11:25:42
cfraser
Audiophile

Posts: 3208
Location: Pickering, Ontario
Joined: April 30, 2000
 (since this topic is still ongoing)...but did you mention exactly which Dell desktop it is you have, besides an XP vintage one?

If you must use an external USB drive, I would make sure the drive and your USB DAC, if using one, are on different USB controllers. And definitely use the USB ports on the back, not the front. HWiNFO32 is a good tool to show you which USB controller is which, and what's connected to each one.

And I would look really hard to make sure you don't actually have SATA ports. If you do, this makes things easier/better for you. If it's an 8300 desktop you have, I bet you have 2 SATA I ports, undocumented but fully functional.

Dell does not like people changing their as-shipped configs, and doesn't "recommend" very useful BIOS or driver updates because they don't want people dicking with "their" stuff. The Dell boxes are much more flexible than the casual user and Dell would have you believe. But you gotta work for it, and they may not be time-effective updates, but OK if you like fooling with this stuff.

Edit: they are SATA II ports, not SATA I like I said...

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 22, 2014 at 11:57:46
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 If you are able, it is best to build your own using the best components you can find.

It is difficult to recommend anything as you have not said what your requirements are. For me, it is better to have a powerful general purpose machine and a low power (35W or less) fanless.

If you are worried about the usb port, get a Schiit Decrapifier or iFi USB Power to fir to your usb port for audio.

 

RE: yeah, a new cheapo PC is my backup plan, posted on October 22, 2014 at 18:57:23
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 PCI slots come in different versions, so they don't work on all motherboards, at least if the computer is very old. In my case, I was able to return the card.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

RE: Inferior sound from USB external drive?, posted on October 24, 2014 at 09:14:18
PAR
 Thanks for your advice. I am sure that you must be right about building one's own but as you point out - "If you are able". I'm more kind of useless :-). In fact I read this forum and so much of it flies over my head that its a danger to low flying aircraft.

I am dipping my toe after a Proms season of enjoying the Radio 3 HD streams. I also recognise that the silver disc is on its way and that I will have to grapple with some kind of digital file audio sooner or later.

I have l looked at a lot of player software and am put off by the poor metadata capabilities to suit Western classical music. In the end I have found something called Sonata Server which is a mash up of J River and dbpoweramp with an overlay to cope with classical music metadata. So my needs are to run that. Output is to an asynchronous DAC which can handle most common PCM and DSD file formats.

Any further thoughts? I understand that the Sonata software runs best with a touch screen.

 

JRiver for classical music, posted on October 24, 2014 at 10:45:54
Old Listener
Audiophile

Posts: 2090
Location: SF Bay area
Joined: February 6, 2005

JRiver itself has really good features for browsing classical music collections.

The screenshot shows a classical music view that I have used for years.

The link below is to a step-by-step guide for creating a classical music view in JRiver MC.


my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/

 

RE: JRiver for classical music, posted on October 25, 2014 at 00:14:47
PAR
 Thanks. That is very useful. A lot of work though with tens of thousands of tracks to enter (if I ripped my whole collection).

 

96 vs 192 khz, posted on October 25, 2014 at 02:31:30
Tom Schuman
Audiophile

Posts: 2632
Location: Bremen
Joined: October 22, 2003
 OK:

I seriously would NOT worry about the difference between 96 and 192k, there is almost no chance that you can hear the difference between the two at this stage.

OTOH there MAY be something to be gained (all other things being equal) by using a USB to SPDIF converter, if only because, like I said, coax right out of a PC/sound card may not give the best results (and I'm talking about perceptible differences...I've had a coax out of a HPackard PC once and it was just NOISY.).

Then again, whether this will be any better than the straight USB connection into the Marantz is, in your case, very questionable, because it sounds like your problem is the multiple USB slots necessary to get your songs to the DAC.

PC audio is in my opinion a huge can of worms, because most PCs are not built to prioritize audio only (they're there to surf the internet, etc.)

If I were to start from the beginning, I would probably just buy a Mac mini laptop setup with an optical out, and just not expect to put ALL of the music there. Just the stuff you like.



 

RE: 96 vs 192 khz, posted on October 25, 2014 at 12:39:55
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 The 192 kHz downloads tend to sound better than the 96 kHz. At least that's my experience when I've been able to compare the different formats for the same album.

It's definitely worth the download wait and the storage costs, but whether it's worth the sometimes absurd price premium is something else. Some sites charge the same for all the hi-res formats, in which case it's a no-brainer to go with the highest available resolution.






Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

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