Author Topic: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!  (Read 6388 times)

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Offline JimRemingtonTopic starter

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NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« on: December 07, 2021, 09:23:08 pm »
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/62753-nvme-ssd-designed-for-audiophiles/

 Audiophile NVMe M2 SSD specification

    1TB 3D NAND flash in pseudo SLC mode = 333GB
    Crystek Crystek CCHD-957 Femto clock ossilator
    Audionote Kaisei 2x 220uf capacitors
    External 5V DC power input 2.1mm or Internal MB power with capacitor pass through
    2oz copper 8 layer PCB
    Milspec PCB stiffness
    300% grouding area
    5u gold plated connectors
    CNC copper heatsink
 
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Offline x86guru

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2021, 09:36:02 pm »
Those capacitors and the jumper across pin 2-3 need to be mechanically secured and dampened otherwise my 194dB sound systems is going to dislodge them from the PCB...
 

Offline ataradov

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2021, 10:15:41 pm »
I like how those idiot jump on to any BS. New audiophile toilet plunger - mill spec handle stiffness.  What is the price point?

I'm guessing it is not not a huge market, but it is super easy to come up with product ideas, since they buy anything you throw at them and ask for more.

It is just amazing how those people fail to grasp how anything works at all. They seriously think that the quality of the crystal on the SSD matters at all. In reality their shitty flac digitized from vinyl will be instantly cached and SSD will go to sleep, but it will be sleeping on such an accurate clock.

And they are "burning in" the capacitors. LOL.

A question that sums up pretty much the whole movement:
Quote
I am intrigued by the sort of lack of specificity as to what characteristics are improved here.
I am sure that there must be some measurements that will show improved S/N or reduced jitter, or something, aren't there?
And a response:
Quote
I guess if a music listener does not have the belief in certain components having an impact on Sound Quality then this entire Thread is a moot point...Right?

LOL.

A critical component that they all are missing is the screw that holds the SSD. The entire sound quality is all digital and compromised if that screw does not cost at least $100. Luckily I have such screws in stock and the results are amazing. And once the screw burns in for another 100 years, it will have the ultimate sound quality.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2021, 10:29:35 pm by ataradov »
Alex
 

Offline Whales

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2021, 12:51:52 am »
Quote
Really cool. Paul Pang offered audiophile grade sata based ssd drives with OCXO (or TCXO) based a while back. I never had a chance to try one but those who did definitely had to say good things about it.

On TLC vs psuedo-SLC flash (I believe pSLC is TLC-labelled flash running in an SLC mode; ie perhaps skipping every cell state other than 000 and 111?):

Quote
TLC mode: It sounds like background music, no features and powerless, everything is flattened, lacks extension and density.

pSLC mode: There is a special natural feeling, it becomes more smooth and calm, the thickness is slightly increased, and overall it is more resistant to hearing but still slightly dry.

Quote
Drives are an essential part of an audio server. They hold the OS and they are needed for music storage.

Ideally they should be transparent, not affect playback of music. But in my experience that ideal is difficult

to achieve. Media storage drives in the USB audio out server seem particularly difficult to solve for the DIY builder...

Quote
Fully damped chassis and fans are flexible mounted. Case and 860 Evo and Samsung Music SSD earthed and Mumetal shielded outside PC case

Thankyou everyone :)  I'm having a dry day at work, this is bringing me a smile :)
« Last Edit: December 08, 2021, 12:59:11 am by Whales »
 

Offline Daixiwen

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #4 on: December 08, 2021, 07:38:43 am »
It's only $800 for 333 Gb ( https://www.zzyzxphile.com/eng/products/revelation_audio_ssd/ ), that's really cheap for an audiophoool product. They must be using low quality components there. I'm guessing the future $4000 model will sound better.
(also I love from the forum one mentioning that he can hear a difference when he runs the operating system from RAM instead of the SSD)
 

Offline ataradov

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #5 on: December 08, 2021, 07:45:44 am »
(also I love from the forum one mentioning that he can hear a difference when he runs the operating system from RAM instead of the SSD)
It is a homeopathic action. Just presence of the device in the system improves the quality of sound. Don't even need to plug it in, just keep it close to the PC.

I also like how they ban everyone who dares to question the science of the whole thing. They obviously know that they are fools, but they can't admit it now, so they have to keep on pretending to hear stuff.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2021, 07:47:34 am by ataradov »
Alex
 

Offline Synthtech

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #6 on: December 08, 2021, 10:01:54 am »
I never understood those discussions on the ”sound” of audio data from different hard drives and SSDs. If the drive is good then data is data. Audio files written to and from them will be identical from all of them regardless of model and brand.

If there was any difference between the data on different drive brands and models then applications (ProTools for example) would be corrupted on some drives and not others. Applications don’t tolerate data corruption. If you copy an application between drives and it runs then the data is identical on all of them.

Unless there is some deep technical voodoo that I am missing?

 

Online Haenk

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #7 on: December 08, 2021, 10:55:48 am »
In every single sales point, this is utter nonsense.
If the data read from the SSD is altered by the voltage supply of your motherboard, your whole system would be in serious trouble, I doubt it would boot up at all. Buffer caps of this size are not needed at all on regular systems.
High precision clocking is another complete BS technical detail of this SSD - the data gets RAM-cached on the SSD (tiny internal controller RAM buffer oder larger external RAM buffer), transferred into computer RAM, processed by CPU, piped out via PCIe to a DAC, passing at least two more, probably three, RAM buffers. So your output signal gets passed around buses and caches several times - a precision clocked SSD controller has no influence whatsoever on your output.
The only failurepoint of a SSD however has been completely ignored. Talking about "controller heat throtteling" here. Which *is* an actual issue, alas not as much on audio streaming data transfer rates though.
 

Offline x86guru

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #8 on: December 08, 2021, 05:30:35 pm »
I bet they are all flat earthers too...


 

Offline JimRemingtonTopic starter

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #9 on: December 08, 2021, 07:42:04 pm »
Quote
A critical component that they all are missing is the screw that holds the SSD. The entire sound quality is all digital and compromised if that screw does not cost at least $100. Luckily I have such screws in stock and the results are amazing. And once the screw burns in for another 100 years, it will have the ultimate sound quality.

An astonishing oversight. Nice catch!
 

Offline mansaxel

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #10 on: December 08, 2021, 08:14:13 pm »
In every single sales point, this is utter nonsense.

Very much this.  The only possible way to convey digital audio is by copying it, into and out of buffers. (I hope RIAA and the media industry mobsters are reading this and fuming from it!)  This is, by the nature of sampled audio, something that is a stop-and-go procedure. Like paper mail.  (and then we have not even started discussing what happens to bitrate-reduced audio, like FLAC or Ogg Vorbis; I'm just talking about what happens in a system where 48000 24-bit samples per channel are conveyed per second. )  Therefore, once things early in the process are just-in-time enough to keep the last buffer full (which in disk playback is trivial) the only clock that is important, is the sample playback clock in the D/A step.  Everything before that can be on paper tape, read out loud by a gnome, for all I care. As long it is coming fast enough to be buffered before being paced out by the sample clock.

But the gnome must be wearing red socks. Or else.

Offline james_s

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #11 on: December 08, 2021, 08:28:02 pm »
A critical component that they all are missing is the screw that holds the SSD. The entire sound quality is all digital and compromised if that screw does not cost at least $100. Luckily I have such screws in stock and the results are amazing. And once the screw burns in for another 100 years, it will have the ultimate sound quality.

You should market a line of audiophile screws and see if anyone buys them. How hard could it be to get some decent quality screws gold plated? The rest is all in the packaging and marketing. People with more money than sense will buy this stuff, who am I to complain about it? People also give their money to extremely wealthy megachurch pastors, the old saying that "a fool and his money are soon parted" has always and I suspect will always be true.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #12 on: December 08, 2021, 08:31:34 pm »
I never understood those discussions on the ”sound” of audio data from different hard drives and SSDs. If the drive is good then data is data. Audio files written to and from them will be identical from all of them regardless of model and brand.

If there was any difference between the data on different drive brands and models then applications (ProTools for example) would be corrupted on some drives and not others. Applications don’t tolerate data corruption. If you copy an application between drives and it runs then the data is identical on all of them.

Unless there is some deep technical voodoo that I am missing?

The placebo effect is a real phenomenon, if a person believes something will improve the sound then it will sound better to them.

Somewhere I read on a blog or something someone was comparing a bunch of capacitors used as the bulk filter before a 3 terminal regulator powering a preamp and claiming he could detect differences in the sonic qualities between different capacitor brands. Total nonsense of course but he believed there were differences so it sounded different to him.
 

Offline ataradov

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #13 on: December 08, 2021, 09:01:56 pm »
Total nonsense of course but he believed there were differences so it sounded different to him.
This by itself is not surprising and mostly fine.

What is more interesting to me is not only reluctance, but outright hostility to any sort of scientific measurement. Would not you want to characterize the improvement in quality? There won't be any difference, of course, but those people already know that. So what gives?
Alex
 
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #14 on: December 08, 2021, 11:49:48 pm »
They are hostile for two reasons: of course, first because they know that'll make it apparent that there is no measurable difference, but second is that people confronting them on this are themselves hostile. I admit there are good reasons for that: those people want to show those products are essentially a fraud. But when you're being hostile to someone, you can't be surprised they'll react by being hostile themselves.

It's just a market. Anyone willing to shake this market will get hostility. It's not even specific to "audiophile" gear.
 

Online Someone

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #15 on: December 09, 2021, 12:14:02 am »
A critical component that they all are missing is the screw that holds the SSD. The entire sound quality is all digital and compromised if that screw does not cost at least $100. Luckily I have such screws in stock and the results are amazing. And once the screw burns in for another 100 years, it will have the ultimate sound quality.

You should market a line of audiophile screws and see if anyone buys them. How hard could it be to get some decent quality screws gold plated? The rest is all in the packaging and marketing. People with more money than sense will buy this stuff, who am I to complain about it? People also give their money to extremely wealthy megachurch pastors, the old saying that "a fool and his money are soon parted" has always and I suspect will always be true.
Pick a "novel" material, that does have different properties from steel/stainless. Market the crap out of those differences and any tenuous link to something audio, pick any of their doublespeak/codewords and suggest links from that to the actual science/engineering. Then offer a gold plated option for extra!

This is no different to nutraceutical marketing, carefully skirting around strict advertising laws of actual medicines. But that market is huge and worth exploiting.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2021, 12:27:00 am »
What is more interesting to me is not only reluctance, but outright hostility to any sort of scientific measurement. Would not you want to characterize the improvement in quality? There won't be any difference, of course, but those people already know that. So what gives?

Because that would blow a hole in their claims, the sales of this stuff relies on belief, scientific measurement has no place there. Engineers already know it's all nonsense, we aren't the ones being suckered by the marketing.
 

Offline ataradov

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #17 on: December 09, 2021, 12:40:50 am »
the sales of this stuff relies on belief
Sure, but I was talking about the buyer's side. You get the thing and it feels like the "base got wider". Would not it be nice to know just how much wider it got? It feels like it would be a natural desire to differentiate when you are getting a really good deal and when you are being fooled. Those people seem to just accept any random stuff, like scamming does not exist in that world.

Audiophoolery seems to be the only hobby that does not operate with numbers. Other hobbies go the other way around - "I just got my new graphics card and I get 5 more FPS in Minecraft". Often improvement is marginal and may not be objectively worth the price of the upgrade, but there are still numbers involved. Nobody compares how things "feel", often people would even acknowledge that it feels exactly the same, but hey, the number is bigger, so it has to be better. There is at least some objective involved.

With Audiophoolery the objective seems to be to pay as much as possible for things that do nothing.  I guess it is something.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2021, 12:46:04 am by ataradov »
Alex
 

Offline james_s

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #18 on: December 09, 2021, 02:08:31 am »
Audiophoolery seems to be the only hobby that does not operate with numbers. Other hobbies go the other way around - "I just got my new graphics card and I get 5 more FPS in Minecraft". Often improvement is marginal and may not be objectively worth the price of the upgrade, but there are still numbers involved. Nobody compares how things "feel", often people would even acknowledge that it feels exactly the same, but hey, the number is bigger, so it has to be better. There is at least some objective involved.

With Audiophoolery the objective seems to be to pay as much as possible for things that do nothing.  I guess it is something.

I look at it like art, what does a painting do? What does a sculpture do? What use is a diamond necklace? You can even buy prints that are indistinguishable from the original to all but the expert eye, or synthetic diamonds that are technically superior to the natural ones but that doesn't stop people from spending obscene amounts of money on originals. People want that stuff because it's expensive. I don't understand the appeal of expensive art or jewelry and I don't understand the appeal of absurdly expensive audiophool gear either but if I had to choose one or the other I'd pick the audio gear, at least I can use it to listen to music and that's something, even if I could buy something that sounds just as good for a fraction the price.
 

Online magic

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #19 on: December 09, 2021, 07:48:11 am »
Not really. Serious art or jewelry is bought because somebody likes it or because it's an investment, i.e. it will hold its price.

Few audiophools treat gear purely as an investment (particularly flash memory ::)) and exactly none of them can admit that the thing they like in their gear is the looks and the delusion it causes rather than the sound.

They are akin to "investing" all your money in fake diamonds.
Which is why every technology forum has a corner devoted to mocking audiophools, but no one is seriously triggered by art collectors.
 

Online Haenk

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #20 on: December 09, 2021, 11:48:22 am »
Few audiophools treat gear purely as an investment (particularly flash memory ::)) and exactly none of them can admit that the thing they like in their gear is the looks and the delusion it causes rather than the sound.

And that is stupid. IMHO there is absolutely no reason to be ashamed to admit buying by the looks, not by the technical data (as long as it not utterly cr#p).
 
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Online magic

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #21 on: December 09, 2021, 12:28:14 pm »
They do believe that they are buying by the sound, problem is that in some cases the sound only exists in their heads ;)
 

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #22 on: December 09, 2021, 03:59:04 pm »
Worthless without an external clock input, I need to synchronise it to my rubidium referenced master clock. The jitter and phase misalignment will ruin the dynamic range and end up unlistenable.
Where does all this test equipment keep coming from?!?

https://www.youtube.com/NearFarMedia/
 

Online magic

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #23 on: December 09, 2021, 05:06:01 pm »
Well, at least you can power it from a hundred paralleled LT1021-5 in metal cans 8)

(Maybe I should order a pallet of those from AliExpress and get into the business of audiophile PSUs...)
 

Offline mansaxel

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Re: NVMe SSD designed specifically for AudioPhools!
« Reply #24 on: December 09, 2021, 05:31:23 pm »
Worthless without an external clock input, I need to synchronise it to my rubidium referenced master clock. The jitter and phase misalignment will ruin the dynamic range and end up unlistenable.

I run my audio system at work from a redundant pair of GNSS steered clocks. I've got a GNSS steered Rb clock to check that they're doing their job properly.  I know a bit more than most people, especially the 'phools, about digital audio clocking...


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