Playing FLAC's from a portable hard drive

afterburnt

I am using an old WD My Passport Essential 500GB USB 2.0 2.5" External Hard Drive for the time being. Is anyone playing there music from an External HD. If so does it make much difference in what specs it has?

deronb1

I am using a Seagate 2tb hd formatted fat32

bryantspaint

wd passport ultra

D'prived

Doesn't make any difference.

steveinaz

I use a WD My Book HDD into my Oppo 103. Love it.

tophatjohnny

I dig that one Mike. I may get one to use as a back up......as i plan on having several. Thanks

daddyjt

The drive itself is of little consequence - Data transfer of FLAC files is a snap, even for an "antiquated" drive - on a per song basis, you're just not moving that many bits.

Of much greater consequence, is your chosen DAC. There are many fine outboard DACs, but I just use the ESS Saber in the Oppo 105 - One of the best DAC chipsets available, AND it comes wrapped in an Oppo player:-) The only downside, is the Oppo OSD is kind of an "all or nothing", as it shows all files with no quick way to navigate from one end of your collection to the other...

afterburnt

Anyone have any thoughts on thumb drives compared to SSD's?

afterburnt

Just wanted to ask. I see 512gb's for 300 something. In a few months they will be less than that. Kind of nice to have something small enough to loose lol

machone

128 GB for $30. The prices are falling.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-128GB-Drive--SDCZ36-128G-B35/dp/B00TKFCYP0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434720533&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+2.0+flash+drive

In my setup I have the external hard drive setting an a cheap countertop next to my laptop. The other night I had headphones on and while holding the head phones with my two hands I rested my elbows on the countertop and boy was there a lot of noise (vibration) coming through my arms that I could hear kind of like a stethoscope. Noise from the computer and the external hard drive. I don't know if this is bad for SQ but I would feel better if I could eliminate the noise and/or vibration. I was thinking about a piece of granite or something.

You guys got any ideas?

steveinaz

For storage "ballparking", I have apprx 400 CD's (flac) on my HDD and they take up about 300Gb. This also includes about 5 albums that are 24/96 flac.

steveinaz

Machone; place some felt stick-on feet, or use vibrapods under the drive. I lay my drive on its side, and have the felt feet on it---it is silent.

machone

Thanks steveinaz.
My current setup is External Hard Drive-USB to Computer-USB to External DAC. I use Korg's Audiogate to convert my ripped .WAV files to DSD 5.6mh on the fly. As this uses computing power (CPU runs at about 23%) I get the laptop fan noise. I raised the laptop above the countertop about 1/2" and this helped to cool things down and therefore lowered the fan speed and noise.
If I used a piece of granite as a sub-base for the computer and external hard drive the granite would inherently be a cooler surface and it would also look cool (no pun intended). The piece needs to be about 18" x 18" and would be isolated from the existing countertop using something like vibrapods.
Felt feet under each component would further isolate them from each other.

machone

Decided to try three pieces of travertine (18" x 18" @ $5 each). Set them on rubber feet attached to the countertop. Stuck vinyl bumpers to the travertine to raise the computer.

muncybob

So, what's the difference or pros/cons using a NAS versus USB external HD of similar capacity?

RamZet

I will argue all day about the difference in wires but a HDD vs a USB I cant. FLAC files are not demanding files for any modern storage device.
I cant even argue that there is a difference between Solid State and Mechanical drives when it comes to playback.

My vote is that there is no difference.