Play back from USB Flash Drive

*Scotty* · « **on:** 27 Nov 2009, 01:45 am »

If you have not tried this yet you are in for a treat. Playback from a USB flash drive sounds quite a bit better than playback from a hard drive. The hard drive drive sounds mechanical in comparison. Music played back from the flash drive is fluid and has a blacker background. It also has better dynamic contrast and better focus in the sound stage. If I want to playback music for background or less critical listening the hard drive is OK. If I am going to pay close attention to the music and derive maximum enjoyment from it than the flash drive is the way to go.
Scotty

srb · « **Reply #1 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 01:57 am »

Quote from: *Scotty* on 27 Nov 2009, 01:45 am

The flash drive sounds mechanical in comparison. Music played back from the hard drive is fluid and has a blacker background. It also has better dynamic contrast and better focus in the sound stage.

Do you mean the hard drive sounds mechanical in comparison and music played back from the flash drive is fluid...?

Steve

srb · « **Reply #2 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 02:29 am »

Quote from: srb on 27 Nov 2009, 01:57 am

Quote from: *Scotty* on 27 Nov 2009, 01:45 am
The flash drive sounds mechanical in comparison. Music played back from the hard drive is fluid and has a blacker background. It also has better dynamic contrast and better focus in the sound stage.

Do you mean the hard drive sounds mechanical in comparison and music played back from the flash drive is fluid...?

Steve

Well, no matter. I tried it and unfortunately, no treat for me. They sound exactly the same.

I wonder if there might be a problem with your hard drive?

I was using:

OS: Windows Vista 64 Ultimate
Player: Foobar2000 v0.9.6.9 with WASAPI driver
Files: .WAV
Hard Drive: Samsung F1 HD753LJ / 7200rpm / 32MB cache / SATA II
Flash Drive: Kingston 8GB Data Traveler 101

Let's see what some others report in a comparison.

Steve

DSD_Mastering · « **Reply #3 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 02:39 am »

That's why it is recommended to use SSD hard drives.

srb · « **Reply #4 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 03:02 am »

Quote from: DSD_Mastering on 27 Nov 2009, 02:39 am

That's why it is recommended to use SSD hard drives.

That's not the subject of this topic, whether an SSD hard drive is better than a USB flash drive. I'm sure that an SSD drive has a better access time and data transfer rate than a USB flash drive, although for 2 channel audio (even 24/192), those better specs are likely inconsequential.

Scotty's statement was "Playback from a USB flash drive sounds quite a bit better than playback from a hard drive."

On my setup, that was not the case. I would still like to hear from someone else who will report the results of this comparison.

Steve

*Scotty* · « **Reply #5 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 03:37 am »

The flash drive is my poor mans version of a SSD. I have several and I put my favorite music by organized genre's on to them. I am using a 500G Seagate FreeAgent Go for my main library and an Asus Eee1000HE with 2G Ram. I am running eeebuntu Linux and use Rythymbox as my player. The hard drive passes check disc utilities with no problem. I hope to see SSDs get a lot closer in price to std. hard drives in the next couple of years.
Scotty

srb · « **Reply #6 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 03:48 am »

Quote from: *Scotty* on 27 Nov 2009, 03:37 am

I hope to see SSDs get a lot closer in price to std. hard drives in the next couple of years.

Yeah, me too! But I'm still wanting to know why you hear a difference between the two media and I don't.

Your external 500GB drive I assume is also connected by USB. It would be interesting if you did a comparison between the USB flash drive and a file on the Asus' internal hard drive.

This USB flash drive vs hard drive comparison is very easy to try, so I hope we'll get some others to report in on their findings.

Steve

*Scotty* · « **Reply #7 on:** 27 Nov 2009, 04:34 am »

The same difference exists between the internal drive and the external flash drive, the flash drive is better. I have a compact flash reader built into the netbook
and I am going try an AB comparison to see if there are differences between the two formats. The internal chips are the same the only difference I can see would be how the data is admitted into the laptop and shuffled around internally before I hits the player. There might be some kind of sonic difference between the USB interface and the card reader interface. Steve, a possible explanation for our differing results may lie in the fact that we have two very different sound systems with virtually nothing in common but the fact that they use electricity and move air. The possibility that we might have two different results is not that surprising seeing as how we are coming at this from two different directions. The reason I am using Linux on my ASUS netbook and not a Microsoft OS is that Linux sounds markedly better than Vista or XP when used for playing back wav files. I verified this by booting from an Ubuntu LIVE CD and trying out the music player that the operating system comes with. The Live CD let you try out the OS without installing it on your HD.
Scotty