Audiophiles - Review of different hard drives affecting the sound...

chrispy108

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hificritic/vol5_no3/listening_to_storage.htm

"Harris thought the Hitachi sounded very ethereal, almost out of phase, and rated it lowest; the Seagate was sharper with a more thumpy bass, slightly brighter with a slight tendency to sibilance. Both lacked much drive in presenting the Madonna track, and were certainly 'mushy' compared with the best sound quality we'd heard from the QNAP stable.

Drive three (a solid state type) gave a far from subtle shift in tone and soundstaging. I thought that here this Kingston SSD spread the stage wider, could really pull apart the multi-track layers, and certainly led in blackness too, sounding agreeably quieter than it had any right to. Yet there was also a dull flatness to its presentation, even a graying of timbre.

If the Kingston SSD stood apart from the disk drives for its mostly good yet quite alien character, drive four made itself known for entirely the wrong reasons. This Corsair drive (another SSD) conspicuously highlighted vocal sibilants, and had a hard, relentless quality that was impossible to miss. Strangely, it also robbed the music of pace; it was the least engaging on any emotional level thanks to an enveloping tunelessness that appeared to carve up a song like an MP3 rip."

joeyowen

Surely a troll...

Although, there is a lot of wisdom in SSDs having Alien characteristics...

CabbageCat

On the Seagate the zeros had a certain sharpness to them - almost making them "D"s - but the straightness and perpendicularity of the ones more than made up for it.

fretmeister

Axe_meister

Waiting for Russ Andrews to start selling Audio SSDs.

Along with his power cables and audio fuses.

strumjoughlamps

I hate HDDs that have no emotional level, fking winds me up..

only issue I had once with a HDD full of mp3s hooked up to a surround sound kit was you sometimes heard the sound of the disc spinning through the speakers.

digitalscream

I've read that article a few times, on the basis that if I look really hard at it I must be able to find evidence of satire.

It may be quite significant that the Corsair Force Series F120 takes a rather unusual approach to handling its data I/O. The Sandforce SF1200 controller chip uses what Sandforce calls DuraClass technology, which suggests this SSD's microcontroller is exerting itself more than usual in order to maintain a high throughput of data.

Le. Sigh. It means nothing of the sort, it's just the name they give to the chipset tech ("dura" coming from the fact that it's designed to enhance durability by reducing write amplification).

Fkn idiots.

FX_Munkee

Wow, just wow.
This is how religions start isn't it?

digitalscream

FX_Munkee said:

Wow, just wow.
This is how religions start isn't it?

Yup.

dogload

Personally, I like my digital audio from floppies- sure, you have to keep changing the disc, but the plastic makes the music sound warmer somehow...

imalone

Genius.

digitalscream said:

I've read that article a few times, on the basis that if I look really hard at it I must be able to find evidence of satire.

Surely the whole thing is evidence of satire?

Personally I think SSD drives sound too clinical, probably due to the crystalline structure. Whereas traditional hard drives have an almost analogue sound. You want to avoid ceramic platters though as the sound is too brittle, old aluminium ones are best, I think EMI are working on a vinyl platter.

scrumhalf

If you listen very closely to music played on HDDs you can hear, very softly, in the background, "1010100011111100011111" etc.

Ruins it for me.

monquixote

People genuinely believe in this stuff. 

The Linn forums have pages of people comparing different brands of ethernet cable etc.

beed84

Legend has it that audiophiles are a actually a covert group of dry witted humorists.  They love it when you don't know whether they're being serious or not.  

This time, however, they may have gone a tad too far.

PolarityMan

How do people so stupid make enough money to afford all this snake oil? Evidence that we're not living in a meritocracy I guess.

Paul_C

dogload said:

Personally, I like my digital audio from floppies- sure, you have to keep changing the disc, but the plastic makes the music sound warmer somehow...

8" I hope ?

joeyowen

Paul_C;477753" said:

8" I hope ?

THATTSS WHAT SHEEE SAIIIIDDDD

bingefeller

This has to be a joke but they've used so many big words and fancy technological terms that it's not.

Fretwired

Personally I use Corsair Resolve Ultra Density hard drives using the company's patented Soundstage Head Interface Technology on Gold Enhanced Everlasting Key Sensors ..

ESchap

beed84 said:

Legend has it that audiophiles are a actually a covert group of dry witted humorists.  They love it when you don't know whether they're being serious or not.  

This time, however, they may have gone a tad too far.

like "OFF TOPIC" on here ... some might say ...

chrispy108

Fretwired said:

Personally I use Corsair Resolve Ultra Density hard drives using the company's patented Soundstage Head Interface Technology on Gold Enhanced Everlasting Key Sensors ..

What?!! Ultra density? You won't have a decent sound stage spread with one of those!