Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini

SSD may sound better than magnetic HD, but it's largely irrelevant today because there isn't any SSD large enough to store the music collection. I have 600GB+ of music from CD, DVD Audio, and HDTracks. It's not practical to build a disk array to store all the music. Even if I did, the disk array will be connected to the computer externally, further minimizing any effect it could have on the main computer. By the time 2TB SSD is available the SSD technology used will be vastly different from today's SSD anyways, so any comparison done today do not have a lot of practical implication.

The main advantage of using SSD is the SPEED, followed by less power consumption, less heat, and less audible noise. If SSD does sound better than HD, that's like a cherry on top. But that's not the reason why people buy SSD.

03-09-11: Jylee
SSD may sound better than magnetic HD, but it's largely irrelevant today because there isn't any SSD large enough to store the music collection. I have 600GB+ of music from CD, DVD Audio, and HDTracks. It's not practical to build a disk array to store all the music.

Jylee, your statement is all certainly true (a 1TB SSD costs around $3000 these days), except for the part about irrelevance. An aspect of the question about sonics that was addressed in my posts and some of those by Darrell concerned the possibility that sonic improvements might result from replacing the computer's relatively small internal drive with an SSD, while utilizing a large external HHD to store the music files.

As you have seen, Darrell described replacement of the internal HHD with an SSD as a "no brainer." And my comments provided technical rationale for why doing that MIGHT produce a sonic improvement. That rationale applies regardless of whether the music files are stored on the small internal SSD or on a large external HHD.

Regards,
-- Al

Here is an interesting take by someone saying SSDs cant improve sound. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Software-Hardware-Comparison?page=1

03-10-11: Perrew
Here is an interesting take by someone saying SSDs cant improve sound....

After reading it (the article on the lower half of the page) several times, I must say that I have very little idea of what he is saying :-)

I think that one of his main points, though, is essentially that noise produced as a result of activity of the cpu chip, under software control, is the predominant source of internally generated noise in the computer. The reason being that it draws more current than any other device in the computer, and rapid fluctuations in that current (which are primarily responsible for the noise generation) will be greater than for all of the other devices in the computer, including the digital chips in the SSD or HDD (an HDD has significant digital circuitry, in addition to the electromechanical stuff). He appears to conclude, therefore, that all internally generated noise that is not produced by the cpu chip, and all other effects that may be caused by the rapid switching of digital signals elsewhere in the computer, is insignificant.

As someone with extensive experience designing high speed digital circuits (not for audio), that all strikes me as meaningless oversimplification, of things that (due to their complexity) are inherently unpredictable apart from experimentation.

Regards,
-- Al

Its the first post by PeterST Im referring too, he is Not advocating what you say thats what Miska says, Peter says to deal with all small spikes.
Also he is saying in other places that he has designed his software after several trials so that now Ramdisk and SSD makes the sound worse.

All Im trying to say is that the story on SSD having superior sound is suported by some but some others dont support it, so I figure if you really wanna know what your own ears detect youre gonna have to give it a go or just ignore it and be happy with the sound you have know and improve the sound elsewhere, IF, you think its doing something wrong.

03-10-11: Perrew
Its the first post by PeterST Im referring too, he is Not advocating what you say thats what Miska says, Peter says to deal with all small spikes.

Yes, that is the post I was referring to also, the one entitled "SSD" and signed "Peter" at the end. As I said, I found it to be somewhat incomprehensible, so it could very well be that I was misinterpreting the point he was trying to make.

All Im trying to say is that the story on SSD having superior sound is suported by some but some others dont support it, so I figure if you really wanna know what your own ears detect youre gonna have to give it a go ....

Agreed 100%.

Regards,
-- Al

all the ssd devices that are in mac's and pc's are of the cheap kind. sure they are faster than mechanical disks, but again, they are very cheap. for a mac mini, i would use a hdd which i do. i am involved in this technology for a living and the normal price for a enterprise class ssd can be around $12,000 depending on configuration. these ssd devices vary quite a bit compared to the cheap ssd devices found in macs and pc's: they provide more fault tolerance by over-provisioning so they have a larger mttf compared to a hard drive.
also, music won't sound better by using an ssd vs. a cheap hdd. for playing music off a mac or pc, you don't need the speed that ssd provides. way over-kill. the benefit you will get is a more quiet pc and a more cooler running pc.