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External HD VS Flash Drive Sound Quality Question

Hi have an Oppo BDP-95. I am up to around 25 Flash drives which is getting ridiculous.

2 questions (hoping for folks who know the definitive answers; I have my own guesses, bu that's all they are.)

1. HD Tracks has written that the Flash drives sound better than any spinning disc or drive due to lack of jitter from lack of a spinning disc. Is that accurate?

2. I have noticed a new generation of external hd's that get all there power through the USB port, & do not require an out board power supply.

A. Would there be any detectable sonic difference either way? If so, which is better: the cheap wall wort power supplies or getting power solely through the USB line?

B. The Western Digital USB drives with no power supply have a proprietary cable that looks quite cheap. Would the lack of an audiophile USB cable be sonically problematic?

I'm basically trying to decide whether to ditch the lash drives or a USB hard drive; & if so whether to go with a powered or unpowered drive. A couple +'s re the new WD's: they are teeny & they run cooler than the Seagates I've used.
moomoo
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Actually, jitter is produced by vibration of the CD, by slight wobbling of the CD that's caused by out-of-round condition of the disc (exacerbated when the transport is not absolutely level). We won't even get into the jitter produced by the background scattered laser light, especially the invisible light that cannot be influenced by colored pens or mats.
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Geoff, he's not talking about playing CDs. The spinning disc he's referring to is the one in the hard drive mechanism. The data being read from the hard drive gets clocked, processed, and reclocked multiple times through all kinds of digital circuitry before it ends up being converted to analog. The jitter that matters is jitter in the timing of digital-to-analog conversion.

Regards,
-- Al
moomoo OP
81 posts
 
Found a 3tb Seagate for $90 delivered. Hopefully no noise issues...... Thanks for the replies! Now what to do with the 25+ flash drives??!
moomoo OP
81 posts
 
Been doing some on line reading. Sounds like it's necessary to spend at least $100 on a high end usb cable(sigh). I may just stick with the flash drives & enjoy the extra backup / storage.

See what my ears tell me when it arrives.
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Was what you read based on experience connecting an external USB hard drive to an Oppo player, or to some other kind of player, or to a computer, or to connection of a computer to a USB DAC? Those are all very different situations from a technical standpoint.

Also, if you hear a difference between playback from the new hard drive and from the flash drives, I would see no reason to necessarily attribute the difference to the cable. I would think that a more likely explanation would be that the design of the player is such that the player itself sounds different when it plays from one medium compared to the other. Due for example to differences in internal noise coupling that may affect either analog circuit points or jitter at the point of D/A conversion.

Regards,
-- Al
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