KVR Audio

kenny saunders · Post by **kenny saunders** » Wed Jan 11, 2023 9:12 pm

I know that game loading times are very close when comparing ssd vs nvme, so assumed the same would be true with loading samples. But I just bought EW Opus and it makes a distinction between HDD, SSD, and NVME, and you have to pick an option, it also mentions that less memory will be used for nvme than ssd.

I haven't bothered with nvme yet, how big is the difference?

uOpt · Post by **uOpt** » Thu Feb 09, 2023 8:02 pm

That sales oddity makes no sense. Don't let them confuse you.

maanga · Post by **maanga** » Fri Feb 10, 2023 1:41 pm

NVME is about 2-3 % faster than SSD in real life use, which you won't notice at all.
For audio editing, it is of no consequence.
Regards,

T-CM11 · Post by **T-CM11** » Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:10 pm

SATA SSD
NVME SSD
Everything's an SSD, unless it's not!

T-CM11 · Post by **T-CM11** » Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:10 pm

maanga · Post by **maanga** » Sat Feb 11, 2023 5:03 am

NVME is directly connected to the CPU (on 4 lanes of PCIe?)
Sata drives are not. They are on a lower bus level.
Sata can be SSD or HDD.
Regards.

DJ Warmonger · Post by **DJ Warmonger** » Sat Feb 11, 2023 5:57 am

Yep. NVME gen 4.0 drives can be easily 10 or more times faster than SATA drive supports (560 MB/s). I'm getting 7000 MB/s drive next month.

USB drives can achieve higher transfers than SATA (saw 3000 MB/s for a top-shelf model), but come with extra delays. Especially if external drive goes asleep.

uOpt · Post by **uOpt** » Sun Feb 12, 2023 8:28 pm

maanga wrote: Sat Feb 11, 2023 5:03 am NVME is directly connected to the CPU (on 4 lanes of PCIe?)

An NMVe slot on a mainboard can be connected to the CPU, but it can also be connected to the chipset.

maanga · Post by **maanga** » Mon Feb 13, 2023 4:35 am

The slot is called M.2, not NVME.
Only M.2 NVME SSD will connect to the CPU.
The M.2 SATA will connect to the chipset.
The motherboard determines how many PCI lanes are available to the user.
Example, if the MB allows 28 lanes, 16x used for graphics, 2 nos 4x for NVME SSD and rest will be on under chipset (SATA).
If only 24 lanes available, then only 1 no 4x NVME SSD possible, rest to the chipset SATA.
(the CPU may be able to provide more PCI lanes, but the limitation is the MB)

Regards.

AdvancedFollower · Post by **AdvancedFollower** » Mon Feb 13, 2023 1:13 pm

Sample content doesn't require huge amounts of bandwidth since even 192 KHz/24-bit uncompressed audio is just over 1 MB/s. However NVMe does provide lower latency which can be useful when reading many small chunks of audio files (random read) which can be the case for multisampled instruments.

Probably changing this option just determines how sample content is loaded - streamed directly from the drive or pre-loaded into RAM. A SATA SSD should be fast enough to handle streaming so it's probably safe to choose that option, but maybe the developer wants to give themselves a safety margin in case someone does encounter problems.

Samplers - NVME vs SSD