KVR Audio

musiclinks · Post by **musiclinks** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:37 pm

Hello All,

I'm going to be getting a new system shortly (hopefully), and wanted to know if I can stick with one internal drive and use usb 2 external sataII or ATA drives for audio. Are the external drives fast enough for audio or is internal SATA2 the way to go?

Johnny Cherry · Post by **Johnny Cherry** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:52 pm

Yeah I would like to know the answer to this as well although, ive got a feeling that it would probably be slower than a 5200rpm internal drive.

MB · Post by MB » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:05 pm

480Mb/s is about 218 times more than the bit rate required for a 24/96 track. If 200+ tracks is enough for you then USB2 is OK. I know the calculations are a bit unrealistic but you get the point.

rsmus7 · Post by **rsmus7** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:08 pm

I just bought a second drive, but I decided to put it internal,
because I found only ATA drives for external USB and they might be slower,
but I dont know, so I choose the safe way,

anyway when you built a new system, why dont you put a second internal hd inside,
you can use it only for music, it´s a bit cheaper and should be faster too.

and you can always get a third one to use as external, for some purposes where speed is not so important.

Spyda KB · Post by **Spyda KB** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:58 pm

I have used internal, external USB and Firewire drives (in cases). Internal drives will always be faster, however I can easily record 40+ tracks of audio with plugins without any glitches from USB or Firewire drives. Your CPU usuage will be higher from USB drives as opposed to internal or Firewire, but USB drives are fine for audio recording. Just make sure whatever drive you are using has a high RPM speed (7200+) and enough cache (8MB +) for the job.

For me, I am currently using an internal drive (mounted in a rack) for streaming samples and a Maxtor 200 GB drive mounted in a USB/Firewire combo external enclosure. The external drive in connected via firewire....running as smooth as silk.

- KB

arke · Post by **arke** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:59 pm

I've got an external USB hard drive. Works fine for me. Then again, I don't do _that_ much with audio.

spaceman · Post by **spaceman** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:04 pm

I DON'T KNOW IF A USB 2 DRIVE IS ENOUGH FOR AUDIO

WHAT DOES THE REST OF THE PEOPLE HERE THINK ABOUT THE SUBJECT?

DOES MY BUM LOOK BIG IN THIS?

LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! DON'T LOOK AT ME!
I'M SHY!!

Neil G · Post by **Neil G** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:12 pm

if i can use a usb2 external for DV and HDV video it should work amazingly well with audio.

SKoT_FX · Post by **SKoT_FX** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:19 pm

The USB protocols have a higher CPU load and packet overhead than firewire. Whilst the bandwdith in firewire and USB2 is similar, Firewire is kinder on the system overall.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:20 pm

A lot of all-caps posts today, eh?

Josmoker · Post by **Josmoker** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:31 pm

There is eSATA and eSATAII as well now for external drives, you know. Looks like a nice thing.

Cheers, Jo

cyanogen · Post by **cyanogen** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:36 pm

I have a Seagate USB2 external drive, and it works just fine. However, I'm only using it on one audio track at the moment.

susiwong · Post by **susiwong** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:44 pm

To put things in perspective, the best sustained data rate you can get out of a modern 7200 rpm drive is approx. 75 MB/s, while the fastest external drives (no matter if USB 2.0 or Firewire) give you between 20 and 25 MB/s.
The limiting factor is NOT the bus speed at all but the chips translating USB/Firewire to IDE/SATA.
Now 20 MB/s may or may not be good enough for you (depending on track count and other factors), but considering the fact that a 2 channel PCI IDE controller costs actually less than an external HD enclosure I myself leave those external HDs to those unlucky people with notebooks or Macs

and enjoy the good feeling of knowing that at least HD performance is not a bottleneck with my system. YMMV.
That said, those external HDs are great for backup, data storage (mp3 collection etc.) and transport, which is what they were developed for.
Hope that helps clarifying things a bit,
susiwong

DocAtlas · Post by **DocAtlas** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:00 pm

I've got two external drives that I originally used with my (now dead) laptop, a Seagate (120 gigs) & a Maxtor (200 gigs). I've had no trouble with using them for massive track counts, either on the laptop or the new desktop machine, running Sonar. I expect to put an additional internal drive in the desktop, but for now it's easiest for me to use the drives I already had (& paid for).

The important thing is NOT to record to/stream from the same drive that your OS & applications are running from. It's best to have a drive dedicated to just streaming audio.

I'm using 1 of the external drives for recording, and the other for sample libraries; streaming a bunch of notes for one of the current crop of samplers is just like adding more tracks to your project, so it helps to distrubute the load among several drives. Hope this helps a bit.

Oh, one more thing, if you need to move projects between several machines, like to a friend's computer, it can be a lot easier to carry an external drive than a whole computer. Of course, you could always put the project on a DVD; it can't get much easier to carry than that.

Mozzer · Post by **Mozzer** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:03 pm

[quote="spaceman"]
DOES MY BUM LOOK BIG IN THIS?
quote]

HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE!!!!

ARE EXTERNAL USB 2 DRIVES FAST ENOUGH FOR AUDIO??