This SSD for audiophiles sounds suspicious

[midian182]

WTF?! If there’s a sure-fire way that a company can justify selling everyday hardware for a high price, it’s by marketing it at audiophiles. The latest product to fall into such a category is an NVMe SSD created specifically for music lovers, though it's highly debatable if it can perform any better at audio tasks compared to standard SSDs.

Spotted by Tom’s Hardware, the audiophile-grade SSD was posted to the audiophilestyle forums by its developer alongside some marketing blurb. They claim it’s been designed from the ground up and co-developed with a controller manufacturer. The co-developer is unnamed, but the picture of the SSD shows it with a controller from Realtek, which has a background in the sound processor business.

The drive comes with a Crystek CCHD-957 Femto clock oscillator, two Audionote Kaisei 220uf capacitors, 2oz copper 8 layer PCB, Milspec PCB stiffness, 300% grounding area, 5u gold plated connectors, and a CNC copper heatsink. What also separates it from other NVMe SSDs is the external 5V DC power input—it requires an external power source instead of being powered from the motherboard. Again, this is supposed to improve audio performance.

While the drive itself features 1TB of 3D TLC flash, users only have access to 333GB due to it running in a pseudo-SLC (pSLC) mode. The poster notes that this mode increases its lifespan by 300% compared to a standard SSDs and gives better performance -- some current SSDs already have pSLC modes. They also claim this mode improves music quality over the standard TLC mode, as explained by this wine-like description:

The sound quality is just our test experience, this test is performed under the same standard product (PCB, external power jack, crystal oscillator, capacitors, etc. have not been modified).

TLC mode: It sounds like background music, no features and powerless, everything is flattened, lacks extension and density.

pSLC mode: There is a special natural feeling, it becomes more smooth and calm, the thickness is slightly increased, and overall it is more resistant to hearing but still slightly dry.

There are no other details about the drive, such as speeds, but it’s difficult to imagine it improving users’ audio listening experience seeing as this is just an SSD. Still, there are a lot of excited reactions on the forum.

No word yet on price as the maker is currently offering out 2 test samples to gather feedback. Expect it cost a small fortune when it does arrive, just like the “audiophile-focused” $10,000 Ethernet cable and $2,500 Ethernet switch.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/92692-ssd-audiophiles-sounds-suspicious.html

 

[Experimentongod]

Any 100% "digital" product (that is, it doesn't include a "DAC" (Digital to Analog Converter)) marketed as "audiophile hardware" is a scam. Sadly a lot of people are easy to manipulate and fall for these "snake oil" sellers.

 

[nismo91]

This is like saying, that a jpg or png file that is stored on a sandisk sdcard will be different than the exact file stored on a kingston sdcard - even if it has the same hash values.

maybe verizon, t-mobile and at&t should also offer audiophile 5G connections too. specially designed for audiophile, using mmwave frequencies at 28ghz that is guaranteed not to introduce noise to any nearby audio devices. $500 a month for unlimited data and text.

 

[Uncle Al]

Yawnnnn ..... just another scam .....

 

[mrtraver]

"Audiophile-grade" - the original NFT targeted at people with more money than sense.

 

[Nintenboy01]

I think audiophiles are in the same category as flat-earthers and holocaust deniers

 

[Puiu]

I think audiophiles are in the same category as flat-earthers and holocaust deniers

There are a lot of products that aren't scams, but this isn't one of them

 

[BoowieBear]

I have been following audiophile snake oil for years and was curious how they would scam rubes after the move to digital. I guess just like this.

Here is a great review of a mat you put on CDs to make them sound better.

https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_12_3/marigo-labs-signature-3d-mat-7-2005.html

 

[Eldritch]

So somehow an SSD makes music sound good?
Ok, I will bite. Then in that case, wouldn't caching it to RAM would be even better? I am off to buy a stick of RAM for better audio quality!

Edit : While writing I had an idea, speakers with RAM to cache your music. No lag etc! Buy now! Starting at $1999

 

[ypsylon]

Audiophiles, if you can sell them 5000$ audio cable so you can sell them audiophile SSD.

Premise of audiophile SSD is so bizarre, its like making wooden tires for you car because they are totally eco.

 

[captaincranky]

I have been following audiophile snake oil for years and was curious how they would scam rubes after the move to digital. I guess just like this.

Nah, the only way to improve audio quality is to go back to noisy, scratchy, vinyl records.

That 44 Khz sampling rate of CDs annoys the hell out of me, how about it, can you hear it too?

 

[koblongata]

All I have to say is, one should test this kind of stuff and hear it for themselves, a lot of the shops provide free trail anyway.

I found isolation & re-clocking with crazy accurate clock really important, PCM transmission is not lossless OK, audio quality does depend on how timely you send the pulse signals.

[For me I have only played with products that deal with the USB stage]

 

[captaincranky]

I found isolation & re-clocking with crazy accurate clock really important, PCM transmission is not lossless OK, audio quality does depend on how timely you send the pulse signals.

Latency is really only much of an issue during recording (**), and those crap wireless ear buds

So next are you going to claim you can hear the 44 Khz "stair stepping" on CD playback?

(**) And that's only because there are still so many USB 1 and USB 2 recording interfaces in the wild.

Listen to this mix and tell me what's wrong with it. (Hint, it has absolutely nothing to do with latency or sampling rate).

 

[Thretosix]

Oh the days of buy these Monster Cables, they will last forever. The cables still work, the TV / audio equipment not so much.

 

[Bullwinkle M]

Listen to this mix and tell me what's wrong with it. (Hint, it has absolutely nothing to do with latency or sampling rate).

It's mud with zero imaging, or the type of noise an audiophile SSD aims to fix

But more importantly, they don't have a singer

If you can't sing, you should be a rapper!

 

[captaincranky]

It's mud with zero imaging

But why? I'm going to suggest way too much compression, and a massive amount of channel cross-talk, with the over-driven guitars bleeding into every other instrument's space in the mix. That's what destroys the image.

I honestly think the young lady has quite a decent voice, or at least it would come across that way, if 1200 watts of Kemper amps hadn't trampled all over it..

You should give the last verse another listen, when she's singing solo with just the piano accompanying. That's where the engineer isn't trying to savage 10 pounds of sh!t, into a 5 pound sack,

She's most likely not a native English speaker, which is probably where you're picking up some odd inflections.

It's "opera metal", which ironically enough, is always performed in English, whereas true Opera is mostly sung in Italian.(As you likely already know).

The song is beautiful, and the concept of the album is unique, (the rise and fall of a civilization that never existed), but every time I spin it up, I can't help but think the recording engineer should have been taken out and shot.