External hard drives and sound quality

You ask a question that only you can answer. The only way you can tell is to try it and see if you hear a difference. These types of questions always get 2 types of responses which has already occurred.

1. bits are bits, how could it possibly matter?

2. Everything matters. I tried it and heard a difference.

Go to the audioasylum.com PC audio forum and you can find a lot of discussion about this. People propose that solid state drives sound better, lower rpm drives sound better, if you have a usb dac then a firewire drive sounds better and vice versa, different usb ports sound different, etc.

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I'm going to agree with Mr Stacy on this one. I'm not saying that they do or don't affect the sound as I haven't tried it myself, but I am saying it is impossible to predict what effect something will have on a system without trying it. If a bunch of people say they have heard a difference then no matter how many logical reasons you have why it won't, it is simply guesswork to conclude that they are wrong.

To the finer point of your position.

Claiming the sound is different depending on the type disk storage is the same thing as saying the type of storage causes the audio stream (data) retrieved to be different.

I don't think anybody has stated that the data is different. They are saying that using an external drive somehow affects the sound of their system. There are a myriad of ways that hooking up an additional device to a computer would affect its operation. Focusing on one part of the equation (uncorrupted data transfer) ignores a large number of possibilities.

Until you have tried the experiment on numerous, varied systems then trying to prove a negative (HDs do not affect the sound) with logical arguments is a waste of time since you have undoubtedly ignored many variables some of which we may not even know exist.

It has been scientifically proven that bumblebees can't fly which just goes to show that scientific explanations and logical conclusions don't always result in the correct answers.

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People can believe what they want but there is no technical basis for it.

Just because you can't come up with a technical reason why doesn't mean it isn't true. It looks to me like you are dismissing something you don't fully understand. Are you a hardware and software engineer well versed in this technology? Have done extensive research and explored every possible reason why changing a component could in any way affect the operation of a computer system and scientifically proven that it does not or could not affect the sound? I can think of many possibilities, increase or decrease in RF levels, different load on the power supplies, difference in the timing of operations caused by the need to service another device, etc. Until all of these reasons and more have been thoroughly explored and discounted there is no "technical basis" for dismissing the possibility that it has an effect.

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Assuming you really are, it still doesn't refute any of what I said. If you are not it lends less credence to your position but once again, you can't prove a negative by focusing on one aspect of a problem.

Have you done extensive research and explored every possible reason why changing a component could in any way affect the operation of a computer system and scientifically proven that it does not or could not affect the sound?

I think I've made my point. Unless you can prove it does not then the possibility exists that it does no matter what you choose to believe.

Happy listening.

Why do you assume I would not use them? I have 3 external drives hooked up to my computer. I have no idea whether or not they can affect the sound and neither do you because neither one of us or that other fellow have done the testing to prove it one way or another. I use software that loads a file into memory before it plays it which I like to believe mitigates any negative effects reading from any drive might have. It seems perfectly logical but I have no proof of that. For me to state external drives do affect the sound would be just as silly as you stating they don't because neither of us has any proof.

I'm having a hard time believing you are an engineer. If you are then you must have been trained in the scientific method yet you completely ignore the basic premises. You have a hypothesis that you now believe to be a scientific law with very limited testing. Going back to a previous post, using your logic you must believe that bumblebees can't fly. There is no scientific reason they can so therefore they can't. That is exactly the same logic as "People can believe what they want but there is no technical basis for it."

As for wireless I got my sister a 1TB Buffalo NAS drive that hooks to her wireless router via ethernet that works fine. She uses iTunes on a PC to stream from that wirelessly to an Aiport Express hooked into her stereo. No claims whether or not any of that affects the sound as I've done no comparisons but it sounds fine to me and she has no dropouts. The transfer rate is a bit slow but fine for audio. It also has a USB port so you can use that to hook up direct to the PC to speed things up when you load it.

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Kijanki, I reread your post a few times and I'm not sure which side you are on, if either.

Mapman, you finally bring something to the table.

"I have used internal, external USB, and wireless NAS storage and I have heard no differences. Nor do I hear a difference having used three different computers as music servers."

Sorry if I missed it but it looked to me like everything you posted before was telling us why it shouldn't make any difference, not that you have tried it and found none. I have no problem with somebody taking a position based on their own experience even though I'm not sure your limited tests are in any way conclusive other than for you. What bothers me are those making dogmatic statements based on what they believe should be true based on "technical" matters or what they've heard from others. That's what gets us statements like:

All well designed and built amps sound the same. All wires sound the same. Transistors have lower distortion so they must sound better than tubes. Horns honk. Negative feedback lowers distortion so it must be good. All digital is the same because bits are bits. Computers have too much non-audio stuff in them to be any good for audio. And on and on and on.

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Kijanki, I agree with your last post but there are some things in the second to last that I take exception to. Nobody has even hinted that the drives are corrupting the data. Both you and Mapman use that as some sort of proof that the drives can't alter the sound when nobody has suggested that is the reason. It is like Mr Stacy said, I said, and even you alluded to in your last post; there are things that can affect the sound that we don't understand. Stating all hard drives sound the same because they all deliver the same bits ignores all else. OK, I said that before and yet I still get bits is bits tossed at me so evidently I'm not getting my point across.

BTW I don't use any feedback in my amps and think they sound wonderful.

So Russian fleas respond to a verbal commands? I would like to see that :>)

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Kijanki, I think we are in agreement on this. When we get out of the realm of low to mid fi systems where it is very easy for most of us to hear a difference and for the most part we can agree on which sounds better; we get into the upper end systems where it starts to become a matter of preference rather than right or wrong and a lot of what may be a subtle or even inconsequential difference to one might be a deal breaker for another. One who is a big fan of vocal music and focuses on midrange purity may be oblivious to abnormalities in the bass region that a fan of rock and roll would find horrendous.

Onhwy61, if you had followed the thread you would know that nobody here is arguing that the data is corrupted, only that there may be some other mechanism in play that affects the sound of the system. Having a computer add 2 and 2 to get 4 when it doesn't really matter how long it takes to come up with the answer within reason is much different than processing data in real time to produce audio.

Puerto, play some files from your internal drive to see whether or not it is the external. You can get a cheap toslink for a few bucks that will tell you if the fiber is defective. Try your headphones and DAC and whatever else with a different computer. Continue in that vein until you isolate the problem.

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