Primer on SSD and internal hard drives


I recently acquired a streamer /DAC that supports an SSD or internal hard drive.  This is new turf for me and wonder if I could get some basic guidance.  Please pardon my complete ignorance on this topic.

So what is the difference between an internal hard drive and an SSD?  Is one preferable?

The manual suggests using either a 3,5" or 2,5" drive. Does size matter ? ( no pun intended)

Are there sonic differences in the different available brands?  

Again, pardon my lack of knowledge on this topic and thanks for your help.

Mike

 

mdrone

Showing 1 response by ghdprentice

An SSD drive is very likely to sound better than a hard drive. But a high quality streamer will gather the music off the hard drive and shut it down when playing. 
 

With a high quality streamer there should be no difference in sound quality between a streaming service like Qobuz and using music from your internal SSD drive. So if you have a high quality streamer I would not put a lot of effort / cost into internal memory. Less and less are ripped or downloaded music used at all. I only have some on my streamer for emergencies when the internet is down… at this point less than once a year for a very short time.