SATA wires vs filter

I received a slightly used SOtM PCI USB card the other day and it's really made an improvement to an already good system. Sweet and everything clear is focused. No more roaming instruments. One store selling the SOtM filter says it's better fit for spinning drives, that there's no reason to add a filter to more recent SSDs.

I haven't tried SATA II vs III. Just went with Paul's recommendation as it didn't seem to have any downside.

I do have his slim red SATA cable on my SSD. Yes, it made a difference, but it wasn't huge in my setup. This cable feeds a SSD that has the OS and player only. Music resides on a separate drive. The server is pretty optimized: server mobo, Xeon, fanless, linear power supply, PPA USB card, PPA picoPSU, etc. Honestly, after reading so much about it I was expecting a bigger impact on sound.

The red SATA cable is quite stiff. Take it into account for your layout/length.

I just received a new desktop yesterday which had the SSD hooked up to the Sata III. I tried it out today and the sound was ok but not that great. I was going to raise the volume some but instead tried the PPA tip and changed the SSD to a Sata II. It is easy to do as all it takes is moving one end of the SATA cable from one slot to another and they are close together.

I only listened to a few songs but there seemed to be more bass, high end and detail. It was a lot more interesting to listen to compared to the SATA III SSD connection.

This was my step towards building a dedicated desktop music source and I plan to try some of the PPA products.