Scar972, It can make a difference if your external (mechanical) storage is acoustically noisy. Other than that your DAC has asynchronous (I believe) input, meaning that timing of the computer and DAC are separated. What you send to DAC is data - not the music (you can use computer at the same time). Music is recreated in the DAC by added timing (separate clock for D/A conversion). I would not transfer files to SSD drive for two reasons. First is better flexibility of external storage and the second is the fact that it can make your SSD last longer. Your SSD has limited number of writes for each sector. In order to extend it drive constantly reshuffles sectors to minimize the use of each sector. The more free space you have the more years it will serve you. Don't forget to make backups. I make two backups to prevent situation when something bad happens during backup destroying both disks. In addition my second backup, that I keep at work, gives me protection from fire, theft etc.
storage options for MacBook Air
I've decided to setup my MacBook Air for digital audio, all of my music is currently saved on a WD external hard drive. My question is, would it be better to keep it on the external hard drive or move the music over to the MacBooks' 256 GB solid state drive? are there other storage options I should investigate? thank you!