Would an SSD Solid State Drive improve the performance of Pianoteq?

Hi Greg,

According to the FAQ, there isn't even that much memory needed. I believe it states 256mb minimum. Amazing!

The reason I thought a drive might matter is because the program is, after all, residing on the hard drive, and even though the processor is doing much of the work, I'd think that there would be some communication with the hard drive. But, I'm not a techie by any means, so I'm better off just asking.

Thanks,
Michael

Cool Greg,

Thanks for the explanation.

Michael

One non performance benefit for an SSD in any audio application is silence.  Also, because they don't have any moving parts and run cooler, the overall heat load on the system is reduced meaning you might be able to get by with fewer fans, quieting the system even more.

When I had problems with audio glitches on my old laptop, one of them was caused by some background task that intermittently accessed the hard drive. I'm not sure how much the problem was related to the hard drive access itself, but SSD might have helped!

That's a very interesting question. I would guess that it would still be ok, assuming that there was no heavy disk activity from system activities. Not quite as good has having a seperate drive, but still much, much better than having a single rotating disk drive. One recommendation for using SSDs as the main system drive is to configure things such that a RAM disk is used for some system related functions, rather than the SSD - especially things that WRITE to the disk. This technique could be used for a normal hard disk, too, I suppose. Btw, I'm using a single drive in my laptop, and it works fine for samples. I have virtually no background disk activity, even though it's my system drive as well.  It's not producing fantastic performance, but that's because it's not a very fast drive - not because I only have a single drive.

I'm amazed at how quiet my laptop drive is. However, I understand that this is partly due to a special way the heads move, to reduce noise, and this reduces performance. I am trying to find out if I can disable this feature, to improve the performance of my sample libraries. (I have no idea how much it will help, yet, if any) I found a DOS utility that is supposed to do this, for my specific drive, but I can't get it to work yet.  But, the quietness at the moment is superb!

Greg.

Hi Greg,

I think that using one SSD for both OS and samples MIGHT work because there are no read heads moving back and forth.

I had to look up 'TRIM' to see what you were talking about    And I wonder how necessary that function is if I'm primarily using the computer for music performance, but not recording. Any opinion on that?

Thanks,
Michael

I think a single SSD for everything would work fine. As I say, IMHO, even a single hard disk can work fine, despite the fact that this is contrary to common advice.

Regarding sequential write performance of todays SSDs, from specs I've seen it's actually very good. (this isn't relevant for you, though, Michael)

If I were getting an SSD for my system drive, I'd try my best to get TRIM, even if I weren't going to do any recording. I agree that it's not critical, but without it, general performance slows down over time more than it does with the TRIM functionality.

For recording, I think I'd use a RAM disk, regardless of whether I was using an SSD or a hard disk. I'd be slightly less inclined to do this on a desktop machine with no power backup.

Greg.

Btw, I do have a problem with my laptop drive which I am quite sure is due to mild power saving. It doesn't spin down (that is disabled), however it has other mild power savings features. This causes the drive's response, from idle, to be a bit slower than it would be otherwise, and it was enough to break one of my sample playback engines.  The workaround is to generate a tiny bit of background disk activity. (yes, that's right - I do not have ENOUGH disk activity!)  I am waiting for the power savings specs from the manufacturer, just so I can be absolutely sure, but I have done enough testing to be quite convinced.  I've also asked them whether there is any way this functionality can be completely disabled.  I don't think SSDs would suffer from this type of problem.

Again - not terribly relevant for Pianoteq per se.

Greg.

Always separate drive for samples, separate for OS. The best performance, SSD or not.

EvilDragon,

Thanks for the reply. I guess I should have asked you the question differently. My main concern is whether or not one SSD with both the OS and samples on it would work reliably for playback and performance, and I'm not concerned about recording.

In an ideal situation I realize that separate drives would be better, but I'm trying to simplify a performance rig. As far as I know, the main concern people have with partitioning one HD, is that the heads go crazy looking for things and it affects performance drastically.

So, I need to find out if that would be an issue with one SSD. It may be that I'll have to try it out to see for myself.

Michael

dhalfen,

Even though it's not going to help Pianoteq, for everything else it seems like a pretty good choice the more I find out.

Thanks for the info.

Michael