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  • Streaming from USB3 SSD?

    S
    S

    Hello,

    I'm thinking of building a very small mobile audio rig based on Macbook Air 11" with 8GB memory, 512GB of SSD for dual booting to Win764bit&OSX together with bunch of external hard drives. Does anybody have any experience on USB3 external drives and VSL instrument streaming? Can I still use higher buffers to stream from USB3 like it was an internal SSD drive? That would make the 8GB memory enough for plenty of instruments.

    Traditionally, there's been some overhead on USB, taxing a little on CPU and so on. Thunderbolt would be better solution for sure, but so far no external cases where you can put your own drives, at least to my knowledge. Also, for true mobile use, any externals should take power from the bus, using Macbook itself as UPS of sorts.

    Thanks,

    Stakula
  • Cyril BlancC
    Cyril BlancC
    last edited
    last edited

    @Stakula said:

    Thunderbolt would be better solution for sure, but so far no external cases where you can put your own drives, at least to my knowledge. Also, for true mobile use, any externals should take power from the bus, using Macbook itself as UPS of sorts.

     

    Usb 3 is 5 Gb/s

    SATA III is 6 Gb/s

    Thunderbolt is 10 Gb/s (TB2 is announce for 14 Gb/s)

    Search for "Thunderbolt to sata III" you have the Goflex and ......
  • M
    M

    Stakula,

    There is at-least one, portable, external, SSD, bus powered, ThunderBolt drive, but it's expensive.

    Find it here:                      http://www.macworld.com/article/1166646/elgatos_bus_powered_thunderbolt_ssd.html

    If you can find a multi-interfaced ThunderBolt case i.e.: (having USB3 and ThunderBolt).

    You may be able to use the USB for bus power while running the drive through ThunderBolt.

    That's what we did with eSata.... Plug the eSata or (in your case) ThunderBolt cable in first, and you get no power.

    Now plug the FireWire or (in your case) USB3 cable in, and you've got power.

    The good news is, your Mac recognizes which cable was plugged in first, and uses it to run your drive.

    Yeah..... Macs are just smart like that.
  • BillB
    BillB

    Why not just buy more memory? 

    Dorico, Notion, Sibelius, StudioOne, Cubase, Staffpad VE Pro, Synchon, VI, Kontakt Win11 x64, 64GB RAM, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, August Forster 190
  • M
    M

    Bill,

    More memory is always a good thing. Unfortunately, the MacBook Air accepts 8 gigs max.
  • BillB
    BillB

    Bummer...

    Dorico, Notion, Sibelius, StudioOne, Cubase, Staffpad VE Pro, Synchon, VI, Kontakt Win11 x64, 64GB RAM, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, August Forster 190
  • S
    S

    I asked from OWC (Other World Computing) if they're about to make a Thunderbolt case. They responded:

    "Due to certification requirements - we're a bit off before likely to see enclosure only. Apple and Intel control this strictly… and there are also power restrictions as well."

    Too bad. Does anyone have any experience of USB3 streaming? Because Macbook Air has a 8GB memory limit, it would be very interesting to know if USB3 SSD's are fast enough for large buffers and lower memory usage for VSL. VSL team, have you done any tests?