How slow are "slow" scan speed readouts in VSL synchron player? - windows vs native Macs

[Vagfilm]

I recently bought a mac mini m1 (used) because I became fascinated by its silent blissful operation (my God, finally no fan noise). My mac is the base model (256Gb SSD / 8Gb RAM) which is fine for my slow piano playing and low number of used mics (my synchron CFX and D274 custom presets have only 2 or 3 mics). On my windows laptop the VSL readouts of scan speed were the same (620 MB/s) when the libraries are installed in the internal SSD or on a cheap 480Gb external SSD and I honestly don't hear any difference in performance (but again, my fingers are far from able to push the system to the limit...). For this reason I thought that only 256Gb of internal SSD would make no difference since I could easily expand the storage space using a large external SSD.

Lo and behold, I found that the readouts from APFS formated external SSDs are dramatically lower than on windows. I bought a large Crucial X6 external drive and VSL reports a scan speed of ~130MB/s. My old SSD that in windows had scan speeds of 620MB/s (readout of the VSL synchron piano player), dropped to 115MB/s after I formatted it to APFS.

Is this difference in scan speed really accurate, or am I overthinking it? I think that to reach 600 MB/s readouts like I am used to in windows, I need to buy a thunderbolt 4 external SSD, which is almost as expensive as the mac mini. On the other hand, if the VSL scan speed is not really accurate and only indicative, maybe the speeds are reported differently but the actual real-life performance is not that different in NTFS vs APFS SSDs. From my quick testing using MIDI files played with many mics, I feel that the Crucial X6 is working fine despite the low 130MB/s scans, but if I know that this may be a limitation in the future, I rather return it now and get a true thunderbolt 4 external SSD.

Any thoughts on this?

[Paul]

Hi Vagfilm,

How is your drive connected?

[Vagfilm]

@Paul said:

Hi Vagfilm,

How is your drive connected?

Hi Paul,

Directly to one of the 2 usb4/TB4 of the mac mini, using the provided cable. Although they are 40gbps ports, I now know that apple limits all usb3 connections to 10gbps. So in windows my new drive is a bit faster than the old non-descript drive, although they both rate at the same 620MB/s in the Synchron player. In the mac, one at APFS and the other formatted as exFAT, they both rate at less than 150MB/s.

I notice that the initial sample loading is much slower than on windows, but I don’t notice a difference while playing (but I play slow).

My issue is: is that 150MB fast enough and anything above it is overkill and does not make a difference in real life use (apart from a few more seconds at the initial loading), or should I aim at something significanly faster?

[Andreas8420]

Hi @Vagfilm - the Synchron Player database only does a very (!) rudimentary speed test to determine whether it's an SSD or an HDD. If you want to measure and compare "random read speeds" (this is what matters for SSDs), some great tools exist, like CrystalDiskMark.

[Vagfilm]

@Andreas8420 said:

Hi @Vagfilm - the Synchron Player database only does a very (!) rudimentary speed test to determine whether it's an SSD or an HDD. If you want to measure and compare "random read speeds" (this is what matters for SSDs), some great tools exist, like CrystalDiskMark.

In that case, may I politely ask why bother having a reading that may cause unnecessary doubts? Why not do this scan in a blind way whenever a new path is added, and based on that internal reading suggest a buffer size without disclosing the internal reading?

As it stands, the streaming speed is taken by users as a value determined in a more correct and VST specific way. It just throws a curveball to all users that care about SSD speed and have previously or simultaneously already measured the speed using Crystaldiskmark or similar mac apps...

[Andreas8420]

If you work with SSDs, you will hardly run into a situation where those SSD reading speeds become a limiting factor, performance-wise. It is better to look at the CPU, connection, or drive file system rather than SSD reading speeds.