I’m back on the Roon bus again. I have Roon Server installed on a Mac Mini 2010. Many (in another place) report that the library, loaded onto an external drive, sounds better than running off a NAS. On the Mini, one of the ports is a Firewire 800 and was wondering what your thoughts would be if I was to connect a drive to that rather than the USB. I have a Firewire enclosure but would need to get a drive for it.
Back in the day Firewire was considered superior to USB for audio purposes, would that still be the case today.
No harm in connecting via Firewire if the drive supports it but i’m not sure why it would make a difference here. In my Mac ‘n’ DAC days (both with Firewire and USB) if using USB to connect to the DAC it was advisable not to use a USB drive too. In your case, if the Mac is just acting as the Roon Core and the end points are across a network then they are not going to care whether your external drive is Firewire or USB.
My u derstabdibg is that a FireWire connected drive is seen by the Mac just as if it was an internal drive, in which case perfectly usable for music storage.
I doubt you’d hear much difference to be honest, but no harm comparing.
Thanks for your replies.
I gave it a go and as noted there didn’t seem to be any difference between Firewire and USB. I did notice a lift between direct connection and NAS though. Not a lot but a subtle uplift.
Whether the difference is worth losing the convenience of a NAS is undecided.
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