Good SSD for RPi music source?

Streaming Audio
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Decided to try an external USB SSD for music storage & streaming connected directly to a RPi. I currently have a RPi serving music with a mapped drive to an aging Synology NAS which I’d like to resign to backup duties only. Any of you nice folks had good (or bad) results with any specific brands & also anything else to look out for setting this method up?

thanks :+1:

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I’ve liked the Samsung T5 and older T3 drives - tend to snap themup in Amazon sales, though the prices are considerably better than in years gone by.

The Samsung are sold as USB C but at least used to include a USB A to USB C cable for backward compatibility.

I like the design/compact form factor of these drives over others I’ve seen, but tech always marches on so there may be excellent rival products.

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Thanks Alley_Cat, will check them out :+1:

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I have a Samsung T5 attached to the RPi + DigiOne combo that is connected to the nDAC via DC1 but I typically switch off the USB bus (and HDMI, the internal sound card, bluetooth, wired Ethernet, etc.) on that RPi. On another RPi wired to my router, I have two USB HDD attached. If your music collection is less than 1TB, you could also consider storing it on a micro SD card. The price of 512GB micro SD cards is very low and that of 1TB cards falling.

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Thanks nbpf :+1: If you have the USB bus disabled on the RPi how does it use the Samsung T5? Is that because, as you state, you are using a large capacity SSD for the OS & music store? I never gave the SD card route a thought but it’s certainly a cheaper option looking at prices!

Any possible sound quality improvements between My existing NAS share, a USB SSD attached to the RPi or an SD card setup as you propose, in your opinion??

cheers

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Yes, the RPi that hosts the Allo DigiOne Signature starts upmpdcli and MinimServer at boot time and has a T5 connected via USB. The BNC output of the DigiOne Signature is connected to the Naim DAC via DC1.

On this RPi, I can then stop MinimServer and shut down the USB bus (and the wired Ethernet interface) remotely.

It then acts as a pure transport and requires only about 200 mA plus 100 mA for the DigiOne Signature. When MinimServer is down, this RPi gets the music data over the wireless from another RPi which is wired to my router.

The RPi which is wired to the router is connected to a 1TB HDD and to a 5TB HDD.

In my system, replay from the T5 (over MinimServer running on the RPi that hosts the DigiOne Signature) has perhaps a little bit more weight than replay over the wireless but the difference is negligible.

That is the reason why I typically switch off the USB bus (and thus the T5) on the RPi + DigiOne Signature combo. This reduces the power consumpt and the JS-2 that powers it runs just warm.

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Just curious, may I know the reason of saving power consumption, is it because you worry about the power supply overheating or something else?
Thanks

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The common wisdom is that, on a renderer, components that are not used should be switched off in oder to reduce potential sources of electromagnetic interference. The other rational is to reduce the load of the JS-2 which in turn reduces its power consumption and heat dissipation. I do not know whether these measures improve the sound quality of the DigoOne Signature but they do not make any harm either and cost nothing. Thus, no reason not to implement them, in my view.

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I brought a Allo Shanti to power Digione signature recently, the result is positive, I also run minmiserver with SSD attached, but I don’t know how to measure the power consumption, the Shanti casing is not warm at all, after running for several hours.
Regards. Kwan

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I leave my Shanti on all the time (USBridgeSig+DigiOneSig).

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Went with a Seagate external SSD as they were quite a bit cheaper than Samsung T5. Hope to get this little project sorted over the holidays. Just looking into which would be the best file system to use on it… :thinking:

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I use a native file system for my usb drive. My RPi is running Linux so ext4 was my choice. You can’t plug it into a Windows machine however. I don’t believe Windows can read it, so beware. That’s not an issue for me, but may be a concern for others.

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Just search “usb c current meter” on amazon. There are a lot of quite cheap and small devices to measure voltage and consumption.

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ext4 is probably the best choice if you do not need to connect the drive to Windows or OS X machines.

Data transfer to the drive and backup are best done via rsync scripts and ssh public key authentication. For instance, I use

#!/bin/sh
source="/home/nicola/share/audio/data/"
target=“pi@rpi7:/mnt/hdd1/share/audio/data”
sudo rsync -avh --progress --delete --update -e “ssh -i /home/nicola/.ssh/id_rsa” “$source” “$target”

to mirror a music library on my laptop onto a USB drive connected to an RPi on my LAN. Simple and effective and no need to faff around with samba shares and drag and drop.

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Thanks for your replies folks, I was thinking NTFS so that I can just dump my music collection on to the drive connected to my win10 PC & then move it to the RPi. Your script looks like a very neat solution though!

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NTFS is fine if you want to connect the drive to different devices. If you need to write to the drive on the RPi, just install ntfs-3g.

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cheers, I hope to get this up & running this weekend…

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Looks like it’s all up & running. Used ntfs file system & copied all my music from win10 machine. Response time in app is now very quick! Need to come up with a storage solution for the RPi & drive next as it doesn’t look good just laid on the floor under the TV stand…

Thanks for your responses people :+1:

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Glad it worked out! I keep the RPi that hosts the Allo DigiOne Signature that feeds the nDAC in a cabinet beneath the nDAC. The RPi that acts as a server is wired to the router. It is in another cabinet and in another room.

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20

Thanks nbpf, helpful as ever :+1:

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