PCIe speeds for audio production

[needhamleigh]

Hey guys, first time post/thread!

 

I'm starting to finalize plans for a new audio production/gaming rig.  My question to you fine folks here is: will the speed boost (1-4 G/s) of a PCIe SSD NOTICEABLY improve performance with a multitrack software like Cubase, Ableton, Protocols, etc?  Is it worth a the money, or should I just stick with a SATA3 SSD?  Thanks!

 

Ps Assume I will be using a multicore, hyperthreaded processor, if that helps.

[RevoltTrain]

No, it's not worth the extra money at all.

[needhamleigh]

The double-quadruple read/write speeds for pcie won't effect live sample-based effects and phrase sequencing in a multitrack environment with 30-40 tracks running?

[needhamleigh]

Anyone test this out or have a theory?

[TheGeekster]

I guess it depends on the sample file size, and how many are used at the same time, but honestly I don't believe it would need anything faster than a standard sata 3 ssd with decent read & random read speeds

[Eric1024]

TL; DR waste of money, your wouldn't be able to generate that much disk bandwidth if you wanted to.

 

This is just math.  Even if you're using absurdly high quality audio sources, you'll probably never have anything with a bitrate higher than 10Mb/s. That means even if your software were reading 100 audio source files at the same time, it would only be pulling 1000 Mb/s == 1Gb/s == 125MB/s off the disk. Realistically, with 30-40 tracks, still assuming an outrageous bitrate of 10Mb/s, that's 38-50MB/s. Even a sata2 SSD can read at ~250MB/s, which is 5x faster.

 

Also, you're forgetting that there's the filesystem's cache in between you and your disk. So frequently used files will get read once from disk, and subsequent reads will come from main memory. There's a good chance that your disk will be doing noting at any given time.

[elkenrod]

Also, you're forgetting that there's the filesystem's cache in between you and your disk. So frequently used files will get read once from disk, and subsequent reads will come from main memory. There's a good chance that your disk will be doing noting at any given time.

 

This

[needhamleigh]

Awesome!  That's the kind of explanation I was looking for.  Thanks for info guys!  This'll help me out big time (and save me $$).