Speed of external drive for SD3 – USB3 vs Thunderbolt

[cazbaum]

Will Superior Drummer 3 run faster/better from a Thunderbolt 3 external drive vs a USB3 external drive? I currently have it on a USB3 and it works fine but I’m upgrading my external drives soon and wondering if it would be worth the extra money to buy one with Thunderbolt. Would I even notice a difference in performance? I use SD3 mostly in conjunction with Pro Tools if that matters. I have an iMac with a 10 core i9 and 64G of RAM.

Thanks!

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.3
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

Topic

[Mark King]

Look at what the read speeds are and compare. I use an m.2 drive internally on a pc and the kits load in about 2 seconds. SD3 kits are stored in RAM so once loaded the drive makes no difference.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[cazbaum]

So the speed of the drive only affects the initial loading of the samples? It’s all RAM after that? In that case, would it be fine to have SD3 on the same external drive as my Pro Tools session files?

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.3
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

[Ilja Körrer]

Never change an running system 😏😉!!

[Brad]

cazbaum wrote:

So the speed of the drive only affects the initial loading of the samples? It’s all RAM after that? In that case, would it be fine to have SD3 on the same external drive as my Pro Tools session files?

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.3
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

Correct. SD3, EZD3, EZBass, etc trigger samples from RAM. Once the instrument/kit/preset is initialized there’s no additional disk access required to trigger samples. They are not streamed from disk as are some virtual instruments.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.3
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

• The post has been modified 2 times, last modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Brad.

[Bear-Faced Cow]

I mentioned this in various posts regarding drives. It is more about bandwidth than speed. It’s not how fast you can load a file, but how many files you can load at once and there are lots of kit piece audio files to load in SD3. If loading time is a concern, then you will want to go with thunderbolt. An SSD over thunderbolt will allow you to load large presets in seconds as it will load more files asynchronously due to a wider bandwidth.

Jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[Ken Spence]

Hi everyone

I have a question for thunderbolt guys.

My PC is an  i9, 20 core hyper thread Windows machine. It says that it has thunderbolt capability, but I think I need to buy some sort of adaptor for the motherboard or just get a PCI card.

 

Do I need a special Drive box?
would it make a huge difference in my duh with say, 40 tracks of audio streaming. I know this is off-topic a bit, but you guys seem to know what you’re talking about regarding thunderbolt stuff.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.3
Operating system: Windows 10

Cheers Ken
SD 3.3.6 on Windows 10 | Cubase 11
And a new Apple air laptop OS 15.5

[Author]

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