is 370 mb/sec enough? SSDs with Blackmagic multidock

[Bearsounds]

Hey there guys, I would like first to thank Darryl Ramm and Southsidemusic for their help and the great info they provide! really helpful!
After a long search looking out for which external drives I should use for audio and samples, I decided to buy the Blackmagic multidock thunderbolt2 for my mac pro trash can ( 6 core 32gb ram 512 gb ) PTHD and apollo as main interface.
I know it is limited to Sata 3 and I decided to use 4 Samsung 850 SSD pros and evos (2 pros for Audio, 2 evos for library and samples/internal pcie ssd for system & plugins)
I like the fact the blackmagic multidock is silent and rackmounted plus the thunderbolt connection and the possibility to bay 4 ssds + very affordable!
But my only concern would be the speed when writing/reading Audio sessions. I read that samsung pro ssds can only max ~370m/s in JBOD, even with thunderbolt2 connection of the multidock! I don't really want to use any RAID since we really need 4 dedicated drives for our setup. this is also the first time we'll be recording large sessions for video productions... and I was wondering what are the limitations of 370m/s audio in SSD? are there any other faster SSDs 2.5 that works with blackmagic?
Thank you

[Eric Seaberg]

How many tracks and at what sample/bit rate are you talking about? Do you realize that USB2 is totally capable of recording 64-tracks at 48k/24 bit with lots of leftover headroom? What kind of speed do you realistically think you need?? REALLY???!!

[Southsidemusic]

Hey and Thanks for the kind words

With that you will have a nice setup and enough to record pretty big sessions as all the drives wont be accessed at the same time lbut would be fine if they were.

Nice to get the updates as to how your system is getting on and please let us know when you start using everything. You will be a happy camper for sure.

Also let us know if you need any help going forward

At Eric : no way USB2 would be recommended to anyone these days and what does headroom have to do with USB connections .. We have large sessions all day long and have used USB2 by force a few times and nothing was working good .. hell we wpuld ha e been glad to get 24 tracks on there so 64 ... hahaha .. what music would that be ??

We tried many different ways and the drives kept crapping out so seriously doubt you can use it with larger sessions along with VI and Plugins aswell as sufficient speed for audio tracks as you say. Lets try and advice members with todays tech. Thanks

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

Hey and Thanks for the kind words

With that you will have a nice setup and enough to record pretty big sessions as all the drives wont be accessed at the same time lbut would be fine if they were.

Nice to get the updates as to how your system is getting on and please let us know when you start using everything. You will be a happy camper for sure.

Also let us know if you need any help going forward

At Eric : no way USB2 would be recommended to anyone these days and what does headroom have to do with USB connections .. We have large sessions all day long and have used USB2 by force a few times and nothing was working good .. hell we wpuld ha e been glad to get 24 tracks on there so 64 ... hahaha .. what music would that be ??

We tried many different ways and the drives kept crapping out so seriously doubt you can use it with larger sessions along with VI and Plugins aswell as sufficient speed for audio tracks as you say. Lets try and advice members with todays tech. Thanks

I think Eric might be confusing audio throughput from an interface and drive throughput - one has nothing to do with the other.

The last time I used USB2 for storage was on my old Windoze/Sonar 8 system back a decade or more ago and let's just say even then it was a dog. Firewire 400 was way better and could keep up no problem. No FW800 at that point in time.

One question I have with the MultiDock - what if you don't have all 4 ports with drives in them? Is there a little door that close off the open bay? My studio gets a bit dusty so I worry about things like that.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by Bearsounds

Hey there guys, I would like first to thank Darryl Ramm and Southsidemusic for their help and the great info they provide! really helpful!
After a long search looking out for which external drives I should use for audio and samples, I decided to buy the Blackmagic multidock thunderbolt2 for my mac pro trash can ( 6 core 32gb ram 512 gb ) PTHD and apollo as main interface.
I know it is limited to Sata 3 and I decided to use 4 Samsung 850 SSD pros and evos (2 pros for Audio, 2 evos for library and samples/internal pcie ssd for system & plugins)
I like the fact the blackmagic multidock is silent and rackmounted plus the thunderbolt connection and the possibility to bay 4 ssds + very affordable!
But my only concern would be the speed when writing/reading Audio sessions. I read that samsung pro ssds can only max ~370m/s in JBOD, even with thunderbolt2 connection of the multidock! I don't really want to use any RAID since we really need 4 dedicated drives for our setup. this is also the first time we'll be recording large sessions for video productions... and I was wondering what are the limitations of 370m/s audio in SSD? are there any other faster SSDs 2.5 that works with blackmagic?
Thank you

The Multidock works just fine. It's a wonderful piece of gear. When I got mine I stress tested it for recording audio in Pro Tools. I recorded 16 tracks at a time until I got up to the HD maximum of 256 tracks at 24 bit 48Khz. Then I added a whole bunch of edits and crossfades which push the disk even more. The Multidock worked absolutely perfectly.

370M/s can be limiting for streaming samples though. It limits polyphony and a lot of modern sample libraries are hugely demanding in that respect. It's an easy enough problem to solve. Like many composers, I just use RAID 0 on pairs of SSDs which takes the read speed up to around 720M/s. Some guys RAID up 4 SSDs and get up to 1250M/s! (Personally I believe disk access speed is as important as raw data transfer rate and that's where SSDs shine.)

I don't think there's any point in using the Samsung Pro drives. Most modern SSDs work just fine. I have Crucial MX100s in my two MultiDocks at the moment and that's what I used for the stress test above. They work fine but I'll get Samsung SSDs in future.

[Bearsounds]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

Hey and Thanks for the kind words

With that you will have a nice setup and enough to record pretty big sessions as all the drives wont be accessed at the same time lbut would be fine if they were.

Nice to get the updates as to how your system is getting on and please let us know when you start using everything. You will be a happy camper for sure.

Also let us know if you need any help going forward

Thanks a lot! I will post insights and pictures of the studio as soon as I finish all the installations! shout out to all of you guys who are helping the community and easing our confusions!

Originally Posted by Marsdy

370M/s can be limiting for streaming samples though. It limits polyphony and a lot of modern sample libraries are hugely demanding in that respect. It's an easy enough problem to solve. Like many composers, I just use RAID 0 on pairs of SSDs which takes the read speed up to around 720M/s. Some guys RAID up 4 SSDs and get up to 1250M/s! (Personally I believe disk access speed is as important as raw data transfer rate and that's where SSDs shine.)

I don't think there's any point in using the Samsung Pro drives. Most modern SSDs work just fine. I have Crucial MX100s in my two MultiDocks at the moment and that's what I used for the stress test above. They work fine but I'll get Samsung SSDs in future.

Thanks Mardsy for the reminder! we will be using mostly Kontact native instruments and the orchestral samples are definitely demanding! so, I guess I have to use the RAID 0 configuration in both SSD evo hard drives that stores libraries/sample in that regard! I already bought the blackmagic multidock online and waiting for it, but I still didn't buy any ssds yet. Any suggestions for specific pair of SSDs 2.5 that would be fast using samples in RAID?

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by Bearsounds

Thanks a lot! I will post insights and pictures of the studio as soon as I finish all the installations! shout out to all of you guys who are helping the community and easing our confusions!



Thanks Mardsy for the reminder! we will be using mostly Kontact native instruments and the orchestral samples are definitely demanding! so, I guess I have to use the RAID 0 configuration in both SSD evo hard drives that stores libraries/sample in that regard! I already bought the blackmagic multidock online and waiting for it, but I still didn't buy any ssds yet. Any suggestions for specific pair of SSDs 2.5 that would be fast using samples in RAID?

I'm not the best person to ask about SSD brands but I'm VERY happy with the Samsung Evo I've just put in my PC. Stupid fast! You don't have to go with RAID but I've found I hit the Kontakt pops and clicks threshold later by using it. Obviously you need to be careful backing up because if one drive of a pair goes down, both do!

[Bearsounds]

Originally Posted by Marsdy

I'm not the best person to ask about SSD brands but I'm VERY happy with the Samsung Evo I've just put in my PC. Stupid fast! You don't have to go with RAID but I've found I hit the Kontakt pops and clicks threshold later by using it. Obviously you need to be careful backing up because if one drive of a pair goes down, both do!

Thanks, I didn't want to use RAID for this very reason and I also wanted to distribute different samples in two different dedicated drives to avoid latency problems!
I'll start using the drives JBOD as pairs at first then change to RAID 0 whenever I encounter some bad delays!
what are you guys using for backup? ssds or spinners?

[Southsidemusic]

We have made the step in our big room to all Samsung 840/850 Pro SSD and two 1TB SSD's for storage of all libraies and samples but the spinners widely used here on the foum is WDC Black 1-3TB abd need to be USB3 or Tbolt cases and connections.

In my home setup i have only SSD's from Samsung and all spinners which runs great still have beendonated to our pro bono studios where the now continue to run great. They are all WDC Black 1TB and 3TB drives and if price is tight those spinners are super fast and reliable. Make sure the ones are 7200rpm 9ms seektime or less and minimum 64mb cache.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by Bearsounds

Thanks, I didn't want to use RAID for this very reason and I also wanted to distribute different samples in two different dedicated drives to avoid latency problems!
I'll start using the drives JBOD as pairs at first then change to RAID 0 whenever I encounter some bad delays!
what are you guys using for backup? ssds or spinners?

You could always start out non-RAID and see how you get on? Another great thing about the multidock is the drives are hot swappable. You can just eject them like a USB thumb drive so moving data around is easy if you do decide to go with RAID.

I'm using a lot of Spitfire Audio libraries and they are extremely demanding in terms of polyphony.... Like one note taking up 24 voices! It adds up really quickly.

Edit: I understand what you mean about spreading the load around. I'm actually streaming off three pairs of SSDs set up in RAID arrays.