A few random thoughts on drives, BIAB and speed:

RealTracks and DealDrums would be an ideal type of file to store on a SSD because the files are read, not written to. As I have the audiophile version, that is not practical for me to do yet; the SSD would have to be well over 1 TB.

I load my BIAB main program from an SSD, and it definitely improved the initial loading time and overall performance when I did this. I have a suspicion this will not be as much of an issue in the future.

The external hard drive supplied by PG Music for the audiophile version is USB3. I don't know what they use for the regular non-audiophile version. Is it USB2?

The speed of reading anything from an external drive, USB 3 or just 2, is considerably slower than the speeds obtainable from an ordinary internal hard drive. In other words, an internal hard drive might be faster than a USB SSD drive (I have one, but not for BIAB). In my case, I use an internal 10,000 rpm Western Digital Black Caviar drive for my RealTracks and RealDrums. The conventional hard drive speed is slower, at 7,200 rpm. Laptops may only run at 5,400 rpm (making the replacement of a laptop boot drive by an SSD a particularly nice speed improvement).

Having said all that, the performance of my laptop with the PG Music external drive, even with the audiophile version on it, runs just fine.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.