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Some of the thinking I've been doing about this includes 2T of SSD for BiaB as .wav files, but as the Audiophile version ships on a USB drive and is often used from it, am I overreacting by considering putting the content on an SSD?


Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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I only ever use the RealTracks / RealDrums of my Audiophile system from the supplied 2TB USB-3 hard drive. I install the program and related files to my internal drive, but the uncompressed WAV files of all that RealTracks / RealDrums material always stays on the shipped 2 TB drive. I think this is pretty much standard procedure for Audiophile users.


BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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This may help. My situation offers a comparison.

I have two PCs for music. They are mostly identical except the production machine has a six-year old i7 and the backup machine has a five-year old i5. I run the audiophile version on both machines (at different times, of course). The operating system is on its own SSD and the BIAB main program runs from a separate SSD, on both machines.

On the production machine, I have an internal 2 TB hard drive for RealTracks and RealDrums only. It’s fast for a hard drive, though, at 10,000 RPM. It’s a Western Digital Caviar. Normal hard drives run slower at 7,200 or 5,400.

My backup machine uses the supplied USB drive for RealTracks and RealDrums.

Surprisingly, the speed of generating a song in BIAB isn’t all that different between the two machines. Sure, things are ‘snappier’ on the production machine but I have no way of knowing what part of that is the CPU and what part is the storage device.

The only way I could speed things up further without a new PC would be an internal 2 TB SSD for RealTracks and RealDrums. I’ve never felt the need to do that.

Bottom line, the USB drive from PG Music runs fine.


BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Hi Matt,

Thanks for that.
I'm presuming the drive from PGM is also a hard drive, not SSD(Flash) as their media charge is quite modest (perhaps actually cheap).

Even on this machine (i7-740 and ordinary 5400 HDDs, I loaded up a six instrument RealTrack style and generation of about 80 bars was around 8s, which is hardly stressful. I know BiaB builds a good chunk of the track before starting play and does the rest in the background, so probably drive speed is not so necessary. I like to hope most DAWs and VSTis will load the data early so the sound generation is never(?), or at least rarely, made to wait for data to arrive.

Yes, I think I'm overreacting.


Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
.
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Yes, as long as the CPU can handle it, the checkbox for Fast Generation lessens the differences. I remember when regeneration used to take several minutes (go make a sandwich) so eight seconds sounds pretty good.


BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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