Zzyzx Revelation Femto SSD – bit by bit?

The Sound

Let’s get right to the point: we hear absolutely no difference between the Samsung SSD and the Zzyzx Femto SSD. We really tried to hear something, but we did not succeed.

Perhaps it is due to the fact that we are playing with a Mutec MC3? Or that the Alpha PC is not good enough (no linear power supply)? Or maybe our ears are not good enough. Who knows.

RAM buffer

What could also be possible is that every piece of decent software takes in the data and puts it into RAM (Random Access Memory). That RAM – the fast memory of the PC, NOT the SSD or hard disk! – is used by the software to buffer a few seconds. Some software load the entire song in memory.

So in practice there is no playing from a disk at all. And timing is totally unimportant: the PC reads in “bursts” to the RAM. This is also easy to see in the task manager of the PC or Mac: you can see when you load a track, that the sofware briefly reads from the disk and puts it in the RAM.

With a streamer playing from a network, the same thing is done: the streamer first puts the data in the buffer (also to the streamer’s RAM) and starts playing. You will see that if you disconnect the network connection, the streamer just keeps playing.

Buffering the errors?

“But…” audiophiles will say…. “the errors can be buffered to RAM!”.

No: it can’t, because – as with networking and a copy to for example, an external usb-drive – error correction is built in. When a PC copies the data from the SSD to the RAM, checks are done – practically in real time – for data integrity. If that didn’t happen, there would be loads of data corruption!

For your information, there are also numerous error correction algorithms in a processor. Without those corrections, PCs would crash every minute.

“OK…. so no data errors. But that audio SD has less noise…”.

Yes: less noise is always good. However, the question is: is that one SSD the real culprit in the PC? Look at the environment in which this SSD is operating. You place it in an M.2 slot (basically pci-express) of a motherboard. A pcb packed with voltage regulators and a central processor with now billions of transistors. A processor that can draw tens of amperes under peak load and does its work at GHzs. We estimate that it generates slightly more noise than an m.2 ssd.

Our opinion

While this m.2 SSD certainly generates less noise, – in our opinion – the noise of an m.2 SSD is a drop in the ocean.

Thereby, it is totally irrelevant, since the data from the SSD is simply buffered in RAM. That RAM is not powered by a nice, clean power supply AND does not have a separate low phase noise Crystek clock.

In short: any “advantages” that might be there are killed within nanoseconds of pressing Play. Or are we now giving away an idea for the next product…. audiophile RAM?”