Can we used external SSD drives with the Kronos ?

kronoSphere · Post by **kronoSphere** » Mon Mar 07, 2016 7:24 pm

Hello to all here,
my question is simple : Can we use external SSD drives with the Kronos ?

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Mon Mar 07, 2016 11:12 pm

Yes, but I suspect not for what you might have planned. There's nothing special that differentiates, from the host computer side, between an external SSD and an external HDD or even a USB stick. But if you mean "can I stream my samples from a USB drive" then no. USB 2.0 isn't really reliably fast enough for this and the Kronos doesn't allow it.

kronoSphere · Post by **kronoSphere** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:41 am

Thank you a lot SanderXpander for your answer. I just hope the future will improve it

Pedja · Post by **Pedja** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 12:26 pm

kronoSphere wrote:Thank you a lot SanderXpander for your answer. I just hope the future will improve it

In Kronos 3 it will be available, optimist will say this. This is the limitation of USB 2 standard, with USB 3 will not be too much better. I mean that MB in Kronos use SATA 3 standard ports, which is much more faster than USB 3. For sound streaming only way is SSD inside the Kronos.

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 2:46 pm

I don't think this is the case necessarily. It's true that SATA3 is faster than USB3 but the disks the Kronos uses don't even come close to maxing out the bus. On my computer I use a USB3 Samsung EVO 840 500GB for all my sample streaming (Komplete 9 Ultimate, Addictive Drums, EW Hollywood Strings etc.) and it's perfectly reliable. I don't know if they will ever implement it, but it's definitely technically possible.

Infa Red · Post by **Infa Red** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 12:38 am

kronoSphere wrote:Hello to all here,
my question is simple : Can we use external SSD drives with the Kronos ?

SanderXpander wrote:Yes, but I suspect not for what you might have planned. There's nothing special that differentiates, from the host computer side, between an external SSD and an external HDD or even a USB stick. But if you mean "can I stream my samples from a USB drive" then no. USB 2.0 isn't really reliably fast enough for this and the Kronos doesn't allow it.

I believe the summary here that SanderXpander is saying is, the bottleneck of speed for the Kronos external drive situations is not the drive, so getting a better faster drive solves nothing. The bottle neck is the fact that the protocol to get in and out of the Kronos externally is USB2.

Pedja wrote:In Kronos 3 it will be available, optimist will say this. This is the limitation of USB 2 standard, with USB 3 will not be too much better. I mean that MB in Kronos use SATA 3 standard ports, which is much more faster than USB 3. For sound streaming only way is SSD inside the Kronos.

Well, I am no super tech dude by any means, so I could be wrong here, but isn't SATA3 6Gb/s and USB3 5Gb/s ? So to say SATA3 is "much faster" than USB3 is imo a little over zealous there. LOL And to say USB3 is not much faster than USB2 (which runs at 480Mb/s) and is 10 times faster than USB2 is a bit off too. IMHO USB3 is much much faster and better than USB2, and SATA3 is just ever so slightly faster than USB3.

From my experience in the pro-audio world dealing with computers and streaming large high quality 96k 24bit audio live, USB3 works fine. That said, USB3 is getting a speed boost soon, as is Thuderbolt2 - So I hope Korg does not do the classic issue of updating their newest board with old tech. If I were Korg, I'd plan the next board around the newest release of the fastest protocol and use that. (USB3.2 or Thunderbolt3)

That would be future proof for many many years and stop these issues we face now. Kronos2 was released and USB3 and Thunderbolt had been out.