Amongst other things, recently putting together a new live rig was reminder of just how effectively an everyday USB stick can solve some common laptop performance issues. Before sneering at the thought of using a humble USB key instead of your ‘lightning fast’ internal drive, you might want to read the rest of this article to see if this idea could work for you.

Overview
The idea is simple: leave your operating system and software installations just as they are, but access all of your samples, set files and performance related data from an everyday USB key.

Potential Benefits

• Avoid vibration issues
• Improve data transfer consistency
• Improve access speed
• Save yourself some cash

Avoid Vibration Issues
If you play music heavy on the low end from a laptop in a performance environment, it’s quite possible that you already have – or at some stage will – experience issues with sub bass vibration. These effects can range from jumping or glitching of the audio, to erratic gaps of complete silence; possibly even a maxed out CPU or system crash when the set you’re playing should hit nowhere near the available limit.

A hard drive works like a turntable in that a ‘needle’ (or head) moves across a ‘record’ (platter) to access your data as the system requests it. If there is enough vibration in the room, it can cause the head to jump, skid or slip while attempting to access your audio files, and while your poor processor frantically tries to compensate the read errors, this can result in any – or all – of the symptoms listed earlier, possibly even damaging your drive.

Unlike a regular HD, the everyday USB key is a solid state drive that has no moving parts. This means that as long as it stays connected, you could probably throw the thing in a tumble dryer without noticing any difference in performance.*

* Disclaimer: We do not recommend using your laptop from inside a tumble dryer. Attempt this manoeuvre at your own risk, but please send photos or video if you are successful.

Improve Data Transfer Consistency
Although most modern internal hard drives should have a significantly faster peak speed compared to a USB key, one of the advantages of solid state technology is that it usually accesses data at a far more consistent rate. If you were to benchmark a series of different drives using free utilities like HD Tach from Simpli Software, you’d notice that whilst a USB key should deliver extremely consistent speeds throughout, a standard internal drive is likely to ‘zig-zag’ up and down throughout the test.

In short, having a blazing fast top speed is all well and good – and over time, your internal drive may well clock a higher average – but performance issues in a live environment are often more about the slowest speed than the fastest.

Despite the ‘bigger better faster more’ approach to improving technology, the simple truth is that we don’t need incredible read speeds to play a large number of simultaneous, high quality audio tracks. A 24 bit stereo WAV for example, requires rates of just 0.26 Megabytes per second (MBps), and in terms of pure throughput, this means that even an incredibly slow USB key should handle more than enough audio to keep you satisfied on stage. By way of example, a cheap and nasty USB key with sequential read speeds of around 8MBps is still theoretically capable of streaming more than 30 stereo tracks of 24bit WAV audio without issue.

In contrast however, if you have an internal drive that ‘zig-zags’ from 100 MBps at it’s fastest, but occasionally drops down to a lowly 3 MBps (perhaps it requires defragmentation or is being affected by sub bass vibration) you might well notice glitches, pops or other problems with your audio each time it bottoms out. Puts things into perspective doesn’t it?

An important note on transfer speed:
When looking at transfer speeds like those mentioned above, be mindful of the difference between Megabytes per second (MBps) and Megabits per second (Mbps). Just one capital letter can make all the difference as 1MBps = 8Mbps.

Improve Access Speed
Before a standard hard drive can begin reading data, the platter must physically spin to allow the head to arrive at the place where the information is stored. Although this happens very quickly (usually a matter of milliseconds) the time taken to reach the starting point – referred to as access time – can sometimes cause a noticeable delay in response when triggering samples in a live environment. With solid state technology however, there are no moving mechanical parts and this often results in lower access times. Depending on the speed of your internal drive this difference is often negligible, but from our own experience we suggest that there can also be a tangible improvement between trigger and response. Why not try it for yourself?

Save Yourself Some Cash
Although Solid State Drives (SSD) are becoming far more widely available and could deliver exactly the same benefits we have discussed here, there’s something to be said for the price, convenience and ease of use of what is a cheaper, but (depending on your usage) no means inferior option. Given the choice, we’re not recommending choosing a USB key over a SSD, but if you have a spare USB port and want to save some cash while obtaining similar benefits, the choice is a bit of a no-brainer.

Recommended USB Keys
The specific brand, model and size of USB key you choose will depend on your usage, but here’s a quick list of some that we’ve personally tried in live environments that have given fantastic results:

• Corsair Flash Voyager
• Lexar Jump Drive Lightning

If you have any personal experience with other brands or models we’d love to hear from you so don’t be shy.

Conclusion
Technology has come a long way since we were desperately searching for a solution all those years ago, but since finding one the Lo-Key Fu set is still run from a USB key today. As mentioned earlier, a SSD will provide the same benefits with a faster transfer rate, but don’t overlook the humble USB key as an interim measure if you’re keen to save some cash along the way.