Re: Shiny new portable recorder.
- From: mrivers@xxxxxxxxxxx (Mike Rivers)
- Date: 1 Aug 2005 21:48:45 -0400
In article <RnqHe.1$646.0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Floppy disks, like audio tapes, rely on flimsy magnetic material that is
> read by physical contact with the heads.
>
> Audio preamps, like CF cards, need have no moving parts, and as such have
> fewer failure modes.
Those are pretty flimsy analogies. How about:
Floppy disks and audio tapes can suffer from physical wear, but
they're big, fairly robust, and you usualy have some warning, like
slow performance due to eventually successful retries, before they're
ready for the junk pile. Catastrophic failure is rare.
Audio preamps and flash cards have no moving parts, but the flash
cards rely on tiny multi-pin connectors and everthing is sealed up in
a module the size of a postage stamp with nothing that can be
troubleshot or repaired if there's a failure, whereas real preamps
are hand wired and have real components in them that you can replace.
And the failure of a preamp after a recording is made can't cause a
loss of the recording (unless you drop it on the flash card).
> > And such incompatibilities don't, or couldn't exist with recorders?
> One should study this and know the answer before buying media.
At this point, I don't think we have enough data.
> I thought we were talking about *you* as the user?
One of perhaps many. But I'm not infallibibble either.
> > With a 3-head tape deck, you can check to see if it's recording any
> > time you want to pick up a set of headphones and listen. And if you're
> > monitoring the playback, you can see if the meters stop moving.
> >
> Even so, that won't inform you of drop-outs, areas of poor coatings and
> such. Only a 100% evaluation will do that.
True, but those are things that, though annoying, can be tolerated. At
least you can listen to something. But if the card won't read, you
can't listen to anything. Different kinds of failure modes. There's no
equivalent to a dropout on a flash card. You may have a mute or a
blast of noise, but you won't have a graceful short term drop in
volume.
> All I've written, and others have supported, is that the likelihood of the
> "second chance to fail" is quite low.
So it's all about chances?
> > There's also the issue of the working life of a flash card.
> > There's a real limit, and it has been reached by some already.
> >
> I haven't seen this problem. I'd be willing to bet that it's a matter of
> the user stumbling across the incompatibility issue that I mentioned
> before.
It's real. Believe it. You may not have stumbled across it because
you're not using your flash cards enough. Try running your Unix
system off one. That'll exercise it to the point of failure pretty
soon. It's not a good idea, of course, but that was one experiment
that someone tried just to document the failure.
> And, what I've been trying to get through to you is that this is a problem
> with how you are looking at the tasks. How do you keep from recording over
> tapes during a weekend?
That's easy. There's a write-protect tab. Also, you take the stack of
blank tapes out of the box they came in, and as you record one you put
it back in the box. I don't know of a write protect tab on a flash
card, and other than a soft wallet, I know of no storage system for
them. They don't come in a box, and while a shrink-wrappted tape
cassette is no picnic to open in a hurry, a blister-packed flash card
can be downright dangerous.
> that workflow is more
> task-intensive than would be required for CF card swapping.
I don't see how this can be true. Swapping cards is the same kind of
task as swapping tapes, and there's no equivalent, with tape, of
burning a CD and erasing the flash card in time to re-use the card
when needed.
> The bottom
> line is that you just don't want to do that, which is fine, but it doesn't
> make the concerns you've expressed legitimate. ;-)
True, I don't want to do it, and I think I have good reasons why it
won't work for me.
> So, here's a possible workflow:
> * Set up the recorder and a laptop w/CF adapter (mine is a USB thingy).
> (Presumably, the recorder is connected to the mixing console tape outs.
Sorry, no space for all that. I can set up the recorder, or set up the
laptop. Not both. Besides, I'd like to avoid the tangle of power cords
and USB cables.
> * I haven't seen the xfer software for this particular recorder, but I'll
> assume that it is at least as smart as for cameras. If not, that still
> isn't much of a problem, as the files would still have time & date stamps
> * At convenient break points near where the CF card would be full swap it
> for a fresh one, transfer the files to the laptop, then wipe the CF card.
I would guess it's simply a matter of sticking the flash card into the
reader, starting a file browser (Windows Explorer, in my case) and
dragging the file(s) on the card to a folder on the hard disk. And as
long as the card is in the reader, after the transfer, I might as well
format it and put it in the "empty" stack. I might be able to take my
eyes and ears of the stage (I'm running the live sound, too, remember)
for enough time to do that, but I really don't like distractions like
fooling with computers while I'm mixing live. It seems that inevitibly
when I take my eyes of the stage for half a minute, that's when
someone picks up a different instrument or walks over to a mic that
isn't on.
> Much of this can be automated; it would be a trivial task to write an
> auto-logging routine that would create a database of the files associated
> with a performance as you add files to a directory, and even verify the
> copies and re-copy if necessary, then wipe the CF card. I wrote just that
> kind of applet when I was using SyQuest discs on large projects, and IIRC
> it took me all of a day to get it finished and working.
That's probably not necessary. If I was doing a job like this, I'd be
inclined to use one card for each set, let the recorder run throughout
the set, and I'd have one contiguous file per set. All I need to do is
name it for the group and I can figure out what to label the CD when
doing that transfer.
> * Burn CDs whenever it's convenient.
That'll be next week. So I guess that I'll also have to get a bigger
hard drive for my laptop computer, or use an external drive (which
might not be a bad idea).
> If you're recording pros, it shouldn't be necessary to constantly adjust
> PA levels during a song (if not, what makes this music so important?)
It's folk music, so it's not pros, and that's exactly what makes the
music so important.
--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@xxxxxxxxxxx)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo
.
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