Topic: Uh-Ohhhhh!!! My R-09 HR wedges (freezes) during a session!

[tungarbulb]

The other day I was at a program of live electronic music, getting it all down with my Church Audio outboard mics and preamp and my up-till-now trusty Edirol R-09HR digital recorder. I usually record in 16/44.1K. This time I was experimentally using 24/96K.

The first two acts were relatively quiet. The third act (the low, point of the show in my opinion but what the hey) was raucously loud. I don't recall exactly what I did, what I touched, but all I know is that the recorder stopped dead where it was. Pressing the stop button, or any other button had no effect at all, not even the power switch. I ended up having to shut the unit down by removing the batteries. I restarted it. I hit record again. My input level settings were way above what I'd set them at before.

Anyway, whenever I tried playing back the track with the offending artist on it, the machine wedged, that is, it froze, and just like the first time, no button-pushing would help. I had to reboot the machine by taking out the batteries, just as I'd done the previous two times.

Now, the last time something like this happened to me it was with my old digital camera. My camera froze while I was trying to snap a photo, and the only way to un-wedge it was to take out the batteries. It turned out to be a defective compact flash card (A Lexar, BTW.) The one in my R-09HR was a San Disk 8GB SDHC card which I'd purchased recently.

I took the 8 GB card out, fearing that all my night's efforts had been consigned to the Great Bit Bucket. I replaced it with an old 1GB SD card which I carried as a spare, and recorded several tracks of a few minutes each of night bugs (they're just insane this time of year, by the way!). I did notice that my recorder stopped in its tracks during one such attempt. It was late at night, so my half-asleep brain didn't remember if I just hit the pause button by mistake or if the machine was wedging up on its own again. I *think* I just pushed "pause" by mistake but I'm not sure.

I downloaded the tracks from the suspect 8GB card onto my PC and examined them in Adobe Audition. The offending track, the fourth one, which made my machine freeze each time I tried to play it back downloaded just fine (as did the others). Thankfully, the previous 3 tracks appeared to be undamaged (haven't listened to 'em all the way through but I see no obvious signs of digital hash). The 4th one, the offending one, had at least one glitch in it, kind of like a skip on a scratched vinyl record for those of you who are familiar with that kind of thing. Why my recorder wouldn't play it but Audition did is a mystery to me.

Is my chip to blame? Or is my R-09HR a lemon? I have some important recording dates coming up and I know full well that doing the warranty dance with Roland or the warranty company will take weeks, if not longer. (Should I have just eaten ramen for a few months longer and gotten a Marantz recorder instead?)

In other words, has this kind of thing happened to anyone else who uses a Roland R-09HR? If so, what did you end up doing?

[RAQnasty]

hi - I started the other thread about a similar r09-hr issue...

funny you mentioned that card - the card I used was a 4 GB SanDisk SDHC.  It is the only SDHC card I have, the others are all "plain" SD cards.

Is there any chance this is what caused the issue?  I may have to do some in-basement experimenting around this premise.

[tungarbulb]

hi - I started the other thread about a similar r09-hr issue...

funny you mentioned that card - the card I used was a 4 GB SanDisk SDHC.  It is the only SDHC card I have, the others are all "plain" SD cards.

Is there any chance this is what caused the issue?  I may have to do some in-basement experimenting around this premise.

Maybe so.

After reading the other postings in your thread, I'm even more convinced that we're looking at a firmware bug of some sort. We should bitch en masse to Roland Corp. and make them fix it.

Stupid firmware/software-based electronics. I never had this kind of problem when I used a cassette deck...

[it-goes-to-eleven]

So you were testing new modes at a show, rather than at home.

Memory cards are not the uniform and always reliable devices we might hope they are.  They fragment, not unlike hard drives.

To suggest it is the recorder when you have done so little testing seems premature.

You did not mention formatting the cards.  Do you format or delete your files after you transfer them?

[vanark]

First thing I thought when I read this is that it is okay at 16/44 but as soon as you start with 24/96 you get issues?  SD card.  Try a different one maybe at a higher class (you only mention the size, not the speed).

[RAQnasty]

So you were testing new modes at a show, rather than at home.

Memory cards are not the uniform and always reliable devices we might hope they are.  They fragment, not unlike hard drives.

To suggest it is the recorder when you have done so little testing seems premature.

You did not mention formatting the cards.  Do you format or delete your files after you transfer them?

no not experimenting at a show with anything "new".  Have used those settings and that specific card before (at my best estimate that particular card has been used 5-6 times).  As far as formatting goes, I always format the card (not just deleting). 

Again, let me say the recording is one of the best quality I have pulled with my setup, the only issue was upon playback in the recorder.  As far as "experimenting in my basement" I am referring to trying to reproduce the anamolous playback using that card and then others.  I simply havent had the time to do this yet.

[RAQnasty]

First thing I thought when I read this is that it is okay at 16/44 but as soon as you start with 24/96 you get issues?  SD card.  Try a different one maybe at a higher class (you only mention the size, not the speed).

I could be wrong, but the 4GB card I have is actually a higher class than the 2GB I used that particular day - both SanDisk.

[tungarbulb]

So you were testing new modes at a show, rather than at home.[/qoute]

I'd actually tried it in 24/96 mode a few times before with no hang-ups, including a pair of rather lengthy soundboard recordings (through an ART transformer box).

In any event, I'm definitely going to be making more experimental recordings with the unit before trying to record anything important in 24/96. For the record, I've never had it hang up on me in 16/44.1 mode.

Memory cards are not the uniform and always reliable devices we might hope they are.  They fragment, not unlike hard drives.

So formatting them won't necessarily remedy fragmentation? My first thought was that I hit a bad sector which the card never got full enough to hit while in 16/44.1 mode. So do I need to fill up every new card with 3.6 hours (24-bit) or 12 hours (16-bit) of whatever just to make sure it won't screw up on me? If San Disk cards don't make it, what about other brands (I know that Kingston and especially PNY are to be avoided at all costs).

After I download *and* back up anything I've recorded on those chips, I format them in the recorder.

To suggest it is the recorder when you have done so little testing seems premature.

Based on my experience as well as those of others here, it sounds a lot to me like what we appear to have is a firmware bug. The unit performed without a hitch during a slew of 16-bit sessions. I guess putting 24/96 capability into such a small package was a tremendous leap of faith. Looks like the folks at Edirol need to release an update sooner or later.

First thing I thought when I read this is that it is okay at 16/44 but as soon as you start with 24/96 you get issues?  SD card.  Try a different one maybe at a higher class (you only mention the size, not the speed).

I chose one of San Disk's Ultra series of cards meant for DSLR's, rated at a transfer speed of 15 mb/sec thinking it would be adequate.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

A lot of the "fast" cards are optimized for the burst performance needed by DSLRS.  Sometimes the steady transfer rate suffers.  At least that was true in the early days.  Cards have matured a lot, and that should be less of an issue.

It's good that you format, and don't just delete.  However, we don't know if the Edirol implements TRIM..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

Another gotcha is partition alignment.  An improperly aligned partition can have a dramatic impact on performance.  One would hope the default parition table is optimally aligned.

In the meantime, you should record at 24/48 or 24/44.. But maybe test first

[tungarbulb]

So, formatting won't remedy sectoring errors in flash media as it (supposedly) does in full hard-drive formatting? Is the format function in the Edirol more like Windows' "fast format" function?

As for wear leveling, do 3-5000 cycles mean recording, playback, formatting or all 3? Should SD or CF cards be retired each year to just make sure?

[George2]

What class card?? Xspeed??
Why 24/96?
Let it run at home while testing.
What firmware?

[vanark]

I don't know why you are trying to help him. He has already decided it is firmware even though the rest of us suspect it is the SD card at 24/96.