Topic: I love the JB3 damit

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

I love this thing I just got it and I have to say it rocks. I just upgraded the hard drive from the 20 to a 40 and it works like a charm. Got the new firmware ver 1.40 and its great. Many new features added it was a pain in the ass to upgrade from ver1.10 though. But I got the old driver and everything was great. Wow the only thing I notice is the monitoring of a recording is noisy but the recording when played back is dead quiet. Anyway I thought I would share my new found love for the JB3 with ya all.

Chris Church
PS.... A friend of mine owns MP3.COM and he makes batteries for the Archos I am going to talk to him about making a battery for this thing.
I am sure there would be people lined up around the corner

[svenkid]

JB3 rules for me too! 

[RebelRebel]

I love this thing I just got it and I have to say it rocks. I just upgraded the hard drive from the 20 to a 40 and it works like a charm. Got the new firmware ver 1.40 and its great. Many new features added it was a pain in the ass to upgrade from ver1.10 though. But I got the old driver and everything was great. Wow the only thing I notice is the monitoring of a recording is noisy but the recording when played back is dead quiet. Anyway I thought I would share my new found love for the JB3 with ya all.

Chris Church
PS.... A friend of mine owns MP3.COM and he makes batteries for the Archos I am going to talk to him about making a battery for this thing.
I am sure there would be people lined up around the corner

Chris, there are many many threads about JB3 power here...people have gotten more than enough juice from the power runner batts and other solutions.

[terrapinj]

show your buddy the prices the extra batts snatch on ebay, should help get him motivated.

you can easily power it with an external pack of some sorts, but for stealthing its so nice not to have one more thing to get in and carry on you

[poorlyconditioned]

I love this thing I just got it and I have to say it rocks. I just upgraded the hard drive from the 20 to a 40 and it works like a charm. Got the new firmware ver 1.40 and its great. Many new features added it was a pain in the ass to upgrade from ver1.10 though. But I got the old driver and everything was great. Wow the only thing I notice is the monitoring of a recording is noisy but the recording when played back is dead quiet. Anyway I thought I would share my new found love for the JB3 with ya all.

Chris Church
PS.... A friend of mine owns MP3.COM and he makes batteries for the Archos I am going to talk to him about making a battery for this thing.
I am sure there would be people lined up around the corner

I would not recommend this for analog recording.  The ADC is reasonable, but not great.  But the problem is that every so often you can hear hard drive noises on the recording.  A high-pitched whine/buzz every 30 seconds or so.  I'm not suprised, since everything is so closely packed in there.  What suprises me is people using really high end gear (Neumann, Scheops, etc) then putting into analog in on a NJB3 or similar.

For digital recording this thing rules though.  With an external battery pack and a decent ADC in front, it is great, especially for festivals, etc.  Just leave it running in "continuous" mode.

  Richard

[rowjimmy]

My JB3 really smoked it @ Vegoose, no doubt.
 

[Roving Sign]

For the record  -some- people have had issues with HD noise...

I acknowledge the problem - I believe its there - but I also wonder if certain units are more prone to this noise...they cant all have the SAME exact HD in there...?

I dont go analog very often - the only stealth job I did - came out really low level - I tried and tried to hear some HD noise - even after 20 something db of gain added...

Is there a spectral that shows what the noise looks like? It might be easier to see - than hear...

[Chanher]

For digital recording this thing rules though.  With an external battery pack and a decent ADC in front, it is great, especially for festivals, etc.  Just leave it running in "continuous" mode.

  Richard

Just remember the split is at the 3 hour mark and that it is NOT seamless. If you hit the 3 hour mark in the middle of a song, you will lose a few seconds of music.

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

Its funny you should be talking about this I just replaced the harddrive with a new hitachi guess what? no whining noise. GONE the fujitsu drive that comes stock sucks because its too noisy. Think about this the fugitsu drive is made in 2002 on my JB3. Things have come along way in drive technoligy like less power consumption and much better drive electronics the hitachi drive that I had came from a Neuros video recorder a  new one it had a broken screen so I ditched the rest and tore out the harddrive. And its very quiet now. So i suggest for the guys like me that dont want to go in via digital to take a close look at the internal JB3 harddrive and replace it with a good hitachi or something simmilar maybe even a nice WD if they make a 2.5.

Chris Church

For the record  -some- people have had issues with HD noise...

I acknowledge the problem - I believe its there - but I also wonder if certain units are more prone to this noise...they cant all have the SAME exact HD in there...?

I dont go analog very often - the only stealth job I did - came out really low level - I tried and tried to hear some HD noise - even after 20 something db of gain added...

Is there a spectral that shows what the noise looks like? It might be easier to see - than hear...

[Roving Sign]

Chris - do you have model # on the drive you used...?

I've been suspicious of the drives since people started reporting this noise...

[F.O.Bean]

ive used my jb3 didg-in HUNDREDS of sets/times and it has only had weird glitches maybe twice,a nd they were user error

what im saying is, take care of the HD in it and it will take care of you plus 16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

[Chanher]

16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

so true, I've been having the same revelation Nick Pick's had, if I'm making a PA tape, especially in an indoor venue, I almost prefer 16-bit, especially when you factor in transfer time, flac time, dither time, etc. etc.

[F.O.Bean]

16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

so true, I've been having the same revelation Nick Pick's had, if I'm making a PA tape, especially in an indoor venue, I almost prefer 16-bit, especially when you factor in transfer time, flac time, dither time, etc. etc.

after hearing v3>modsbm1, my ears definitely might prefer 16-bit most of the time

as much as i wanna go 24-bit, alot of me says WHY? i record in bars/clubs mostly

[Roving Sign]

We're talkin' analog-input here Bean...

But yeah - I just got the firewire card about a month ago - Rocks...dreamy fast!

Agree on the 24 bit thing...the sonic issues arent the issue...its all the extra CPU cycles...

I just started feeling like Im pretty fast in the 16 bit turnaround...

24 bits and I'll never get anything done!!!

[Chanher]

16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

so true, I've been having the same revelation Nick Pick's had, if I'm making a PA tape, especially in an indoor venue, I almost prefer 16-bit, especially when you factor in transfer time, flac time, dither time, etc. etc.

after hearing v3>modsbm1, my ears definitely might prefer 16-bit most of the time

as much as i wanna go 24-bit, alot of me says WHY? i record in bars/clubs mostly

"Why" is the correct question we should all ask ourselves when considering 24-bit. when I finally began to use my ears, all I heard was higher resolution of reverb and crowd noise. however, I need to run these comparisons on a high-end audiophile system, maybe I'll regret it when I'm old enough to get my own and house and listening room...

anyway, so yeah, the jb3 is cool.

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

I will take my JB3 apart and see what the model number is and report back. I also think drive cache has somthing to do with it. The whining noise is something to do with grounding on the drive or a bad power supply circuit. I wounder what would happen if a person used copper shielding tape? to isolate the drives electromegnetic and emi field from the JB3 Main board might be worth checking out for the people that do not want to change the drive?. I also like the new firmware with the boost its great still the monitoring section is very noisy. I have learned you can not judge real noise by lisiting to the monitoring fuction while recording. It sounds noisy and then when you listen to it after being copied to your computer the noise is not there.

Chris - do you have model # on the drive you used...?

I've been suspicious of the drives since people started reporting this noise...

[Roving Sign]

Just remember the split is at the 3 hour mark and that it is NOT seamless. If you hit the 3 hour mark in the middle of a song, you will lose a few seconds of music.

   I've run over the 3hr mark in continuous mode a couple times and each one there was perhaps a micro sec of gap... certainly not seconds.  YMMV

I think the earlier firmware verisons left a gap -

[TheWildKindness]

I would not recommend this for analog recording.  The ADC is reasonable, but not great.  But the problem is that every so often you can hear hard drive noises on the recording.  A high-pitched whine/buzz every 30 seconds or so.  I'm not suprised, since everything is so closely packed in there.  What suprises me is people using really high end gear (Neumann, Scheops, etc) then putting into analog in on a NJB3 or similar.

 I have heard 'of' this problem, but I have used my: AT 831's > SP BB > (line-in) JB3, set-up quite a bit...and I have never had one issue with hard drive noise.

[Chanher]

Just remember the split is at the 3 hour mark and that it is NOT seamless. If you hit the 3 hour mark in the middle of a song, you will lose a few seconds of music.

   I've run over the 3hr mark in continuous mode a couple times and each one there was perhaps a micro sec of gap... certainly not seconds.  YMMV

I think the earlier firmware verisons left a gap -

ah ok, my mistake. but I do know it is not seamless, I believe I remember hearing a small pop too at the beginning of a file the jb3 started.

[rdflash]

Chris - do you have model # on the drive you used...?

I've been suspicious of the drives since people started reporting this noise...

I get hard drive noise when I boost the dB gain.

If I leave it at "0" - all the problems cease to exist.

[Aaron41]

I like my JB3. Definitely a great starter recorder. I definitely want to upgrade to 24 bit soon though.

[RebelRebel]

I agree about the PA stuff....since i started doing only acoustic/classical recording, all I hear from 24 bit PA tapes is more of what I hate about PA tapes to begin with. the signal that comes out is so destroyed by compression, bad equipment, bad soundmen, etc....what advantage is there in 24 bits of that stuff?and then listening on a multithousand dollar playback system you hear even more ugliness...
now acoustic/classical ...thats where high res is the heat...jb3 is an awesome machine..

16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

so true, I've been having the same revelation Nick Pick's had, if I'm making a PA tape, especially in an indoor venue, I almost prefer 16-bit, especially when you factor in transfer time, flac time, dither time, etc. etc.

after hearing v3>modsbm1, my ears definitely might prefer 16-bit most of the time

as much as i wanna go 24-bit, alot of me says WHY? i record in bars/clubs mostly

"Why" is the correct question we should all ask ourselves when considering 24-bit. when I finally began to use my ears, all I heard was higher resolution of reverb and crowd noise. however, I need to run these comparisons on a high-end audiophile system, maybe I'll regret it when I'm old enough to get my own and house and listening room...

anyway, so yeah, the jb3 is cool.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

The jb3 brings home the bacon!

Funny how it seemed like the jb3 market would be history once the MT hit. I had to buy 3 jb3's on ebay before I got a good one (and for only $105). Fortunately I got my money back on the two problem units.

Hard drive noise is also known to vary between units on Archos recorders. My archos has a noisy hard drive.  My jb3 is quiet.. It is great for grabbing boards.

[F.O.Bean]

I agree about the PA stuff....since i started doing only acoustic/classical recording, all I hear from 24 bit PA tapes is more of what I hate about PA tapes to begin with. the signal that comes out is so destroyed by compression, bad equipment, bad soundmen, etc....what advantage is there in 24 bits of that stuff?and then listening on a multithousand dollar playback system you hear even more ugliness...
now acoustic/classical ...thats where high res is the heat...jb3 is an awesome machine..

16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

so true, I've been having the same revelation Nick Pick's had, if I'm making a PA tape, especially in an indoor venue, I almost prefer 16-bit, especially when you factor in transfer time, flac time, dither time, etc. etc.

after hearing v3>modsbm1, my ears definitely might prefer 16-bit most of the time

as much as i wanna go 24-bit, alot of me says WHY? i record in bars/clubs mostly

"Why" is the correct question we should all ask ourselves when considering 24-bit. when I finally began to use my ears, all I heard was higher resolution of reverb and crowd noise. however, I need to run these comparisons on a high-end audiophile system, maybe I'll regret it when I'm old enough to get my own and house and listening room...

anyway, so yeah, the jb3 is cool.

thats about what my opinions are at the moment w/ 24-bit teddy, and w/ sweet boxes ala the modsbm1 and a slew of others at 16-bit, why upgrade?

[RebelRebel]

The ModSBM is a nice sounding piece of equipment for sure....I used one only once unfortunately  but I really liked it.

I agree about the PA stuff....since i started doing only acoustic/classical recording, all I hear from 24 bit PA tapes is more of what I hate about PA tapes to begin with. the signal that comes out is so destroyed by compression, bad equipment, bad soundmen, etc....what advantage is there in 24 bits of that stuff?and then listening on a multithousand dollar playback system you hear even more ugliness...
now acoustic/classical ...thats where high res is the heat...jb3 is an awesome machine..

16-bit firewire transfers are the SHIT

so true, I've been having the same revelation Nick Pick's had, if I'm making a PA tape, especially in an indoor venue, I almost prefer 16-bit, especially when you factor in transfer time, flac time, dither time, etc. etc.

after hearing v3>modsbm1, my ears definitely might prefer 16-bit most of the time

as much as i wanna go 24-bit, alot of me says WHY? i record in bars/clubs mostly

"Why" is the correct question we should all ask ourselves when considering 24-bit. when I finally began to use my ears, all I heard was higher resolution of reverb and crowd noise. however, I need to run these comparisons on a high-end audiophile system, maybe I'll regret it when I'm old enough to get my own and house and listening room...

anyway, so yeah, the jb3 is cool.

thats about what my opinions are at the moment w/ 24-bit teddy, and w/ sweet boxes ala the modsbm1 and a slew of others at 16-bit, why upgrade?

[pfife]

My jb3 was a workhorse too.... it worked flawlessly for a long time.... like over 2 years, until finally one day it started to have problems when I was taping Duo... Ed showed me how to reformat, and that made it work well again, but I had to reformat regularly after that.   Before that show, I had not ever reformatted or defragged the drive.

Since then I've gotten a whole new rig, w/ an R-1, and I also tape in small shithole bars w/ terrible sound, and I still like the sound of my 24-bit recordings more.  However, since every aspect of my rig changed all at once, its difficult for me to single out the change from 16bit to 24bit as the most significant upgrade.

I do believe that the modSBM-1 may not have been the right peice of gear *for me*....

[TheWildKindness]

My jb3 was a workhorse too.... it worked flawlessly for a long time.... like over 2 years, until finally one day it started to have problems when I was taping Duo... Ed showed me how to reformat, and that made it work well again, but I had to reformat regularly after that.   Before that show, I had not ever reformatted or defragged the drive.

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

[terrapinj]

My jb3 was a workhorse too.... it worked flawlessly for a long time.... like over 2 years, until finally one day it started to have problems when I was taping Duo... Ed showed me how to reformat, and that made it work well again, but I had to reformat regularly after that.   Before that show, I had not ever reformatted or defragged the drive.

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

some people format each time they remove a show from the drive - to keep the drive free from errors. it may not be necessary that often (or it may) but you should at least get into the habit of doing it every so often. i try to reformat mine every couple weeks or at the very least once a month if i've been taping a decent bit. you need to access the startup menu by holding down the stop key and inserting a paperclip or some other similar object into the reset hole in the back, when the 1st creative screen pops up release the stop key and press the play button.

[TheWildKindness]

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

some people format each time they remove a show from the drive - to keep the drive free from errors. it may not be necessary that often (or it may) but you should at least get into the habit of doing it every so often. i try to reformat mine every couple weeks or at the very least once a month if i've been taping a decent bit. you need to access the startup menu by holding down the stop key and inserting a paperclip or some other similar object into the reset hole in the back, when the 1st creative screen pops up release the stop key and press the play button.

 Thanks for the info. When I re-format the drive, will it still keep the latest firmware on the drive? or will I have to reload it? Do you know anything about defragging the drive? Or is it better/easier to just reformat on occasion? Thanks again for the response TerrapinJ +T for your help.

 - Shawn

[terrapinj]

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

some people format each time they remove a show from the drive - to keep the drive free from errors. it may not be necessary that often (or it may) but you should at least get into the habit of doing it every so often. i try to reformat mine every couple weeks or at the very least once a month if i've been taping a decent bit. you need to access the startup menu by holding down the stop key and inserting a paperclip or some other similar object into the reset hole in the back, when the 1st creative screen pops up release the stop key and press the play button.

 Thanks for the info. When I re-format the drive, will it still keep the latest firmware on the drive? or will I have to reload it? Do you know anything about defragging the drive? Or is it better/easier to just reformat on occasion? Thanks again for the response TerrapinJ +T for your help.

 - Shawn

the firmware will stay on there, but you will have to reset all your settings (backlight time, date, name etc)

the two functions you can use are format and disk cleanup - the disk cleanup is like a defrag I guess, i usually use the two at the same time, format, then do a disk cleanup. if you search around some of the older JB3 threads there should be some specifics as to what each does exactly and how frequently it should be used. i use them as preventative maintenance.

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

If you are formating a hard drive you do not have to defrag because its a now clean slate as far as your partition table is conserned.All that formating does to a drive is whipe the partition menu from a drive meaning the drive " thinks " there are no files on it, when it fact all the files are still there it then allows you to simply write over top of the files as if they did not exist. Defraging orginaizes these file fragments and puts the most requested data closer to the edge of the plater so it can be got to quickly from the heads of the drive but this is a moot point if you have formated the drive. The only way to really wipe a hard drive is to do a low level format but in order to do that you need software like spinrite 5.0 that gathers the drive geometry and allows a safe low level format. You should know what the hell your doing if you do play with that stuff, this will bring your drive back to original specs. I only use that if I am dealing with a boot sector virus that fdisk / mbr does not remove. You should dfrag a hard drive when you have erased more then 10 gigs from it. I dont recomend doing it all the time because it will lower the life of your drive. The more you ask it to read and seek the more the heads move the more the heads move the less time your drive will stay in working order. I dont do it all the time but I would do it if I had been erasing alot of small files that added up to a total of 10gigs or more. I hope I did not bore you with the facts of defrag

Chris Church

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

some people format each time they remove a show from the drive - to keep the drive free from errors. it may not be necessary that often (or it may) but you should at least get into the habit of doing it every so often. i try to reformat mine every couple weeks or at the very least once a month if i've been taping a decent bit. you need to access the startup menu by holding down the stop key and inserting a paperclip or some other similar object into the reset hole in the back, when the 1st creative screen pops up release the stop key and press the play button.

 Thanks for the info. When I re-format the drive, will it still keep the latest firmware on the drive? or will I have to reload it? Do you know anything about defragging the drive? Or is it better/easier to just reformat on occasion? Thanks again for the response TerrapinJ +T for your help.

 - Shawn

the firmware will stay on there, but you will have to reset all your settings (backlight time, date, name etc)

the two functions you can use are format and disk cleanup - the disk cleanup is like a defrag I guess, i usually use the two at the same time, format, then do a disk cleanup. if you search around some of the older JB3 threads there should be some specifics as to what each does exactly and how frequently it should be used. i use them as preventative maintenance.

[Roving Sign]

If you are formating a hard drive you do not have to defrag because its a now clean slate as far as your partition table is conserned.All that formating does to a drive is whipe the partition menu from a drive meaning the drive " thinks " there are no files on it, when it fact all the files are still there it then allows you to simply write over top of the files as if they did not exist. Defraging orginaizes these file fragments and puts the most requested data closer to the edge of the plater so it can be got to quickly from the heads of the drive but this is a moot point if you have formated the drive. The only way to really wipe a hard drive is to do a low level format but in order to do that you need software like spinrite 5.0 that gathers the drive geometry and allows a safe low level format. You should know what the hell your doing if you do play with that stuff, this will bring your drive back to original specs. I only use that if I am dealing with a boot sector virus that fdisk / mbr does not remove. You should dfrag a hard drive when you have erased more then 10 gigs from it. I dont recomend doing it all the time because it will lower the life of your drive. The more you ask it to read and seek the more the heads move the more the heads move the less time your drive will stay in working order. I dont do it all the time but I would do it if I had been erasing alot of small files that added up to a total of 10gigs or more. I hope I did not bore you with the facts of defrag

Chris Church

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

some people format each time they remove a show from the drive - to keep the drive free from errors. it may not be necessary that often (or it may) but you should at least get into the habit of doing it every so often. i try to reformat mine every couple weeks or at the very least once a month if i've been taping a decent bit. you need to access the startup menu by holding down the stop key and inserting a paperclip or some other similar object into the reset hole in the back, when the 1st creative screen pops up release the stop key and press the play button.

 Thanks for the info. When I re-format the drive, will it still keep the latest firmware on the drive? or will I have to reload it? Do you know anything about defragging the drive? Or is it better/easier to just reformat on occasion? Thanks again for the response TerrapinJ +T for your help.

 - Shawn

the firmware will stay on there, but you will have to reset all your settings (backlight time, date, name etc)

the two functions you can use are format and disk cleanup - the disk cleanup is like a defrag I guess, i usually use the two at the same time, format, then do a disk cleanup. if you search around some of the older JB3 threads there should be some specifics as to what each does exactly and how frequently it should be used. i use them as preventative maintenance.

Chris - they are discussing the functions in "Rescue Mode" on the JB3 - not the same as DOS/Windows stuff...

(there is a reset button on the bottom of the machine - hold "stop" down, push the reset, and hit "play" as soon as the Creative screen shows - that will put you in rescue mode)

Clean up - looks for orphaned files and rebuilds the library/directory...if your machine ever freezes up mid show - make sure you use "Clean Up" - there is a good chance it will find the track...

Format - just "erases" and rewrites the library...I doubt it really erases as it doesnt take much time...not really the same as "Format" in DOS

I dont think there is anything that is a true "defrag" function of the JB3...

[CHURCH-AUDIO]

I knew that! Not .....  Never mind.
As I was saying on the JB3 the when your in rescue mod its importaint to defrag the hard drive after formating hehe.

oh well I guess I was a tad bit to eager to share my computer knowlage but I can see that my point is MOOT.

Chris Church

If you are formating a hard drive you do not have to defrag because its a now clean slate as far as your partition table is conserned.All that formating does to a drive is whipe the partition menu from a drive meaning the drive " thinks " there are no files on it, when it fact all the files are still there it then allows you to simply write over top of the files as if they did not exist. Defraging orginaizes these file fragments and puts the most requested data closer to the edge of the plater so it can be got to quickly from the heads of the drive but this is a moot point if you have formated the drive. The only way to really wipe a hard drive is to do a low level format but in order to do that you need software like spinrite 5.0 that gathers the drive geometry and allows a safe low level format. You should know what the hell your doing if you do play with that stuff, this will bring your drive back to original specs. I only use that if I am dealing with a boot sector virus that fdisk / mbr does not remove. You should dfrag a hard drive when you have erased more then 10 gigs from it. I dont recomend doing it all the time because it will lower the life of your drive. The more you ask it to read and seek the more the heads move the more the heads move the less time your drive will stay in working order. I dont do it all the time but I would do it if I had been erasing alot of small files that added up to a total of 10gigs or more. I hope I did not bore you with the facts of defrag

Chris Church

 I've been curious to know how important it is to defrag and/or reformat the drive on the JB3? I have been using mine for a year and have never done so. I just upload the recordings onto my computer, do all the editing and burn them on cd's. Once I feel that I have a flawless copy archived on cd, I then erase the recordings off of the JB3. Seems to be working fine....so how important is the defrag/reformat? And when you reformat it, do you have to reload the the firmware? And how do you defrag/reformat this thing anyway? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I haven't really thought much about it and have been wondering what the significance is lately.

Thanks for your help.
 - Shawn

some people format each time they remove a show from the drive - to keep the drive free from errors. it may not be necessary that often (or it may) but you should at least get into the habit of doing it every so often. i try to reformat mine every couple weeks or at the very least once a month if i've been taping a decent bit. you need to access the startup menu by holding down the stop key and inserting a paperclip or some other similar object into the reset hole in the back, when the 1st creative screen pops up release the stop key and press the play button.

 Thanks for the info. When I re-format the drive, will it still keep the latest firmware on the drive? or will I have to reload it? Do you know anything about defragging the drive? Or is it better/easier to just reformat on occasion? Thanks again for the response TerrapinJ +T for your help.

 - Shawn

the firmware will stay on there, but you will have to reset all your settings (backlight time, date, name etc)

the two functions you can use are format and disk cleanup - the disk cleanup is like a defrag I guess, i usually use the two at the same time, format, then do a disk cleanup. if you search around some of the older JB3 threads there should be some specifics as to what each does exactly and how frequently it should be used. i use them as preventative maintenance.

Chris - they are discussing the functions in "Rescue Mode" on the JB3 - not the same as DOS/Windows stuff...

(there is a reset button on the bottom of the machine - hold "stop" down, push the reset, and hit "play" as soon as the Creative screen shows - that will put you in rescue mode)

Clean up - looks for orphaned files and rebuilds the library/directory...if your machine ever freezes up mid show - make sure you use "Clean Up" - there is a good chance it will find the track...

Format - just "erases" and rewrites the library...I doubt it really erases as it doesnt take much time...not really the same as "Format" in DOS

I dont think there is anything that is a true "defrag" function of the JB3...

[Roving Sign]

No problem Chris...I definitely appreciate your input around here...

I've been aware of you products for some time (I think my friend has one of your preamps)...nice to hear you chiming in...

[Teen Wolf Blitzer]

Not as much as I love my R-4!   

[RedRocketSr]

didn't want to start a new thread, so I'll tag along on this one...

I was looking around Creative Playcenter and saw the EAX advanced EQ settings option was set for 'Advanced EQ-Rock' and it was set for 'Speakers: 4 channel'

What's the norm that everyone uses? Is this for playback only or does it affect recording as well?

thanks..

[TheWildKindness]

didn't want to start a new thread, so I'll tag along on this one...

I was looking around Creative Playcenter and saw the EAX advanced EQ settings option was set for 'Advanced EQ-Rock' and it was set for 'Speakers: 4 channel'

What's the norm that everyone uses? Is this for playback only or does it affect recording as well?

thanks..

 I believe that the EAX settings are for playback only.