Topic: PART V: M-Audio MicroTracker details

[silentmark]

Nice that you got it to work at 24/96, although it is more stable at 24/48, this might be the source of your glitches, it could also be the microdrive ...

[clarson]

it could be the microdrive. I recorded silence through the 1/8" and the  1/4" and every once in a while I could hear the microdrive spin, or something inside of it "ticking".

[neutrino]

it could be the microdrive. I recorded silence through the 1/8" and the  1/4" and every once in a while I could hear the microdrive spin, or something inside of it "ticking".

Were you playing back the file via the MT itself, or did you download the files to a PC and then playback? I haven't noticed any artifacts when recording with my MT and a Hitachi/Apple 6gb microdrive, but I do hear added noise if I try and play back a file directly from the microdrive. Also, I haven't heard of anyone having stability issues with the MT recording through the analog inputs, it's only when trying to record a digital signal through the spdif has it been most problematic.
dB-

[coloartist]

That's Todd's larger version of the juice box, with the pass-through in addition to the 5V, right?

That Juicebox has two 5v outputs. One for my MT, and one for my JB3. It is powered from a Walmart Battery.

[eupeptic]

On first listen the recording sounds incredible.  24 bit is definitely the way to go.  However, I've already found 3 glitches.  One sounds like a skip and the other 2 sound like short static bursts (0.2 seconds or so).  I checked them out in goldwave.  One of the glitches looks like the diginoise I sometimes see on DAT transfers with the wave sqared off.  The other one that sounds like a click does not show high bursts in the wave editor.  Could these be related to the microdrive and the sample rate?  I'm tempted to grab a 4gb CF card before my next 2 shows which are this friday and saturday.    Thoughts    It was a great, great show.

A 4GB CF card would certainly be a good thing to have. (Sometimes microdrives seem to fail when a butterfly sneezes nearby, while regular CF cards (at least Sandisk) are likely to keep on working even after they've gone through the washing machine, or fallen a couple dozen feet onto a hard surface. (But the price and capacity of microdrives sure makes them tempting to have provided that you don't drop things too often... ))

Though you might first try formatting the microdrive with 64K clusters (under Windows 2k/XP, right-click on My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management - and the format command gives you the option to select the 'Allocation unit size'; or just use the format command from the Command Prompt). (This should reduce the amount of seeking that the heads have to do while the drive's being used.)

You could also try using 24/48 instead of 24/96 (which cuts down the amount of data that's being written to the microdrive - maybe enough so that you wouldn't get any more glitches), but that's not as ideal as having it work flawlessly at 24/96...


Also, it might be interesting to see if the 5GB Segate ST1 microdrive works any better than the Hitachi microdrives (as the Segate has a 2MB cache vs the Hitachi's 128KB, and it has higher sustained read/write transfer rates). (Though what I've read at on the forums at dpreview.com is that it drains camera batteries a lot faster than the Hitachi drives do.)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/print/seagate-st1-5gb.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/print/hitachi-microdrive.html

[udovdh]

On first listen the recording sounds incredible.  24 bit is definitely the way to go.  However, I've already found 3 glitches.  One sounds like a skip and the other 2 sound like short static bursts (0.2 seconds or so).  I checked them out in goldwave.  One of the glitches looks like the diginoise I sometimes see on DAT transfers with the wave sqared off.  The other one that sounds like a click does not show high bursts in the wave editor.  Could these be related to the microdrive and the sample rate?  I'm tempted to grab a 4gb CF card before my next 2 shows which are this friday and saturday.    Thoughts    It was a great, great show.

Though you might first try formatting the microdrive with 64K clusters (under Windows 2k/XP, right-click on My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management - and the format command gives you the option to select the 'Allocation unit size'; or just use the format command from the Command Prompt). (This should reduce the amount of seeking that the heads have to do while the drive's being used.)

BTW: How does the MT format a 4GB CF card? (any opinions on the formatting chosen?)

[jbraveman]

it could be the microdrive. I recorded silence through the 1/8" and the  1/4" and every once in a while I could hear the microdrive spin, or something inside of it "ticking".

Were you playing back the file via the MT itself, or did you download the files to a PC and then playback? I haven't noticed any artifacts when recording with my MT and a Hitachi/Apple 6gb microdrive, but I do hear added noise if I try and play back a file directly from the microdrive. Also, I haven't heard of anyone having stability issues with the MT recording through the analog inputs, it's only when trying to record a digital signal through the spdif has it been most problematic.
dB-

I copied the files onto my computer.  I confirmed that they were not playback glitches in the wav editor.  The skip suggests to me that there was a brief pause in the writing of the data stream.  I don't know what kind of buffer the recorder has, but it seems possible that at 24/96, the recorder was unable to keep up when there was slowdown in the drive.  I'm gonig to try 24/48 on my 4gb microdrive at Winwood on friday.  Otherwise, I'll have to get a CF card.

[ShawnF]

That's Todd's larger version of the juice box, with the pass-through in addition to the 5V, right?

That Juicebox has two 5v outputs. One for my MT, and one for my JB3. It is powered from a Walmart Battery.

Ah--I think I had assumed the other output was for the V3, I guess, though I don't know why.  Thanks!  End of hijack.

[coloartist]

That's Todd's larger version of the juice box, with the pass-through in addition to the 5V, right?

That Juicebox has two 5v outputs. One for my MT, and one for my JB3. It is powered from a Walmart Battery.

Ah--I think I had assumed the other output was for the V3, I guess, though I don't know why.  Thanks!  End of hijack.

I have a second Walmart Battery, and a 12 hour battery from Kindkables for my V3.

[plucks]

ToddR's right angle coax also fits flawlessly with the usb cable

[headroom]

S/PDIF output extension for Portable MiniDisc Devices Here's a very trivial S/PDIF transmitter hack for portable MiniDiscs and other digital audio devices lacking S/PDIF output.

Maybe somebody can use this idea as inspiration as a hack for SPIDI OUT on the Microtracker?