Topic: anybody here use pdaudio?

[sleepypedro]

i'm slowly acquiring components for a pdaudio system and will finally have everything ready to roll in a week or so.  just ordered a muvo mp3 player today for $180 because it's got a 4gb microdrive within that's worth more than the value of the playa... gotta love that.

anyways, would love to hear from anyone who's using a PDA to record... anyone?

thanks
peter

[Craig T]

I have a iPaq 3800 with PDAudio-CF card and use a 5GB Toshiba pcmcia drive.  I played with it last summer and fall and never got reliable 24bit recording.  By last fall it was reliable recording 16bit, but I went back to using my laptop for 24/48.  Just last week I updated my Wichita and Live2496 software and was going to give 24bit another try.  There's a thread somewhere on here, maybe in the computer forum.

Craig.

[lds490]

I just started using PDAudio.  I use the same 4 gig microdrive as you.  It's my first rig so I can't compare it to others.  I'm running the Gidluck Mastering software, which is very basic.  I recommend it because Gordon Gidluck provides excellent personal technical support.  I used it once so far and it workd fine at 16/44.1.  I think you may run into trouble if you want to record at 24/96 with the microdrive because it does not write fast enough.  Also, 4 gigs is not a lot of music at 24/96.  I'll be running it again on Friday night and may stealth Dylan tonight or tomorrow night.

Others on this board are somewhat critical of Core Sounds, especially their customer service.  Also, apparently Len has made some exagerated claims about the PDAudio performance.  PDAudio does work flawlessly at 16 bits but, like I said already, at 24 bits you need much more storage capacity and fast enough write speed.  I'll probably eventually invest in a 20 gig external hard drive for open taping.

Good luck!

[Craig T]

nice av.

[MattD]

I think Len would have been far better off marketing this as a 16-bit stealth tool and then "upgrade" to 24/48 and 96 when it was feasible. It'd have made Core-Sound look a hell of a lot better than it does now by failing to deliver on specs. I don't think this would have cut into his sales too much to do it this way, and probably bettered them in the long run.

[zhianosatch]

Yep.

[lds490]

I think you are probably right.  The thing is very cool for 16 bit stealth.  I've tested mine at home at 24/48 and it works fine.  I'm not sure how much you can record on 4 gigs at that speed.  Gordon Gidluck reports that he has successfully recorder up to 4 gigs (a couple of hours) at 24/96 using a 5 gig PC card hard drive.  This is an interesting option because the PC card drives are cheaper than the CF card microdrives.  However, it is somewhat less stealthable because you need the PC card expansion pack, which is bulky.   You can also use a 20 gig external hard drive which would be even less stealthy.  Once you purchase the PDA, expansion pack, PDAudio card, and memory, you are looking at a fairly large investment (especially if you want to record 24/96 for any length of time).  

[macdaddy]

what pda/dual cf expansion pack are you using with the muvo drive..?

[lds490]

I use the Nexian dual CF sleeve.
Gordon Gidluck reports success recording at 24/96 using a 4 gig Microdrive:

Previously a 16-bit 44.1kHz attempt had resulted in two channel
swappings over a 5-1/2 hour time period. So I was not extremely optimistic about the 24/96 test.

I setup (4) 1gb files. The first 3 files were 1gb exactly (1,024,000kb). I
created the 4th file with Allocate.exe to use the remaining space on
the drive (926,720kb).

Normally, I would use 64kb clusters, but the Lexar card reader doesn't
seem to like this. I formatted the drive therefore with 32kb clusters.


I recorded 40hz square waves at 24-bit 96kHz until the recorder shut
off. This was 1 hr 58 min 25 seconds. Waves came out perfectly!

When using update mode, there is some wasted space at the end of each
file which has to be truncated when importing the files into software. I
truncated the unused space in each file, and joined together the 4
segments in Samplitude. The join points are seamless with no lost samples. This iseasy to check for with square or sine waves.

This is certainly good news for owners of the Microdrive. It's small
size and 4gb capacity make it a very good option for dual CF sleeves.