M-Audio MicroTracker details **PART III**

[John Kelly]

From my personal experience I have had more products with CF fail on me and not had any of the microdrive products fail.  Now my primary microdrive devices are Ipods (1x2g, 1x3g, 1x4g (which has 2 drives) and a mini) and they all have never given me a problem.  My luck with CF and flash memory has been really disappointing.   

Only one of your iPods actually has a Microdrive...

[Nick's Picks]

dont get me wrong...i'd rather use microdrives too.
but small hdds have proven quite sucky for the FR2.  I can't see how smaller hdd's are going to fair better.
thats my own experience.  and like I said, I have heard others report that they dont work for squat in their cf based recorders.

i'm not trying to bash them..I just have practical expectations.

[neutrino]

The cost difference is quite signifigant between microdrives and CF cards and if I can use a microdrive with success I would rather put that savings difference into other things.   

This is where you and I differ I suppose.  A 6gig microdrive is 100, a 4gig CF card is about 190 if you look around.  The difference, to me, is not that much, and when you've got 1500+ invested in mics, 1200+ in a preamp/ad then i just don't think cutting corners to save a 100 or so bucks is worthwhile. 

It is a good discussion and +T back to you, I'm just playing  's advocate

One big difference would be a 6gb microdrive user getting 3hours of 24/96 with no drive exchange where a 4gb cf user gets 2hours and the risk of losing part of a performance when exchanging cards. We'll have to wait and see just how much time is killed exchanging disks on the MT.
dB-

[wbrisette]

Does anyone know if the unit will actually take a 24/96 signal via s/pdif?  There've been some that doubt it...

That will be the big question, that and what happens when a AES signal is thrown at it.

Wayne

[CQBert]

OK - I am an admitted novice on this thread but.... it seems to me like 'we', TS are tossing a whole lot of professional quality faith into a consumer oriented product...  sorry if I am wrong...

The micro-tracker does not seem to be a production tool at its base and MAYBE similar to the JB3 and will have shortcomings with regards to what 'we' want it to do...

AES is a perfect example... 

I am not sure - just kind of glancing at the multitiude of stuff out there... if this is it - the next coming of taping... 

Just not sure....

Hell - I hope it is all it is cracked up to be...   if so  > find me a V3 opti and lets go....

Wait and see...  field trials will tell all......  Sound Devices has been on top of nearly every issue from day one and Edirol is in the process of completing retrofits on its products...  we will see..

CQBert

[284201]

Does anyone know if the unit will actually take a 24/96 signal via s/pdif?  There've been some that doubt it...

That will be the big question, that and what happens when a AES signal is thrown at it.

Wayne

Bingo.

Those of you who plan on running this thing out of a V3 have seemingly little to worry about, but for those of us using a Mini-Me or anything with a pro AES out only, the future's a little shadier.

I'll have no problem if this thing can't do 24/96, as I've been doing 24/48 for quite a while, and I'm not sure the higher sampling rate is really worth it, but I'm sure as hell not going to use the shoddy s/pdif out on the Apogee.

M-Audio seems to be billing this thing as a replacement for DAT, so in my mind that means it should take a pro level signal, but I'll believe it when I see it.

It would be nice to replace the lappy for the sake of convenience, but I'll continue to deal with the extra weight and awkwardness of it if it means I have to sacrifice reliability.

[Simp-Dawg]

frankly, i see this as a replacement to jb3 and dat...no moving parts and likely will have the ability to record 16/44.1 reliably on a 4gb cf card with no moving parts.  if it does 24/96 reliably, great, but that's not my primary use.  i just want a flash based recorder for cheap, already got the mics and pre/ad i want...for now.

[leegeddy]

Does anyone know if the unit will actually take a 24/96 signal via s/pdif?  There've been some that doubt it...

That will be the big question, that and what happens when a AES signal is thrown at it.

Wayne

Bingo.

Those of you who plan on running this thing out of a V3 have seemingly little to worry about, but for those of us using a Mini-Me or anything with a pro AES out only, the future's a little shadier.

I'll have no problem if this thing can't do 24/96, as I've been doing 24/48 for quite a while, and I'm not sure the higher sampling rate is really worth it, but I'm sure as hell not going to use the shoddy s/pdif out on the Apogee.

M-Audio seems to be billing this thing as a replacement for DAT, so in my mind that means it should take a pro level signal, but I'll believe it when I see it.

It would be nice to replace the lappy for the sake of convenience, but I'll continue to deal with the extra weight and awkwardness of it if it means I have to sacrifice reliability.

you can easily convert aes>s/pdif signal with adaptors.

marc

[rdvdijk]

Okay I looked at Len's    site.  According to their numbers recording at 24/96 writes 576 KB to disk every second. 

Now looking at this chart at: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7699
I picked a random Microdrive towards the bottom of the list (the slower cards are listed closer to the bottom) , the Hitachi Microdrive 4GB, formatted FAT32 with 32K cluster size8 (Model: HMS360404D5CF00)   writes at 2.882MB/sec.   

Help me here i'm trying to understand? 

Well, those speeds you mention are burst speeds. Modern digital camera's implements these algorithms which allow small sets of data (like a digital photograph) to be written real fast, but PDAs do not. Len's site shows a test of sustained writing speeds on PDAs. I merely gave this link as an indication (and possibly a future comparison) of how fast or slow microdrives can be.

I've been reading on the PDAudio list, and according to the programmer there (Gordon, not Len!) this is a real problem and this is not a p.o.s.

Personally, I expect the CF-interface of the MicroTrack to be better than on a normal PDA, and we won't have any problems there. On PDAs there's the (bottleneck) operating system that gets in the way, but in case of the MicroTrack it's input -> D/A -> CF interface -> card.

Roel

[284201]

Bingo.

Those of you who plan on running this thing out of a V3 have seemingly little to worry about, but for those of us using a Mini-Me or anything with a pro AES out only, the future's a little shadier.

I'll have no problem if this thing can't do 24/96, as I've been doing 24/48 for quite a while, and I'm not sure the higher sampling rate is really worth it, but I'm sure as hell not going to use the shoddy s/pdif out on the Apogee.

M-Audio seems to be billing this thing as a replacement for DAT, so in my mind that means it should take a pro level signal, but I'll believe it when I see it.

It would be nice to replace the lappy for the sake of convenience, but I'll continue to deal with the extra weight and awkwardness of it if it means I have to sacrifice reliability.

you can easily convert aes>s/pdif signal with adaptors.

marc

True, but it's just not something I want to deal with.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if this thing turns out to work, but if it doesn't, no biggie.  I'm just spitballing like we've all been doing. 

My setup now is pretty much a no-brainer: just plug the USB cable from the MME into the lappy and hit record.  If it turns out I can run AES out > s/pdif in without worrying about a) the flaky MME s/pdif out or b) not getting a "unsupported format" error or the like on the Microtracker, I'll be a happy guy. 

...And you or Todd  R. get to make some cash, and I get a new cable, so what's with all this adaptor talk? 

[wbrisette]

you can easily convert aes>s/pdif signal with adaptors.

Yes and no. Typically what you do is convert the 110 ohm AES signal to 75 ohms. However, typically the inline convertors don't touch the signal. That means you end up with an AES formatted digital signal at 75 ohms. Some devices are OK with this, others as I've found don't quite know what to do with it and won't work with this signal.

However that said, I agree with CQBert, in that we might be expecting a bit much out of this consumer device. This is after all not a replacement for the 722, but as folks have pointed out a replacement for 16-bit DAT and the JB3, just like the R1 was.

Also right now we're all simply blowing smoke since nobody has tested one, and until we can do that we won't know the answers to a lot of our questions.

Wayne

[udovdh]

Aside from the impedance mismatch, if the receiver chip is capable of understanding AES it might just be a firmware upgrade away...

[Nick's Picks]

for those of you thinking your going to run 24/96 into a microdrive ...on ANY recorder...
i'm tellin you...its not going to work reliably.

this is not an assumption.
this is from years of hdd recording...both full size and tiny, on lots of devices.
it does'nt work well....if at all.
maybe if your MT is sitting on a block of dry ice...maybe.
that is too much I/O , too much heat for these little drives. 
its not like playing mp3's for hours and hours.  but you'll find out for yourselves.
I plan on trying it too...but my expectations are very low.

[John Kelly]

And why is everyone calling this a consumer device?  This is a pro device made by a pro-audio company.  This one is made specifically for what we do.

[wbrisette]

And why is everyone calling this a consumer device?  This is a pro device made by a pro-audio company.  This one is made specifically for what we do.

USB, SPDIF, CF, MP3 (and WAV)... If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, I call it a duck. That is NOT to say this isn't going to be a great device. Look at all the mileage the JB3 has gotten and it was a true consumer device. But just because something is a consumer device isn't a bad thing, Sony even called the D8 a consumer device by the way, and I didn't know any consumers who had them, only sound geeks and pros.


Wayne