Recording directly to a USB flash drive?

mixedupsteve · Post by **mixedupsteve** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:40 am

I recently bought a 32G flash drive and I'm considering testing it for recording myself.
The problem with these flash drives is there is a controller on them that affects the speed. One brand may be faster than another. Mine is a noname cheapo.

I ran drivecheck on mine and here's the results:

Cheapo USB flash drive
Overall write speed> 3,412KB/sec
Overall read speed> 4,889 ""

My Internal Drive
OWSpeed> 12,445KB/Sec
ORSpeed> 18,629KB/Sec

My External USB2.0 Drive
OWSpeed> 12,125KB/Sec
ORSpeed> 22,530KB/Sec

So you can see that the Flash drive is substantially slower than the USB external and this has little to do with USB itself.

It might still be possible to record a small number of tracks though and as I said, I'm going to try it .

bap · Post by **bap** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:56 pm

OK, I wasn't able to record 8 tracks because I need to build 2 more XLR to TRS cables.

What I did was recorded 3 stereo tracks at 88.2/32 bit float. This was into Samplitude v10.xx using Hybrid Engine (if that means anything to most) with 256ms buffer through ff800. No errors or dropouts with about 1 hr of recorded time. 3.7 GB in an hour. For real recording I would use higher buffer settings if on location.

This was with my wife's laptop (I don't have one) which is a Toshiba Satellite with dual 1.6GH Centrino processor and 2G Kingston RAM. Disc usage was 20% +/_ and DSP processing remained at 2-3%.

I don't think my Mackie Satellite 2 channel would do as well but if you have a hot laptop things might work. RME does good firewire.

My flash drive is not a cheapie - it is a OCZ ATV Turbo. A good value for 2 channel flash drive still.

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:13 pm

Recording live, couldnt you just set your buffer settings like insanely high? because you dont care about latency since nobody would be monitoring at all anyway?
If you can buffer gobs of info on the way in, just to RAM, then let the laptop puke it out to the USB stick at a semi leisurely pace, i dont see why you couldnt work this out. Seems a little bit crazy, but I like the renegade spirit.
Jim, you are truly a renegade, like renegade... starring lorenzo lamas. You are like the falcon crest of location recordists.
happy new year, BTW.

bap · Post by **bap** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:20 pm

I always set buffers at their highest for location recording, and never do critical over dubbing with laptop and firewire. I also will record on location at lower resolution. This was only a first test and dual channel flash drives seem to do better than 5200 RPM external USB2.

I haven't done the real deal yet!

The independent tests on OCZ 2 channel flash rates it at about 121Mb/min read and 140Mb or so write - lower than published by the OCZ site, but close to what Jim is looking for.

I like the idea of recording to flash.

mixedupsteve · Post by **mixedupsteve** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:03 pm

I just looked at an 8 track recording I did about a month ago. It was two sets or aprox 2 hours, at 48k 24 bit. The folder size is 9.7 Gig.

So that's 1,350 KBSec average.
So even my cheapo flash drive should work by this non scientiffic example.
I usually do record at 256ms buffer too.

I'll see what happens.

bap · Post by **bap** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:16 pm

I think that maybe the computer speed will have something to do with it as well.
Fast transfer rate can't hurt!

mixedupsteve · Post by **mixedupsteve** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:32 pm

I usually use my macbook, 2gig RAM and 2.something Core2Duo. It's never blinked even with 16 tracks. Recording is actually pretty easy on a computers resources. It's the mixing, plugins, exporting that's tough.

bap · Post by **bap** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:52 pm

I wish I had a stronger laptop to work with, though I like working in my 'room' or 'office' with the big computer.

I've done some stuff with people who use Mac Pro and Metric Halo firewire interface and it's very nice. They didn't record to anything external though.

seedless · Post by **seedless** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:55 pm

Gentleman Jim wrote:they are not jetting off to Barbados an hour later to mix with Nile Rodgers

that name drop got me excited

tell Niles that Carly Simon's "why" is my jam!

The Scum · Post by **The Scum** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:43 pm

I tried this as an experiment, since it's a cool idea...to have the tracks on the portable media, rather than having to copy sessions after the fact.

I used this hand-me-down PC, I think it's an Athlon 1.7 GHz...RME Hammerfall PCI for I/O - the audio was not on the USB bus. Recording into Cubase SX version 1.06.

The thumb drive was a cheapo Dane-elec 2 GB.

Plugged into a plain USB port, I was able to reliably able to do 2 (count 'em, 2!) tracks of 24-bit 44.1. I could do up to 5 or 6 in fits and starts, but it would tell me the drive was too slow after a few seconds. It would also give me a warning that the thumb drive was a USB-2.0 device in a USB-1.1 port.

In a USB-2.0 port, I was able to get 12 tracks, 24-bit, 44.1 at a time...any more than that and it would be fine for a few seconds, but choke on longer attempts...so a sustained throughput of about 12 megabits per second...nowhere near the touted 480...

Keep in mind that this was a rock-bottom thumb drive. I think SanDisk are making faster ones...I'm sure that in a few years, we'll wonder why we fussed with spinning drives at all.

darjama · Post by **darjama** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:53 pm

Someone tested high speed thumb drives here:

http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/informat ... -vs-exfat/

bap · Post by **bap** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 4:05 pm

My most recent thumbdrive was the OCZ ATV Turbo - the funky yellow one with stripes.

It seems to do pretty well for me.

The top of the line Corsair are supposed to be a little faster but cost a lot more.

mixedupsteve · Post by **mixedupsteve** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:38 am

The Scum wrote:I tried this as an experiment, since it's a cool idea...to have the tracks on the portable media, rather than having to copy sessions after the fact.

I used this hand-me-down PC, I think it's an Athlon 1.7 GHz...RME Hammerfall PCI for I/O - the audio was not on the USB bus. Recording into Cubase SX version 1.06.

The thumb drive was a cheapo Dane-elec 2 GB.

Plugged into a plain USB port, I was able to reliably able to do 2 (count 'em, 2!) tracks of 24-bit 44.1. I could do up to 5 or 6 in fits and starts, but it would tell me the drive was too slow after a few seconds. It would also give me a warning that the thumb drive was a USB-2.0 device in a USB-1.1 port.

In a USB-2.0 port, I was able to get 12 tracks, 24-bit, 44.1 at a time...any more than that and it would be fine for a few seconds, but choke on longer attempts...so a sustained throughput of about 12 megabits per second...nowhere near the touted 480...

Keep in mind that this was a rock-bottom thumb drive. I think SanDisk are making faster ones...I'm sure that in a few years, we'll wonder why we fussed with spinning drives at all.

Thanks for the test. I'm not surprised by the results. I think your right about using fixed media soon. I'll start doing it this way and then loose the stupid thing. I've already left it two different places

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Recording directly to a USB flash drive?

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