Compact Flash Memory for Recording

[dpd]

I recently purchased a Marantz PMD-671 Compact Flash recorder for the radio station. Records up to 24|96. Pretty cool box.

However, the selection of CF cards for this thing is *CRITICAL*! Calculations indicate that a 6X speed CF card is sufficient to record at 24|96. But, I found out *stability* is more important (try to find a spec on that!). Most CF cards won't even tell you the sustained write speed of their cards - if they even know (or care, since they are mainly used for digital cameras and burst write speed is all they care about.)

I need long-form (2 hrs uninterrupted) recording capacity which translates to 4 GB cards. So, I searched all over and purchased two 4 GB, 12X rated cards from Crucial (a great PC memory supplier).

They don't work above 24|48. After 5-10 minutes they start dropping samples every few seconds. Marantz doesn't publish what cards work, unfortunately, although they do have *recommended* manufacturers. They just haven't tested the large capacity cards.

Fortunately - Crucial is refunding 100% of my purchase price. (great vendor)

The search continues....

Moral of the story? Take your pick:

* don't be an early adopter?
* get explicit requirements from the manf if they don't publish enough info before buying
* etc, etc.

[Hynek]

Thanks for sharing your story Paul. I can imagine it's real easy to run into that sort of trouble when you're dealing with the cutting edge stuff.

[jpleong]

I don't know if this will help in your search as much, but Fostex published the cards which they tested for their MR-8 CF recorder. It's not quite 24/96 but it is multitrack recording so the demands are pretty similar. Anyway, long story short, they recommended cards by Transcend (the 45x stuff) and by Lexar (the 80x stuff) among others.

JP

[Justin]

I've had good luck with the Tanscent 1GB card I use in my camera...but that's burst speed...

I wonder if Microdrives are better or worse for sustained read/write. You might have better luck with one of them. Unfortunately they cost more per Gig on average.

[dpd]

I've been talking with the Transcend guys - they tell me their cards do ~6 MB/sec. I'm checking to see if they mean sustained rate for the entire depth of the memory. (edit - they claim their cards can maintain the rate - just got another email on this)

Marantz recommends Lexar - but I've been told to stay away from the 80x cards by someone in their tech support staff and that they 'had trouble early on, but are OK now' by someone else on their tech support staff. Triple-checking that one out before I plunk down ~$500 for one 4 GB card.

Thanks, guys - more to come. I'm trying to figure out how best to test the card that I finally buy... I'm thinking of recording a simple sine wave for 2 hours and then running a spectrogram of the recorded file to look for distortions that would indicate loss of signal problems.

[dpd]

Latest update - Marantz has now confirmed that the Lexar 80x cards work with the PMD series of recorders.

Why don't they simply publish this stuff on their web site?

[dpd]

Received two Lexar 2 GB 80x cards today. Both of them work fine at 24 | 88.2 and should have no problem reaching 24 | 96. Write speeds are just over 10 MB/sec (need just under 5 MB/sec).

Recorded 1 hour continuous at 24 | 88.2 earlier tonight - no gaps. Transfered the file to the PC in just under 6 minutes (10x faster than real time).

No more DAT tapes for dpd :)