Unofficial Mackie User Forums > DL1608/DL806/DL32R/ProDX Mixers

DL32r skips when I record

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ToH2002:

--- Quote from: musicman7722 on April 04, 2018, 09:26:49 PM ---Friends
I decided to have a go at the recording feature of the 32r.  I popped in a new 64gig flash drive.  When into the recording section and formatted it.  I was playing some music on channel 25 so I selected "A" and all 32 tracks then hit record.  I made about a minute recording then stopped it, waited and selected "B" and hit play.  For about 5 seconds it sounded great then it just starting skipping like a bad record the whole way through.

As it was a wave file I opened it with Audacity and it skipped there as well.

--- End quote ---

Normal USB thumb drives are just too slow to deal with the onslaught of a full 32 track recording. They'll maybe cache the first minute (as you described), but then they'll not be able to write everything onto flash storage as fast as new stuff comes in - the skipping you hear is your flash drive first hiccupping and then screaming for mercy...

So you'll definitely need something that can process its input faster. I haven't had any problems with classic USB hard disk drives yet, but they are definitely more vulnerable to vibrations, so if you have your DL32 on a busy stage, I'd suggest you get an SSD USB drive (more costly, but almost immune to vibrations).

You can use USB thumb drives to record or play back stereo with no problems, but for serious multi-track recording, they're just too slow - it's just the technology inside...

Cheers,

Torsten

WK154:
Stating that USB is too slow for 32 channels is not being informed. What is a "normal USB thumb drive"? V3.1 Super-speed + is specked at 10 Gbits/sec and 3.0 at 5.0 Gbits/se. more than enough to handle 32 channels at ~50Mbits/sec. Sort of like comparing a VW Super beetle to a Ferrari F1. You then state that a USB SSD is OK for the job, Really! V2.1 sticks probably won't work unless it's a real V2.1 High Speed (480 Mbits/sec). Keep in mind that Specs and real speed differ greatly. A speed check would be in order. Oh, does Mackie even spec their port? Then there is that USB driver that is in your system! Not so simple is it.

ToH2002:

--- Quote from: WK154 on April 08, 2018, 11:00:39 PM ---Stating that USB is too slow for 32 channels is not being informed. What is a "normal USB thumb drive"? V3.1 Super-speed + is specked at 10 Gbits/sec and 3.0 at 5.0 Gbits/se. more than enough to handle 32 channels at ~50Mbits/sec. Sort of like comparing a VW Super beetle to a Ferrari F1. You then state that a USB SSD is OK for the job, Really! V2.1 sticks probably won't work unless it's a real V2.1 High Speed (480 Mbits/sec). Keep in mind that Specs and real speed differ greatly. A speed check would be in order. Oh, does Mackie even spec their port? Then there is that USB driver that is in your system! Not so simple is it.

--- End quote ---

OK, a bit less adrenaline and aggression, please...

I'm not uninformed - I wasn't stating that USB is too slow but that the typical USB thumb drive is too slow - and that's not because of the speed of USB, but of its internal speed of writing to flash storage. That's why I recommended a hard drive (HDD) or an SSD drive - because their internal writing speed is far superior to the garden-variety thumb drive.

When recording 32 channels, you create a data stream of around 4.6-5 MB per second. One of the more common USB 2.0 sticks, the Sandisk Cruzer 64 GB, can only write 3,25 MB per second. Now if the DL32 can't write the data to the drive at a fast enough rate, it will probably just drop chunks of the wave file while the drive isn't ready and only continue writing when the drive is ready again. Since the audio stream has since moved on, audio gets lost.That's what creates the glitches.

Yes, there are faster flash USB drives that can write 10MB per second and more, so it could be possible to keep up with the stream, but the problem here is that they'll realize that speed ON AVERAGE, so you can't be sure that there isn't a temporary hiccup where the writing speed will drop below 4.5 MB/s, creating glitches. So using flash drives for serious 32-channel recording is not something I'd recommend. If you really have a very fast flash drive, you should be sure that you test its long-term performance in advance of any serious recording.

A hard disk drive can write about 50-160 MB/sec, depending on its rotation speed (typically smaller portable hard drives don't run the 7200 rpm that higher-performance internal drives do) and other factors. A current SSD drive will even have a writing speed of around 500 MB/s. So these drives have definitely enough writing performance to easily keep up with the data flow from the DL32R, with a wide safety margin - that's why I say that they are OK for the job (because they won't get choked by the speed of incoming data).

It has nothing to do with the USB speed, so all the noise about USB V3.1, 3.0 or 2.1 isn't helpful at all here. USB speed is only the TRANSFER rate between the connected devices. What is the choking point here is the writing speed at the end of the transfer - sort of like the Ferrari F1 being stuck in a traffic jam...

In real life terms, USB 2.0 data transfer performance is around 35 MB/s, so definitely enough to transfer a 32 channel data stream. Therefore I'd assume Mackie has built a standard USB 2.0 port into the DL32R - no need to spend more on components if you don't need higher performance, right?  But all relevant USB3 external drives will work on a USB 2 connection (at USB 2 speeds), so yes, an external SSD drive could be a good solution to record on.

And not at all sure what you mean with the "USB driver that is in [my] system"? The only relevant communication here is between the DL32R and the USB drive - my system doesn't come into this at all.

So it actually is simple: any USB drive (2.0 and higher) that is internally capable of sustaining a writing speed above 5 MB/s (without ever dropping below it) is fit to do the job.

I recommended an SSD drive for busy / vibrating stages, because a hard disk (with rotating platters) has a mechanism built in that will park the read/write heads on an unused area when it senses stronger vibrations - to avoid so-called head-crashes, which can cause unrecoverable data loss. During this time, the drive will not be able to write data, so again writing speed will momentarily drop below 5MB/s - glitches will occur. An SSD drive has no moving parts, therefore is not as sensitive to vibrations.

Cheers, peace, love and good vibrations,

Torsten

musicman7722:
Thank you all.  Can anybody recommend a USB drive that will operate consistantly at the speed necessary?

TY

Chris

ToH2002:
I assume your Western Digital Drive is a USB hard disk drive - correct? In that case, unless your stage vibrates wildly, you should be good to go - and your experience with it seems to confirm this.

I run a middle-of-the-road Toshiba USB2 hard disk drive, and it hasn't let me down yet in 3 years.

Unfortunately, I can't give a suggestion for a USB SSD drive - haven't seen the need to invest yet...

Cheers,

Torsten

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