PCM-M10 Memory Cards

[mcp6453[_2_]]

Newegg has a Patriot 8GB Micro SDHC Flash Cards for $8.99 shipped. It's a Class
4 card. Will this card work well in a Sony PCM-M10 recorder? The Sony manual
suggests that it might be picky with some cards. http://tinyurl.com/6ggccm4

[Mike Rivers]

On 2/11/2011 8:24 AM, mcp6453 wrote:
> Newegg has a Patriot 8GB Micro SDHC Flash Cards for $8.99 shipped. It's a Class
> 4 card. Will this card work well in a Sony PCM-M10 recorder? The Sony manual
> suggests that it might be picky with some cards.

They may be covering their butt on that one. When I had a
PCM-M10 in here for review, I bought a generic Micro SDHC
card at my local Micro Center store, cheapest one I could
find, just so I could see how it handled switching from
internal to removable memory. It worked just fine. But at
that price, it's worth a try. If it formats, it'll work, and
if it doesn't format, it's so small and light that it will
cost less than a dollar to send it back and get a refund.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Arny Krueger]

"Mike Rivers" > wrote in message

> On 2/11/2011 8:24 AM, mcp6453 wrote:
>> Newegg has a Patriot 8GB Micro SDHC Flash Cards for
>> $8.99 shipped. It's a Class 4 card. Will this card work
>> well in a Sony PCM-M10 recorder? The Sony manual
>> suggests that it might be picky with some cards.
>
> They may be covering their butt on that one. When I had a
> PCM-M10 in here for review, I bought a generic Micro SDHC
> card at my local Micro Center store, cheapest one I could
> find, just so I could see how it handled switching from
> internal to removable memory. It worked just fine. But at
> that price, it's worth a try. If it formats, it'll work,
> and if it doesn't format, it's so small and light that it
> will cost less than a dollar to send it back and get a
> refund.

Generic SD cards are usually class 6, which means that they can transfer
data at 6 megabytes per second.

Class 4 SD cards can transfer data at 4 megabytes per second.

If you are recording 2 channel 44/16 or 48/16 neither transfer speed should
cause any problems. The DTR required to record or play 48/16 stereo is
0.192 megabytes per second.

[mcp6453[_2_]]

On 2/11/2011 1:09 PM, Arny Krueger wrote:
> "Mike Rivers" > wrote in message
>
>> On 2/11/2011 8:24 AM, mcp6453 wrote:
>>> Newegg has a Patriot 8GB Micro SDHC Flash Cards for
>>> $8.99 shipped. It's a Class 4 card. Will this card work
>>> well in a Sony PCM-M10 recorder? The Sony manual
>>> suggests that it might be picky with some cards.
>>
>> They may be covering their butt on that one. When I had a
>> PCM-M10 in here for review, I bought a generic Micro SDHC
>> card at my local Micro Center store, cheapest one I could
>> find, just so I could see how it handled switching from
>> internal to removable memory. It worked just fine. But at
>> that price, it's worth a try. If it formats, it'll work,
>> and if it doesn't format, it's so small and light that it
>> will cost less than a dollar to send it back and get a
>> refund.
>
> Generic SD cards are usually class 6, which means that they can transfer
> data at 6 megabytes per second.
>
> Class 4 SD cards can transfer data at 4 megabytes per second.
>
> If you are recording 2 channel 44/16 or 48/16 neither transfer speed should
> cause any problems. The DTR required to record or play 48/16 stereo is
> 0.192 megabytes per second.

Arny and Mike, thanks for the responses. It would be great to be able to use an
SD card once and then file it. At this price, it's totally possible. Hopefully
memory prices will continue to decline as SSDs become more prevalent. I can't
wait for the day that I never again have to deal with a hard drive. SSDs can
have problems of their own, but in the long run, they should be dramatically
cheaper to manufacture that hard drives are.

[Mike Rivers]

On 2/11/2011 2:46 PM, mcp6453 wrote:

> It would be great to be able to use an
> SD card once and then file it. At this price, it's totally possible.

The reason why I bought a hard disk based portable digital
recorder (first a Nomad Jukebox 3 and last a Korg MR-1000)
was because at the time flash memory cards large enough to
store even half a day's work at a weekend-long festival were
too expensive to own several of, and I didn't want to add
copying off files to my other responsibilities at the end of
the day. Today they're indeed cheap enough to file as the
primary "master" and make working copies as needed.

The only problem is that they're too small to write any
significant data on. It's not like a 10-1/2" tape reel box. ;)


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[vdubreeze]

For pro work it pays to find out who's manufacturing their own cards
and who buys them on the market and packages them with their own
brand, and who among the latter has a rep for not doing it seemingly
randomly. Some of the latter ones I've had bad enough experiences
with that I wouldn't touch them if they were fast and cheap, because
the QC was subpar. There are also the card's controllers to consider,
which also are sometimes made in house, sometimes bought on the
market. Off the top of my head Sandisk, Micron and Toshiba are among
the former, and Viking, Kingston, PQI, PNY, and Transcend are among
the ones that either buy the parts elsewhere or buy the whole cards
elsewhere. I'd wager Patriot doesn't make the Patriot cards. You'll
get a boatload of different opinions on some of these. In my stuff
Kingston always works great, PNY not so much, to name two. Might be
controllers (which can be loosely likened to Firewire or USB chipsets
in so far as compatibility (and the fact that they get bought from
places like Prolific, who also crank out those). Or might be that the
batch of memory they bought in Sept. was not as good as they usually
get but they stuck them on the same cards anyway. Some generic cards
are really that much of a crapshoot, like DVD media chemicals changing
as the wind blows on generic media.

The class designation is so broad that you can use several same class
cards and their performance will vary widely. I can roughly test them
by putting them in my camera and shooting burst mode until the card
can't keep up and the camera's buffer fills, and then the shutter
stops (until the buffer can dump the contents to the card). You can
also use any number of read/write tests to check more accurately, and
I've done this also. I have new Transcend Class 6 cards that are
slower than older Sandisk Class 4 cards, though according to the class
rating and everything printed on the spec sheet they shouldn't be, and
this isn't isolated. In fact, one reason the Sandisks are all faster
than their counterparts may be that they're about the only memory
manufacturer who design and make the controllers for their own cards.
But mainly the problem is the same as with all ratings: they test
them differently and use the data in the best possible (fudged?) way
so as to render the numbers not really gospel in actual use.

The recorder *might* be picky with a crappy controller, but this stuff
is so under the hood that the manufacturers don't even say anything
about what's inside. You *probably* could record fine with a Class 4
card if the controller was quality. Get it and give it a try (in a
non-critical way, natch : ) ) It might work great. If it doesn't
use it in something else and pick up something beefier. Or return it
to NewEgg, who is really good about that kind of thing. There's
really no way to know unless you find someone who's tried it, because
it's really not just a question of the numbers on the wrapper. $9
shipped is not like $90. Why not get a few different SDHCs under $15
each to cover yourself?

[Arny Krueger]

"mcp6453" > wrote in message


> It would be
> great to be able to use an SD card once and then file it.
> At this price, it's totally possible.

Today I should receive a Ikey RM3 rack mount digital recorder.

It records a balanced line input to USB flash drives or SD cards.

My intent is to use it as the backup drive for this year's band/choir
festival season. The Microtrack is set aside except for truely portable
gigs like video shoots.

Currently, local stores are selling 8 GB flash drives for $14.95.

> Hopefully memory
> prices will continue to decline as SSDs become more
> prevalent.

Figure on the cost per gig to fall by 50% every 12-18 months until the price
of the media is dominated by the packaging that keeps it usuable by human
fingers. Moore's law applies. Right now we're watching flash pricing fall
from $2 per GB to more like $1. Tune in next holiday season...

> I can't wait for the day that I never again
> have to deal with a hard drive.

We're a long ways from that in general. Flash drives are laggards in
comparison to the sustained DTR of commodity hard drives.

> SSDs can have problems of
> their own, but in the long run, they should be
> dramatically cheaper to manufacture that hard drives are.

So it seems. If you consider that every flash drive also has some kind of a
complex controller CPU that front-ends the media and conceals much of its
inherent nastiness...