What is everyone's best bet for flash-memory-based recorders? I've had
excellent results with Hi-MD gizmos for a couple of years now, making
[admittedly amateur] recordings of performances of my wife's chamber
music, but the allure of machines with no moving parts except electrons
is compelling... I get the feeling that real pro's are still on the
fence until the technology proves itself sufficiently reliable for field
use when earnings are at stake and that makes very good sense. Are we
there yet?

tia,
Jason
--
reverse my name in email address

The deciding factor is not the storage medium. The flash as medium has
proved its worth in several professional areas. It is instead the rest
of the unit that matters. In a professional world you need good enough
quality but a lot of reliability and ruggedness. The flash medium part
is rugged and reliable, but many of the consumer grade boxes are thin
and cheap plastics. Indeed, even for minidisc there are field hardened
professional units.

To my ears the large difference is in the analog electronic circuits
and in the AD-converter. Basically you get what you pay for. I like my
Sound Devices 722 which can record to hard disk or flash memory, but it
does come at a price. For those really important recordings though i go
to even more esoteric equipment.

In the lower priced segment the only unit I have tested is the Edirol
R1 and to put it short I would not recommend that for recording
classical music. It does record to flash and that part works without
problem. The analog circuits though does not sound good to my ears and
are quite noisy.

The problem with recommending anything in this area is that the
standards do differ. It seems like the R1 I mentioned is still liked by
some people, while I find it horrendous. My suggestion then is for you
to filter any comments carefully and require to be able to do a test
run yourself with your material.

Gunnar

"Jason" wrote ...
What is everyone's best bet for flash-memory-based recorders? I've had
excellent results with Hi-MD gizmos for a couple of years now, making
[admittedly amateur] recordings of performances of my wife's chamber
music, but the allure of machines with no moving parts except
electrons
is compelling... I get the feeling that real pro's are still on the
fence until the technology proves itself sufficiently reliable for
field
use when earnings are at stake and that makes very good sense. Are we
there yet?

Note that Hi-MD media are ORDERS OF
MAGNITITUDE more cost-effective than
any of the Flash RAM based solutions.

And, for whatever reason, Flash audio recorders
have not advanced to the level of development that
the MD recorders have, except at the high end
(broadcast quality, $1000)

Except for Sony's draconian DRM software, the grass
is NOT greener over on the solid-state side of the
field. You are better off than you seem to realize. :-)

Segensreich Maschinerich wrote:

I wonder, where and why exactly do you get the feeling that "real pro's
are still on the fence"?

I thinik I understand what he means. Pros are either on the bus or off
the bus, but there are many busses that they can take, depending on
where they're going. The amateur tends to want to be able to get on one
bus and go anywhere, or always only goes one place.

If my "pro" gig was recording short segments in the field that went
into a production, I'd welcome a flash card recorder. But since more
often, my field work is recording consecutive days of all-day concerts
that will go into storage and may be taken out years later for
prodution (or not) the media doesn't make sense for me.

"Segensreich Maschinerich" wrote ...
Jason wrote...

What is everyone's best bet for flash-memory-based recorders? [...]
I get the feeling that real pro's are still on the
fence until the technology proves itself sufficiently reliable for
field
use

I wonder, where and why exactly do you get the feeling that "real
pro's
are still on the fence"?

I guess it depends on what the OP means by "real pros".
He would get a different impression if he asked the
question over on news:rec.arts.movies.production.sound

Segensreich Maschinerich wrote:

It's the latter part of his claim that I find slightly absurd, and I
probably should have asked

| where and why exactly do you get the feeling that the technology
| still needs to prove itself as sufficiently reliable for field use?

And I think that he would have no basis for his supposition. However
there are reasons other than the media's reliability that pros (me, for
example) are still "on the fence."

But thinking about reliability, consider the recent threads about the
reliability of recorded DVD and CD-R media. That's still in question by
a lot of pros, and we mitigate those risks by making multiple copies,
perhaps even on different media. This is a pain in the ass that
shouldn't be necessary but it is, because we're unsure about the
reliability.

So is anyone really any more sure of the reliability of flash media?
Well, camera folks have reported bringing back "blank rolls" from a
trip. We "real pros" kind of skirt the issue, largely because of the
cost of the media and the limited devices from which it will play, by
directly and immediately transferring recordings to another medium. So
if a flash card loses its memory in a year, we don't know that.

There have been occasional reports of "did everything right, the meters
were moving, the counter was counting but when I got home I couldn't
find my recording" but none of those have ever conclusively been
because of the media. Somebody pushed the wrong button, shut down too
quickly, or the recording device had a bug that showed up. But **** can
happen with any recording device.

So, media reliability? Probably not. Technology reliability? Maybe
still.

Segensreich Maschinerich wrote:

Sure. It seems to me that these other reasons can be summarized as
"efficiency of workflow in a given production environment," no?

Pretty much, so.

I think that for the amateur recordist, it's prudent to realize that
these considerations do not affect him. They do not affect the quality
of his results.

It depends on his workflow as well. If he goes to school all day and
goes out to the clubs or concerts at night, even two nights in a row,
he needs time to dump his memory. Maybe that's what History class is
for? But if he has an exam that day, he might be going nuts around
concert time.

I understand you open a different can of worms he So far we've been
talking about recording ("reliable for field use" seems to suggest that
focus), now you're talking about archival.

As far as I'm concerned, a field recording is vulnerable until you're
reasonable sure that it isn't. I'm not talking about 50 year archival,
but unless you have a pot ful of memory cards, you have to unload them.


So, media reliability? Probably not. Technology reliability? Maybe
still.

Heh, and I would have said the exact opposite: media (CF cards)
reliability, yes, but technology (recording gadget) reliability,
probably not always. Funny that.

I wasn't making a statement about the absolute reliability, I was
making a statement about the concern about reliability. They're
inversely proportional.