I want to foolproof the CQ-12T’s recording feature so that if I inadvertently switch the board off without explicitly stopping and saving the recording to the SD card, most of the recording is preserved.
Context: There have been multiple occasions where I am both performer and board operator and under pressure to tear down quickly between acts I have just switched off the board. In these cases I have lost the recording every time.
I have learned my lesson and I explicitly stop and save with a self-reminder checkllist.
But surely some sort of regular save feature could be incorporated so the files for each track are updated and committed to the SD in a coherent state every so often, say every minute or so. So if the user forgets to stop and save, and just shuts the mixer down without explicitly saving, they don’t lose the entire recording.
As mentioned, personal discipline is involved in the current process. I want the device to be as foolproof as possible. While I can ensure a disciplined process in the future with checklists, a safety mechanism in the device would certainly help in event of power outage or momentary attention lapse. Until I found out this explicit save requirement, I powered down the mixer after two performances I really wanted to save.
The software should support the user and handle exceptional circumstances such as power outages gracefully.
Without wanting to unduly influence anything (I’m not an R&D engineer) - please feel free to make suggestions without worrying about whether they’re technically feasible or not.
More or less all the time, even our most expert users aren’t aware of how systems are built under the surface - so make suggestions that you feel will be helpful without worrying about whether they’re possible or not. We’ll work that out, and we always try to let you all know if things are definitely not possible.
I would also - (in my opinion!) - say that I think this is a good idea. Having the file continually save with headers intact would improve reliability and robustness. It’s not babysitting to have something easier to use and less likely to fail, after all.
Obviously even with this idea, it would be best practice to stop recordings manually - but it would provide a layer of redundancy if there was a power outage.
Yes, I guess we all have to.
But with my rejected post, however, I just wanted to share with you a link to a maybe possible workaround from A&H that could help you until your request is implemented.
It has happened to me before that a caretaker simply turned off the power, and I was very happy to be able to save my files in this way.
PLEASE! This is a much-needed feature. I can see many people on the forums have encountered similar issues for a whole variety of reasons – power failures, absentmindedness, etc. Various examples are documented in this thread: Power cut means CQ doesn't save multitracks?
I have just lost two hours of a one-off show that I was performing/recording. It dawned on me too late (as I was tearing down frantically at the end of the night) that I had forgotten to press ‘STOP’. I couldn’t believe that my simple error meant that the files no longer existed. There has to be a technical solution that the engineering geniuses at A&H can figure out… save out periodically (every ten minutes?) and continuously append data to the file through a buffering mechanism??
If it’s not possible to build this into the mixer as a preventative measure, is there maybe a Mac friendly way to recover the files? I found the Windows suggested method, but many musicians and creatives don’t own a Windows PC.
If that doesn’t work, you should find a solution that matches by Googling “error checking SD card on Mac”.
I am not an Apple user, so just trying to assist.
Google AI does also suggest this instead of the first image. Not sure how accurate that will be though since it is an AI response:
To run an error check on an SD card on a Mac,
open Disk Utility, select the SD card from the sidebar, click First Aid, and then click Run. You may need to go to View > Show All Devices in Disk Utility to see the entire SD card, not just its volumes.
Thank you so much for trying to assist here, @ShadowSound. I did try this myself earlier using Disk Utility, thinking “this is the Mac equivalent of the PC guidance”. However it is definitely NOT. After running First Aid, it said my available volume size was 32GB (the full size of the card). It completely lost track of the 7GB of recordings it knew was there before.
Damn. Sorry to hear that.
Have you tried any free recovery apps like Recuva? Or whatever may be available for Mac?
Hopefully you can figure something out. I would definitely suggest (if you hadn’t planned to already) not using that SD card for anything else. Put it to one side in case someone more knowledgeable about Macs than I (no knowledge at all) pops in with a better suggestion.
