Well, I finally got around to giving multitrack recording on a USB drive a try today. I am using a Qu-32 and a PNY 64G thumb drive that has worked well for 2 track recording. I was on stage and a friend was monitoring the recording process. He told me that they were seeing many errors pop up during the recording and we have almost as many dropouts as we do music on a song. I am going back and reading everything I can find on dropouts. Slow going for sure, any suggestions on where to start? I won’t have a chance to get back on the system until next Tuesday so lots of planning time. We may try recording to a laptop to see if that helps.
Get a usb3 portable disk drive. We use a 1TB Seagate portable and have never had any errors during the last 4 months of recording multitrack of our church service each Sunday.
@psikes, a month ago I purchased a SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 250GB drive with a USB C to USB adapter and did a multitrack test recording with my Qu16. The test recording was 45 minutes long and it recorded and played back flawlessly. I’m running firmware version 1.95.
Have you been re-formatting the sticks before a new project? The recommendations I’ve followed are:
Make a continuous recording. No stop and start.
Always start with a freshly formatted stick. Off-load, Re-format, Go.
I use 16gb Sandisk Extreme sticks for Qu-drive recording and a Seagate 500gb 7200 rpm drive from the USB-b port with great results, but I’m doing continuous recording of live events or performances. Multiple sets or sessions get a fresh drive.
I must have been very lucky when buying my USB-drive; during all the recording I have done I’ve had one instance where the bass wasn’t recorded somehow. Otherwise flawless even when I stop and restart the recording.
This was my first attempt at multi tracking. I did not reformat the drive before using but even the first track had serious dropouts. I will try again this weekend with the thumdrive after a reformat and next Tuesday with a hard drive.
Thanks for all of the hints and help along the way. These are indeed large steps for an old analog guy.