SD Card Failure with CQ recorder – Which new SD Card to buy?

CQ CQ Feature Suggestions
1

Hi there!

I just copied a multitrack recording from an 128GB Sandisk Extreme Pro card. 16 channels at 48khz. It turns out there is a passage in the recording where there’s dropouts.

I don’t know if my CQ12t had shown any error in the multitrack recorder screen, I was busy mixing with my iPad. When reading the card on Ubuntu Studio Linux, there are no error messages, also not in the system log. So it’s likely that the writing speed of the card temporarily broke down during recording.

Interestingly, this very card had been used in that mixer before to record concerts and there wasn’t any issue. It isn’t unlikely that this SD card simply is starting to die now.

Now my problem is: I have a couple of these 128GB cards, all of these had a previous live in Z Cam video cameras, so it’s likely that when using these, I’ll see the same trouble again sooner or later.

(My newer videos cameras don’t use SD cards at all. So the old cards 128GB and 256GB cards I have as leftovers are now used for photography, where you always have an eye on the camera screen and would notice an error right away… yet not so when recording a concert.)

To be safe, I should buy some brand new SD Cards that are known to work well in the CQ series.

Which SD card model would you guys suggest?

Could even be 64GB or 32GB size, doesn’t matter, reliability is most important.

Thanks and all the best

Doc^4

2

Just to add to this… I got myself an overpriced 128gb Sony Tough SD Card, apparently a discontinued product. I ran like 3 hours of test recording at 16 channels 96khz without errors. But still, that’s what I had done with the Sandisk card before using it, too.

So all I can say for now: If your recording is really important, do it in parallel with a DAW via USB. I tested that too, and the cq12t did well with Ardour via Pipewire on Ubuntu Studio (using a newer version of Pipewire via PPA and set to pro audio mode). This I did with 48khz only, since I usually don’t need 96khz recordings.

To be clear, I don’t think A&H is to blame here, it’s just SD cards getting worn out without proper ways of the user knowing in advance when they will finally exhibit drops in write speed.