Interesting post I found in GearSpace while doing my research,
just to be clear, it was the SD card that was bad/at fault it sounds like, but,
Is it not possible with SD cards to have some sort of data integrity verification while recording?
From what I’ve seen, new, name brand SD cards and USB drives that worked fine yesterday no longer work on the QU console- even though the same disk tests 100% fine and works everywhere else and is rated FAR above the minimum speed spec it needs.
There is a software issue with the USB drive /SD card reader implementation or timing.
It’s pretty fragile and limited in what it understands, such as no exFAT or NTFS (the main reliable formats… it can’t use). It can only use DOS/Win98 era FAT32 style.
The other issue is that when it corrupts a card it won’t show any sign of that. It simply records garbage for hours and later you’ll find out it’s all gone.
Later, we reformat the same exact card and it’s fine again.
I’ve seen it corrupt a card maybe 10% of the time while on other devices they can go for years without issue on the same card.
The software driver or implementation is fragile and needs an update.
Hmm very interesting.
I had a Tascam Model 24, thing ran flawlessly - hours long non stop recording, many many days… never a problem.
Agreed,
my Tascam digital recorder with combo TRS inputs recorded a thousand tracks over the years and never had one issue.
On the new QU mixing deck, (and an SQ model) I’ve lost things more than once, sometimes 2 per week so I got another new card and tried again.
It’s very particular about timing, voltage or something and I haven’t ran enough SD/ USB cards through to see what the pattern is.
I’ve ran 4 USB cards on the USB-A port on 2 different A&H consoles in 2 weeks.
#1 USB drive didn’t work at all although it works fine elsewhere.
#2 worked sometimes, but had to be reformatted and erased weekly.
#3 worked most of the time. until it didn’t during a live show (2 channel stereo) and lost the recorded audio when it corrupted the card.
#4 Mounts ok but won’t save a show /scene file half the time. Disk error.
I’ve never seen that in a device in decades of computer work,
it’s something unique to Allen and Heath.
I’ll try some other cards from the recommended list other than the mostly new, name brand (Sandisk, Western Digital, Corsair, and Lexar (fairly high end, fast DSLR flash drives) I use in other gear (usually for years at higher HD/4K VIDEO data rates with no problem).
I would definitely want this sorted out before purchasing, or some sort of confirmation from development that there are certain SD cards that are required, or that they are working on stability… Because If getting the QU, recording to SD is a big part of it - it’s going to be used for rehearsal recording, live off the floor recording, and live performance mixing and recording… Nearly daily use…
maybe @MarkF can chime in…
I have a hypothesis that’s it’s related to thermal throttling internal to the SD card itself, combined with a very low buffer size on the Qu/SQ.
I’ve noticed good SD cards will have a consistent almost flatline read/write rate when copying files from the PC. Bad ones, I see the rate drop and climb in a pretty even pattern. Card warms up, throttles it’s speed down, then once it cools the speed ramps back up again. Sometimes this can be a reduction in rate over 30 seconds or more.
A normal PC or recorder will have a decently large buffer that can deal with the changes in leak throughout to the card, since the average rate is still good.
I don’t think the buffer in the Qu or Sq has enough samples to deal with this, and without knowing the hardware specifics, I don’t know how fixable it is in firmware.