Sound Card/pros and cons

[Danny B.]

I have done most of my recording with an 8 track reel to reel. Maybe this has been replied to before but I was wondering what are the advantages of SD and other sound cards. Some of these recorders can still record at 16bit/44Hz so I would assume that the sound quality would be decent. I do see on a couple of forums where people state that their hard drive has failed/crashed and the recorder will no longer work. I also read in the on-line manuals of some recorders where they say to leave your recorder in one place to prevent damage to the hard drive. Anyway just a subject to throw out and see what the advantages and disadvantages of hard drive vs SD/other media cards are.

 

[Danny B.]

I must have stumped the whole board. Smart media cards are starting to be replaced by SD (secure digital) cards. Does anyone have an opinion on the advantages or disadvantages of using these cards as opposed to hard drives.

 

[macafied]

I'd say in the long run, harddrives are going to be cheaper. Not to mention the size difference. How many media cards would it take to equal a single 120+ GB harddrive? You would want to have a back-up of all your work no matter which way you go.

 

[tedluk]

I think maybe people aren't answering because it's hard to understand the question.

First you call SDa soundcard. Then you jump from that to calling it a recorder. SD is not a soundcard. It's a type of media for saving data. So it's unclear whether you are talking about digital recorders that use SD as their recording media or archiving data on SD instead of hard drives.

If it's the former, then you are talking about units that compress the data to achieve useful recording times and that entails some degradation of audio quality but you gain portability and reliability. Depending on your needs, this might be a reasonable trade-off.

If it's the latter, I don't see the practicality of using SD instead of a hard drive on your DAW. It would make more sense to me to archive to DVD or CD since the space is so limited on SD.

If I'm missing something in your question, I'm sorry. Please try to explain it to me better.

Ted

 

[Imaduck]

I think, if I understand correctly, you're asking about Hard Drives verses removable media. I'll try to help...

I also read in the on-line manuals of some recorders where they say to leave your recorder in one place to prevent damage to the hard drive

Yes, the one advantage to most removable media (other than optical drives and floppies) is that there aren't moving parts, so they are not suseptable to damage from moving them (hell, they wouldn't make very good "removable" media if they were). Hard drives on the other hand, contain one or more spinning disks and a arm that reads them. Shake the disk enough and yes, you can jam or just break the little arm inside of the hard disk alltogether, so if you want to be really safe, the less you move your recorder, the better.

Just how fragile is a hard disk? Well, I've dropped quite a few on the solid ground (3 or 4 feet), and I've found about 3/4 of the time they're fine. I've never actually had a hard disk break by shaking it. I know that when I did work on computers and we'd purposely go to break hard disks (don't ask why), we'd usually just bang them against a solid surface three or four times on their side pretty hard, and that'd usually do the trick. But as far as moving your computer/recorder around, I've never broken a hard drive by moving or even dropping an entire machine with the drive in it. Not to say it can't be done, but honestly the risk of breaking the drive from just moving the recording unit around seems pretty slim at best.

Some of these recorders can still record at 16bit/44Hz so I would assume that the sound quality would be decent.

Keeping on the topic of Hard Disk/Removable Media, the media itself won't determine the quality; like Mac mentioned, it's about storage. Obviously better quality files are going to take up more space, but quality is quality regardless of media. So basically, if you're recording at CD quality (16/44) on removable media, you're audio is still going to be as great as it would be on HD recording at the same bitrate. However, 80 minutes of CD audio (one track) takes up 700 mb of space, so if you're going to do 4 tracks totalling 20 minutes of all your songs, you're going to need a 700 mb card, which comes at quite a hefty price tag (for that same price, you could probably get yourself a 120 GB hard disk).

So basically, the point is, HD recorders are pleanty safe (removable storage has it's own risks anyway), and much cheaper with tons more storage, so go with that.

 

[Imaduck]

(BTW, by "sound card" I think he meant "cards that hold sound files")

 

[TimOBrien]

Hard drives aren't glass.

I used to work for a disk manufacturer and one of the "tests" they would use on a design is to lift it up over their heads and slam it down on the desk. They're good to something like 80-100G's.

Sound's like you have some 1980's information....

 

[Imaduck]

Hehe, well, they were old, not that old, but yes, old (oddly enough, most of my computers left from the 80's stood up a lot better than those from the mid-late 90's -- probably because the parts are all 10x bigger than they are nowadays ). Anyway, that's cool to know about the hard drive tests and all that.

 

[tedluk]

(BTW, by "sound card" I think he meant "cards that hold sound files")

The problem is he's mixing all his terminology around. In the next phrase he calls them "recorders". I was trying to clarify the difference between a medium, what is stored on it, and the device that writes to it.

Also, 16 bit/44.1kHz is only part of the story. If I'm not mistaken most, if not all, devices that use SD for storage use various methods of compression to increase the amount of data they can hold. As I said, this ALWAYS will create some degradation to the audio. How much depends on the algorithms used. Most of the hard disk based recorders out now store the audio files in an UNcompressed format. This is possible because of the low prices and improved speed and reliability of IDE hard drives.

Ted

 

[Imaduck]

As I said, [compression] ALWAYS will create some degradation to the audio.

Not if it's lossless compression, however I'm not too familiar with how these recording units compress, but I'm doubting that it's just lossless. If it's lossy, then yes, like you mentioned, it will always degregate the quality.

Hehe, I used the word "degregate."

 

[tedluk]

Of course, you are right!

Now I am the one who's been degraded.

The units I'm familiar with do use lossy compression. I think, in order to utilize SD for storage you're going to have to use lossy compression simply because you're not going to be able to reduce the file size enough through lossless compression to gain any real advantage. At least that's my guess.

Ted

 

[Danny B.]

Thanks guys for all the information. My terminology was "INCORRECT" not the first time and won't be the last. I was just curious to what the advantages /disadvantages were between the two. I am a analog recording person. Just getting into the digital realm, and was putting purchase information together. If I didn't have people to talk too, like you, I'd be flying by the seat of my pants. So be patient with us old farts from the old days. We have to learn too!!!!!!

 

[tedluk]

Thanks guys for all the information. My terminology was "INCORRECT" not the first time and won't be the last. I was just curious to what the advantages /disadvantages were between the two. I am a analog recording person. Just getting into the digital realm, and was putting purchase information together. If I didn't have people to talk too, like you, I'd be flying by the seat of my pants. So be patient with us old farts from the old days. We have to learn too!!!!!!

\

But it's ALL about the terminology, man!!!

And don't worry, I'm an old fart too and I can BS my way through this stuff pretty well!

Ted