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  3. streaming from a flash card?

  • streaming from a flash card?

    K
    K
    the new macbook pro and many pc-notebooks have an express card slot with a high data transfer rate. there are card reader expansion boards available for this slot which read normal sd-cards that come in 4 (and soon 8 ) gb and have a data rate of more than 20mb/s and an access-time in the ms-range. at least with opus 1/2 one can squeeze a pretty nice basic template in 4gb - streaming memory-hungry and rarely used stuff like percussion or special articulations from the internal disk (which should work).
    therefore: is there anything that argues against streaming from a flash card? it would be nice if this works, since then there is finally the "mobile vsl-studio".
    any thoughts or experience?
  • J
    J
    The stats you give don't sound too impressive [EDIT - that is, next to a good HD]. These devices are not really made for speedy access, just for dumping back-ups in and out. You'd probably have as good or better performance from the internal drive. Get a decent amount of RAM, and set your virtual memory buffer size reasonably high, and I'm sure you'll get more out of the internal drive.

    What is interesting are the flash-based HDs that Samsung is coming out with this year. Not very big -- around 8 GB, I think -- but the speeds look pretty great. That would certainly boost up streaming performance. It seems to me somebody else is coming out with a 2.5" flash-based HD (is it called an SDD???), as well.

    Anyway, I wouldn't be spending any dough on the flash-card thing, personally.

    J.
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC
    just to mention ... data throughtput might not be much better, but seek-time is almost zero ... a solid state disk would be the best [;)]
    christian
    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • K
    K
    just in case anyone else is considering this option:
    i have a fast 4gb flash-card (30mb/s) in my macbook pro by now to stream opus 1/2 from it - and it works great. all bread and butter sounds are on the flash and the rest is no problem for the internal disk. it´s somewhat like in the old days when everything was burned in rom - fast and silent ... with the advantage that by now one can even work on a train [:)].
    the only minor inconvenience is, that in the card reader i have so far, the flash card sticks about one cm out of the macbook and thereby cannot be inserted permanently when travelling. if anyone knows a card reader where the flash card is fully inside the reader (like a "2. internal disk" one does not have to care for anymore), please let me know.