Octatrack card read/write speed

I am in need of a new CF card for my Octa, and doing some forum search I found a couple of old discussion, but I wasn’t able to figure out what is the actual OT card r/w speed.

Has anyone experienced a considerable improvement on file reading/writing, between for example 50MB/s cards (i.e. San Disk Ultra) over 120MB/s cards (i.e. San Disk Extreme), or 160MB/s cards (San Disk Extreme Pro)?

Are 120MB/s or 160MB/s overkill in your opinion?

AFAIK the first card delivered with the OT was a 4 GB (133x speed). This should be enough for the operations.

Everything that provides more data transfer bandwidth (speed) will do no harm, but will cost more money. It’s unclear, whether the OT can make use of it, or not.

Ultra cards are supporting high resolution video recording, where higher bandwidths are required, then for audio applications. IMO it would be a waste of money.

Much more important is reliability and durability. There is nothing worse than having a card full of work fail and loose the data.

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: How much for a SH101

Yes definitely durability and data integrity are two fundamental requirements.

I’m asking about the card speed because I used a 16GB Kingston 266x, that as I recall it was slightly faster than the 133x stock one, especially when loading projects.

So i suspect the Octa can support faster speed values, but I have no idea what could be the maximum value.

My OT arrived last week with a 16GB 266x CF card as stock. I have a Lexar 800x 16GB card as well, and when comparing the speeds the only real difference between the two was when copying files to and from the computer. The 800x card only booted and loaded a project 1 second faster than the stock 266x card it came with (11 seconds versus 12 seconds).

Copying files from the OT to the computer however was 2.5x as fast using the 800x card. Copying files from the computer to the OT was 3 times as fast with the 800x card (1 minute versus 3 minutes to copy roughly 1GB of data).

My guess is that internally faster cards probably don’t make much if any difference above 266x. There’s definitely an improvement when you’re transferring things to and from the computer though.

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Oh snap. Game on. Welcome back. You’ve been missed. :slight_smile:

Internal bus vs external bus.

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I suspect, if 266x is “only slightly faster” then 133x then the limit might already be reached in the OT. IMO the OT speed should increase with the factor or the card linearly, if there is more to gain, or not, if the limit has already been reached.

Why not use a project with many samples to load, store it on different cards and compare the speed, 133x, 266x, 400x ? This might at least provide some indication of the OT internal speed limits.

I did that, see my post above.

Personally, that’s the only time I plan on removing my CF card ever again. It was scary enough doing it for this test, not chancing fate anymore myself :slight_smile:

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iunderstoodthatreference.gif

Question: why was it scary? I remove those cards often and never had any problems … ?

Question: why was it scary? I remove those cards often and never had any problems … ?

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Some users in the past have had bent pins on their OT’s CF connector when removing/inserting the cards. If that happens, it’s not a trivial repair, apparently.

Question: why was it scary? I remove those cards often and never had any problems … ?

[/quote]

Some users in the past have had bent pins on their OT’s CF connector when removing/inserting the cards. If that happens, it’s not a trivial repair, apparently.[/quote]
I see, thanks for the warning, will be cautious next time :+1:

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That’s exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Thank you Tarekith :+1:

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Hi all,
I know this is an old topic, but i´d like to ask if you are really feeling benefits from the faster CF cards you got.

I use static samples for chain samples, and when i change to another patter that contains a completely different part, i hear like if the octatracks is scrubbing among the chains to get into the new slice.

So reading this posts makes me want to buy a faster card (instead of the stock kingston). But on other posts i read that some people says that a faster card doesnt change anything as the octatrack is limited to the same speed of the stock kingstom CF.

It would be great to know this before buying a new card to fix a problem that it may not be fixed.
Hope you could give me a hint.
Thanks

My problem was solved by getting a faster card. They aren’t very expensive these days, just having the extra space justifies the upgrade.

Thanks for the reply Andrew. Could you please let me know which card did you get? (brand / model)

When I got my OT earlier this year, I compared the stock Kingston card with a 800x one I had as well. In my tests, the only really noticeable difference was when transferring files to and from the computer. There I saw results in line with the differences in the card speed. When it came to loading projects and stuff internally on the card, I only found it was 1 second faster using the new card. Not saying a faster card won’t help, but it might not too.

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Thanks for you input Tarekith!
I’d love to know if you were experiencing any issues with the stock card (before replacing it). Do you use lots of static samples on your projects?

…any preference on the card brand? (reliability/durability)
as i got mine recently, i think i’ll soon need an extra card to store larger samples once i’ll get my head around it :grin:

(i’m sure there’re other posts about this somewhere :hushed:)

I use mainly static samples, and never had any issues with the stock card. Even a few years ago when the stock cards were half as fast as the current ones, always worked fine for me.