sd cards

[Dake Mingus]

The Boss BR-80 can use an sd card up to 32 GB.  I know you really can't get very precise, but if you recorded a 5 minute song using all 8 tracks, how much of the card would you use?

[Hilary]

I've no idea but I'm having real difficulties with the memory on mine - I've got a 2GB but read somewhere on here that the BR80 only recognises 1GB.

[Oldrottenhead]

the br80 recognises up to 32gb it is the original micro br that only recognises up to 1gb.

not sure how much data 5 minutes uses up but imagine it is not a lot. remember each individual track has data. so if you have used 5 minutes on 8 tracks its 8 times more than you have used on 1 track. i am sure 64guitars will be able to give a precise answer. but if you have a 32gb card you should have hours and hours of recording space.

[Hilary]

I've got 8 songs on mine (I've deleted all the eband stuff coz I don't use it) and only about 2 or 3 masters and was halfway through a song last night when it said memory full. There must be something I should be doing that I'm not because it happens all the time.

[Oldrottenhead]

never worked with the br80, but what i do is back up my card to my hard drive then remove any song folders ive finished working on to clear space. with the old micro br i can reformat my card on my pc and when i put it back in my mbr, it initialises it so it is ready to do. i am not sure if you can do that with the br80 as it has a more folders/directories for eband etc. the micro br only has two folders/directories one for mp3s that you have mastered and the song folder.

where is 64guitars when we need him. maybe geir will  be able to help too.

[Hilary]

Oh you are being a help ORH, things that are obvious to everyone else aren't necessarily obvious to me! I've been transferring my files to the pc (and backed up the eband) but all the ones on the BR are current atm. I'm thinking I could buy a 32GB card (or whatever depending on price) and format it on the BR - will I still get all the COSMs etc? The one I'm using came with the BR.

It'll wait - no real time to record atm but the kids to back to school on Wednesday so it'll be party time with Mr BR, Mr Rode and Mrs F   - Having said that, I've just written a song called 'Seven men of short stature' this morning and I can't wait to record it!!!!

[Geir]

Accordint to the manual you use ~1GB pr 3 hours on 1 track (pg. 128) that would amount to about 2-300 mb for 8 tracks on a 5 minute song.

I'll check later, but it seems to be about right to my experience.

[Hook]

I usually have 3-7 different different projects on my mbr ranging in size from 3 to 16 tracks + some saved wav files and I've never seen my 1 gig ever get up to 3/4 full. On my compact flash card I've pushed 14 projects before card full.

Haylie, once you've backed up your tune and are done with it, erase it off the card. You can import the tracks relatively easily later, if you need them,with the wave converter. Your songs usually don't use too many tracks so it seems strange to me you would get a card full unless you have everything you have recorded on the card and never optimized. When you record over & over on the same track it stores that previous data, that's what ends up corrupting the track and causes Drive Busy, I think. When you optimise you clean out all those unused takes, not the v-tracks, just the underlying attempts. After you've saved everything re-intialize your card.

I do think it would be nice to have more space on the card, you cant even buy a 1g in the store anymore! However unless your doing huge, multi track, 20 min. songs or working on 15 different tunes, I don't see it as a big issue.

[chip]

I usually record like this...... if I don't like the track  I undo and do it again. I don't keep tracks I don't want. I never use the V tracks apart from  when mastering (BR80), 8 tracks do me fine... I have about 6 songs on the BR and loads of space on my 2gb card, most songs are 8/6 track songs about 3/5 mins max. I also delete some songs that I don't like or do them again in another way..... .

[64Guitars]

if you recorded a 5 minute song using all 8 tracks, how much of the card would you use?

Geir's estimate is correct. The manual says that a 32GB card can hold about 100 hours (6000 minutes) for one track. That's 5.3333 MB per minute for one track or 42.6667 MB for 8 tracks. Therefore, a 5-minute song using 8 tracks would take about 213 MB, in theory. In actual usage, it could take less because you won't necessarily fill each of the 8 tracks. For example, one of the tracks might hold a 10-second guitar solo in the middle of the song. So you wouldn't need to record that track for the full 5 minutes of the song. You'd just record for 10 seconds. Or maybe your bass guitar doesn't come in till the second verse of the song. So that track will be less than 5 minutes too.

There are many factors affecting the amount of storage required, but I think 200MB to 300MB for a 5-minute song using 8 tracks is a good estimate.

The 1GB card currently in my BR-864 has 15 songs on it in various stages of development. Eight of those songs have 6 tracks or less, one has 11 tracks, and the remaining six songs have between 18 and 46 tracks each. The total space used is about 986MB, so that's an average of 66MB per song. The 46-track song is under 3 minutes long and is using about 153MB.

So, you can see that a 1GB memory card has plenty of room. I would advise against using a 32GB memory card. They're pretty expensive and it's not a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. If the card should fail, you could lose all of your songs! I'd recommend a 2GB or 4GB card. When a song is finished, you can copy it to your computer using my BR Song Librarian program, then delete the song from the BR. That way, you'll always have plenty of room for the songs you're working on. Also, it's a good idea to have several cards on hand. Then, if your current card fills up and you don't want to stop to backup some songs and make space, you can simply remove the card and insert an empty one. Later, you can backup the songs from the full card and delete them so that card will be empty (or near-empty, depending on whether you want to keep some unfinished songs on it). Better to have two or three 2GB cards and move your songs to the computer when completed, than to have one 32GB card and hope that it doesn't die.