Why you never need to optimize

[Ted]

Note: This topic has been renamed from "Weird Optimizing outcome"

To jump to the take-away lesson, click here.

I think I get what Optimizing (Utility > TRK > OPT) is all about.  Saving space, yadda yadda...

Yesterday I had just bounced four tracks to TR34V8.  I had lots of v-tracks in use, so I thought I might optimize.

When I was done, TR3V8 was out of sync from TR4V8 by about two measures.

Fortunately, all of my volume, panning, and effects settings were saved so it was easy to just re-bounce.  Unfortunately, I had already begun working on a copy of the same song, so I ended up exporting TR34V8 from the original song to a WAV file, and importing it into TR34V8 to the new copy.  That made everything better--except for twice having to watch that slow progress bar while wondering if it was going to work.

Any thoughts, MBR geeks?

[Blooby]

That's a puzzler.  Did you save/store the tune before you optimized?

I found another 2 GB card for less than $10.00 (American) the other day.  I think I will just store on computer hard drive or cards.  Little technical glitches like the one you mentioned drive me batty.

Blooby

[Flash Harry]

Back it up, format the card, restore it.

danger! danger!

[64Guitars]

Sounds like a bug, Ted. There have been similar bugs with Song Optimize in earlier BRs, including the BR-864. Roland eventually released firmware updates to fix the problem. I still don't know what version 1.04 fixes in the Micro BR, so it's possible that it could fix a Song Optimize bug.

You'd probably be doing all Micro BR users a favour by reporting this to Roland Tech Support. The more people who report such problems, the better the chances of seeing a fix. While you're at it, you could ask them what fixes are included in 1.04. Of course, Roland U.S. might not even know that 1.04 exists. It's surprising how out-of-touch the different divisions of an international company can be. But it's worthwhile asking. If nothing else, it might prompt them to find out about 1.04 and get it on their website (with English instructions).

Meanwhile, I think all BR users could learn a lesson from this and try to remember to backup the memory card before doing a Song Optimize.

[Flash Harry]

Meanwhile, I think all BR users could learn a lesson from this and try to remember to backup the memory card before doing a Song Optimize.

Now that's what I meant to say....

I just got a bit panicky!

[Davo]

I have had my recorder shut off a few times while on AC power, no other electric devices were effected.

Also a few times I was sure I hit record, but nothing was recorded when I played it back.

Probably just me being a goof.

[Ted]

Every time I tried to work on the song, I got Card Read Errors, and Disk Busy messages.  I even tried a different SD card.

Conclusion: Nothing is wrong with the SD card, but one of the song files in this copy was corrupted and the Micro BR doesn't know the difference.

I won't ever optimize a song again unless I'm desperate and have no other options (at least until there's new firmware that explicitly fixes these problems).

[SteveG]

I've had weird things happen on mine too. Takes not recorded when they should have, and it's always the one that you NAILED!!!!!! Retakes not overwriting the take before which was really confusing! Not had that one tho...

[Ted]

You'd probably be doing all Micro BR users a favour by reporting this to Roland Tech Support. The more people who report such problems, the better the chances of seeing a fix. While you're at it, you could ask them what fixes are included in 1.04. Of course, Roland U.S. might not even know that 1.04 exists. It's surprising how out-of-touch the different divisions of an international company can be. But it's worthwhile asking. If nothing else, it might prompt them to find out about 1.04 and get it on their website (with English instructions).

I posted both to Roland US support today.

[Ted]

Response from Roland:

It's possible some data in that song became corrupted. This could be due to an error in the memory card, fragmentation, or a fluke thing. It would be a good idea to backup your songs and initialize the memory card to clear any remaining bad data, just to be safe.

"A fluke thing..."  Don't you hate it when they use all that technical jargon?

I'll let them know that I copied the song to another unfragmented, formatted, and initialized memory card and still got the errors. Stay tuned.

I've posted their response to my question about the firmware update here.