Loading Speed from CF Card

Hey,

I tried looking for a thread on this, but could not find any. First post here, so sorry if this is obsolete.

I'm looking at a MPC1000 and I want to use it live. I know the loading times are problematic for live use, but maybe someone can tell me how big the problem actually is? My device would have 128 MB of RAM. Does anyone have an idea how long it takes to load thos 128 MB from the card into the RAM? I would of course get a fast card... Maybe someone could tell me what speed they get with which card?

I just would like to know if I can get away with a short interlude while loading the material for the next songs or if it's too long for that.

All the best and thanks!

Depending on the card: 15mb per second/ 30mb per second. When you install a HDD the loading time will be a lot faster. Never tried to load in 128mb at once, but from a HDD it shouldn’t take longer than a minute. Keep in mind the MPC is not able to playback any sound when loading. So you’ll need another sound source when loading mid session.

Thanks for the quick reply!

That's interesting. From older posts here in this forum I gathered that an HDD would be slower than the CF-Card. Just like an SSD or an SD-Card is faster than an HDD. Am I missing something?

I expected that the mpc would be silent while loading. I'll prepare for that. 1 Minute for the full RAM seems absolutely fine.

The bus speed of the HDD connection is faster than the bus speed of the CF connection.

Thanks! That's what my initial thought was, too.
Weird that there are so many posts in this forum saying otherwise.

Well there's several components that ultimately impact the speed...

There's the CPU, which is the first bottleneck, nothing is going to be able to help the CPU go faster than it is capable of processing the data.
Then you've got the bridge (on PC typically referred to as north or south bridge, depending on what functions it is doing)... this is the interface that the CPU talks to for USB, HDD, and CF connections. I have't looked at the architecture specs for the 1k in ages... frequently these are one chip (or it's part of the CPU)...
From the bridge you've typically got discrete chips to manage each discrete data path, so there is likely some kind of controller to handle the actual USB 1.1 protocol, and there are definitely chips on the HDD kit and the CF adapter... each of these operate at different speeds and have different bandwidth parameters.
Finally you've got the actual interfaces themself... no matter what speed you connect to the USB port, you're going to get USB 1.x speeds... so that's kind of a bust. The CF card speeds may have some impact on loading times, but there is definitely a point of diminishing returns because all the chips in the line max out. Finally the HDD... which if I recall has a higher bus speed, but if you've got an HDD in there you are stuck at whatever speed the rotational media is at, which is why you see a lot of people suggest replacing the HDD with a CF card adaptor, because the CF will be faster than an HDD.

Not sure if all that helps, but there are plenty of places for things to go slow in the 1k/2.5k... but it's good to have a sense at least for where it is worth investing if you're trying to improve read/write times.

Wow, thanks so much for this! Sorry it took me so long to answer, didn't know someone had posted here. Thanks again, great help!