Q: CF cards - which speed ? longevity in regard to speed ? e

Hello,
some questions about CF cards, for MPC1K, JJOS :


1. which speed makes sense, where´s the threshold where JJOS/MPC wont work any faster ?
could it be that even 133x speed is as fast as MPC/JJOS can handle ?
...in case for getting cheaper ones


regarding longevity and risk of getting corrupted cards:
2. can size and speed make a difference ?
anybody knowing these things and have recommendations in that regard ?
would you say smaller is better, or vice versa is big sized possibly more advanced technology inside ?
.....not taking in account that one might loose more files on a bigger card
( i know, everybody recommends Sandisk anyway. unfortunatedly these are very expensive.)

3. regarding MPC behave on CF cards in regard of read/write faults.
is card size a factor for the MPC ? .....bigger harder to handle for the MPC ?
or would say that here the brand might count.
( small cards get more expensive now than the 8 and 16 Gb ones btw.)


i need several cards, need stock now, but have also to plan for the next years/decade.
there is lots of scenarios how i could shop, respectivly plan to shop......
knowledgable input much appreciated, as allways

nobody an idea ?

I have used a Lexar Platinum II 1gb (80x speed) for many years now. With my workflow, 75% of the time I track out my work into the DAW (Reaper 4) and transferring the actual beat folder to my music pc when done. The only thing that stays on my mpc cf card are drums and bass samples. You ask good questions though as I have thought about upgrading to a larger card and spending more time in the mpc environment as opposed to tracking out so quickly....after building my 8 core computer, software has completely spoiled me. But there still is nothing that compares to the mpc workflow. There is a thread in the mpc1000 thread where I believe the cf card topic is fully covered though. I know of people having success with 4 and 8gb cards. As far as speed...I don't know? Never been a factor to me cuz hell,.... samples, beats, etc load up fast enough. And once loaded from the card, its in RAM anyway so......here is the link to the thread on here http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=26775

thanks for the link.
i went thru some first and the last 18 pages or so.

someone mentioned the MPC reads with something like 40x speed, but was more like "believing"
seems like from 133x speed on theres no win within the MPC when going with faster cards


if there is any reason to prefer 4GB (or smaller) over 8GB, the time to stock up is now !!
the question is if there is any reason to prefer bigger cards from a technical standpoint ?
( not file load capabilitys )

I never tried ones over 4GB, but there's tons of posts here saying 8 and 16GB are cool.

Yeah I think the internal data bus on that CF reader would have a certain limit. All my cards are 133x (some say '15MB/s') and work fast enough for me. I fill them on a 2.0 USB reader though. The 1.1 USB mounting the MPC on the computer is too slow for doing a lot of folders at once.

I got Transcend, SanDisk Ultra and Lexar Platinum here. Actually the Lexar ones say 200x. All of them 2GB or 4GB. I use the 2GB SanDisk ones formatted at 1GB for my XL.

sorry i forgot to mention ( posted in the long CF harddrive thread)
i run Cards from 2GB to 16GB allready.
the 16GB was from the sold octatrack, so i just took it over to the 1K and added a MPC folder. works fine

i think i will go with the 8GB cards as these are only slightly more $ than 4GB.
from the size, 4GB is sufficient to me.
i personally prefer to have different cards than having to big cards
4 GB is perfect for me, but i fill these up. 8GB give me some "air"

thanks for feedback !

I wait for online sales at computer vendors. Like buy 10 and save x amount of $ on each one.

Same thing happened with 1GB ones it just got cheaper to get 2GB ones. Now 8GB will get to be a better deal than 4GB like you said.

Once you have like 5 or 10 cards you probably never even need to think about an internal HD.

punkydoodle wrote:Hello,
some questions about CF cards, for MPC1K, JJOS :


1. which speed makes sense, where´s the threshold where JJOS/MPC wont work any faster ?
could it be that even 133x speed is as fast as MPC/JJOS can handle ?
...in case for getting cheaper ones

I saw in the MPC1000 CF/RAM thread that you said you have a 600x CF card. I have the CF card below if you want to do a load/save speed comparison test :

le rat wrote: I saw in the MPC1000 CF/RAM thread that you said you have a 600x CF card. I have the CF card below if you want to do a load/save speed comparison test :

hmmm.....
i thought myself today that i could do a test.....I´m just a lazy cat
I have myself several cards. ..thanks for the offer !
I´ll see and report back

The ones I have aren't much difference in the ratings. 133x and 200x.

I looked up how that translates into MB's per second - 133x rating means transfer speed of: 133 * 150 kByte/s = 19,950 kByte/s ~ 20 MB/s.

The wiki entry said that is usually for read speed and write speed will be slower usually.

I have some of the SanDisk Ultra ones, they say 15 MB's per second so they must be slower than the 133x ones.

Maybe it's the fact that the 3 speed ratings I have on these cards are not very far apart like the 600x CF cards mentioned would be...but I've never noticed much difference in any of the cards with the different speed ratings.

I have never used a clock/stopwatch to time it, but I'm usually pretty good at noticing differences of even a few seconds when I do data transferring. I do more of that on computers with my 6 HDD's, but if it was anything more than ~5 seconds of deviation on the CF's I think I would have noticed before.

Of course a real test with a clock and cards with a greater gap in listed transfer speeds is best. I just wanted to post this looking at the 3 cards on my desk here, and thinking about how I never noticed any difference just staring at the load screens.

Also I don't use my MPC's very often, I use a lot more computer based stuff. But I'm always curious on these tech type questions just in general.

Maybe I can find the listed speed of the internal data bus in the MPC and see what the ceiling/limit is. I'm guessing it might be similar to maximum transfer rates of USB 1.1 as the internal data bus uses that protocol when the CF is mounted as removable storage on a computer.

Metatron72 wrote:Maybe I can find the listed speed of the internal data bus in the MPC and see what the ceiling/limit is. I'm guessing it might be similar to maximum transfer rates of USB 1.1 as the internal data bus uses that protocol when the CF is mounted as removable storage on a computer.

this would be cool, would make sense.

ok, i just run a test with 10 cards !
first i thought, oh Man 600x is faster..........
But then......my conclousion, and as it looks to me:
the number of folders you have make a huge difference ! edit:......respectivly number of files


What i did:
i loaded a 79MB file into my older MPC1K ( all black Case, old pads ), just one song i recorded from Vinyl
then i saved this 79MB File to each card, Root folder, not donne any Subfolders.
i counted the seconds on my cheap 7$ watch by listening and watching the second pointer. no stopwatch in my apartment

the results, ......well finally it tells not that much, just that there are more factors than just card speed rating itself:
GB / speed / time in seconds : .........79 MB, one .wav File, rough into rootdirection

32 / 400 / 52sec
16 / 600 / 68 sec
16 / 600 / 44sec
8 / 400 / 167sec
8 / 400 / 169sec
4 / 233 / 150sec
4 / 133 / 50sec
2 / 120 / 163sec
1 / ...? / 77sec
0.1/...? / 63sec ( 128 MB card)


the first 5 ones from 32GB to 8 GB are all transcend cards.
the two 8GB / 16GB are identical cards which makes it more interesting.
4 and 2 GBs Thomann and a transcend.
last two cards were old cards from my looper, no speed rating, but very good cards, known to be fast.
the two 16GB/ 600x have for example both 5 folders in the root direction,
the one that was faster less files on it,
[edit: last two cards had one folder on it, very few files in there,
speed for shure not more than 133x, my guess is more something between 50x and 100x ]
so ..... ??

not shure if it would be cool to make same test with loading a whole folder with many small files in it.
if this all makes a difference ?
now, summer is over here, weather gets bader.....i´l see

Thanks for the test
It brings more questions than answers though.
If you get bored on a long winter day you can compare LOAD time too.
On my CFs I've noticed that load time is faster than save time.
PEace

le rat wrote:It brings more questions than answers though.

i agree