run live off a usb stick

Mr Wednesday · Post by **Mr Wednesday** » Wed May 25, 2005 6:58 am

I was just wondering if you think live would run ok if i ran my audio samples off of a usb stick - the application would be installed on the hard drive though.
The reason is because i want as much hard disk space for my cubase recording projects.
ALso any idea how big a five track EP would be in terms of gigabyte size. Roughly.....

smart1123 · Post by **smart1123** » Wed May 25, 2005 4:42 pm

I don't know about USB 1.0 but USB 2.0 should be fast enough to run your samples.
Are your tracks stereo or whole songs (eg 16 track 32 track mixes) I beleive the rule is 10 meg/minute for stereo audio, a 6 minute 32 track mix usually runs me close to a gig when I go to back it up (from protools all audio tracks no midi no softsynths)

Hope this helps

ejectorset · Post by **ejectorset** » Wed May 25, 2005 4:47 pm

roughly as cd quality (16bit 44.1kHz) stereo .wav files
1 minute of audio = 10 megs. roughly.

that is for a mixed down song. or a wav file ripped from an audio cd.

if you are trying to calculate how much drive space you need for cubase files for recording an EP then it gets a bit tricky.

you need to know the total length you want your EP to be (roughly) and how many tracks each song will use, like drums, bass, synth, etc.

then you can multiply the EP length in minutes * the most tracks any song will have * 10megs.
this will give you an idea.

if you plan on recording at a higher sample rate or bitdepth (ie. 24/96) then the files will take up a lot more room.

Mr Wednesday · Post by **Mr Wednesday** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:18 pm

My samples are just mainly loops.....

Mr Wednesday · Post by **Mr Wednesday** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:21 pm

I've heard round the traps that maybe i should run my files off a faster hard drive....external, in terms of recording with cubase if i am running a lot of audio tracks at once

smart1123 · Post by **smart1123** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:26 pm

don't go under 7200 RPM, if you can afford 10,000 RPM do it.

Mr Wednesday · Post by **Mr Wednesday** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:31 pm

yeah i was definately going to do that...but whoa moma never seen or heard of a 10 000 rpm drive. It kinda means that i would need to get two because i would want to back my files up, but i guess the back up hard drive doesn't need to be that fast

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Thu May 26, 2005 2:24 am

10k RPM is SATA .... Serial ATA.

Pretty much as fast as SCSI for less $.

-Ben

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Thu May 26, 2005 9:39 pm

I got an external drive case for about $30, and put a 200 GB internal drive into it. 7200 RPM which saved me about $50 vs a pre-built 200GB external. The case has FW 400 or USB 2.0 high speed interfaces. I've been doing video captures as well as audio on this drive, works great.

If you are doing USB 2.0 to an external drive, you will not be able to get SATA, 7200 rpm with either an 8MB or 16MB cache is very nice.