CDs or Thumb drives for off-the-board recordings?

[kooz]

people -
looking for some insight from y'all.
I'm the house tech at a club, and am starting to get requests for recordings of performances.
Going rate for off-the-board recordings is anywhere from $20-30.
Is anyone using/selling RAM Flash or Thumb drives rather than CDs, or is CD the way to go? I'd rather just save the file (recorded to my PowerBook) and unmount the media rather than burn a CD...that way the band can dash off right away, landfills don't get clogged with plastic, they bring the memory stick with them next time... Most acts get avg 30 minutes, and no more than 45 minutes on stage, so for WAV files they can do anything they want with, a 1 GB stick should be good for 2 sets/nites.
Am I daft or will this fly? what are some things I should be careful of?
Thanks in advance!

[joelpatterson]

Sounds like an idea whose time will one day come. Instinctively, it seems like it's hard to beat the instantaneity of a CD-- in the car on the ride home, next day where-ever, handed to anybody whatever.

Why aren't you burning the CD in real time so that when the show is over, the CD's done?

Don't worry about landfills--some day they will be mined for the troves of riches they contain.

[Shadow_7]

Plusses and minus's on both.

Stick - per unit costs is relatively high. And you can never trust anyone other than yourself to bring it with you next time.

CDs - take considerably longer to write the information to. And while cheap, some of the media units fail to write. A wasted 20 minutes when burning an hours worth of stuff that didn't take. Maybe quicker depending on your writer / method.

Stick - much larger capacity, stores many more hours of info quickly.

CDs - after 75 minutes of stuff burned as playable audio, you need another disc. If that's not a good place to cut / swap, then more headaches.

Stick - can be rewritten to about a hundred thousand times.

CDs - CDRW's maybe ten times at most, but for me, I'm lucky to get them to burn just once. With about a 25% fail rate depending on how long they sat exposed to UV rays in the store window.

Also CDR?'s are rumored to only have an 18 month shelf life. So if you want to keep it around for the next twenty or so years, you better make some backups. Or use a stick. I'm not sure of a sticks shelf life, but it's got to be better than the old 1.44MB floppy disks.

[kooz]

I can get 2GB sticks for less than $10...which is super cheap infinite capacity as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not concerned about them hearing it on the drive home...unless they all ride together, more than one of the members always loses out. Besides, some car audio units now have a USB port for this reason as I understand things.

Joel - I'm not burning the CD in realtime because I haven't found software that'll allow me to do that on my laptop, nor do I own (or plan to acquire) a free-standing recorder. If you know of suitable software for Mac, please let me know.

[joelpatterson]

Software... not my specialty at all. I thought you might have an ol' Masterlink or something lying around?

USB in cars... well, the future is now, then.

[Remoteness]

...And, a stand allow CD recorder is out of the question?
IMO, it's fast and easy...

HHB makes an awesome dual burner recorder that can record two disks at the same time or it can run continuous.

Your laptop can be the backup and your file set.

[mohthom]

Don't forget to factor in the cost of the media with the HHB drives. The ones I've used ONLY worked with the 1x HHB discs - at a cost of ten times the rate for 'normal' discs.

MohThoM

[huub]

nah, new hhb ones take any disc and record realtime.. only finalizing takes a couple of minutes..

[mohthom]

. . . 'fraid that's not what HHB say - and I've only had burnouts with 3rd party discs (frequently a problem with normal 'off the shelf' discs, never a problem with the HHBs . . . )!

MohThoM

[kooz]

Yeah, a standalone recorder is outta the question: Laptop's bought and paid for (and due for replacement says my Accountant, so I don't mind taking it to gigs), and lighter and easier to carry. And I don't really want to carry blank media with me either, truth be told. A half dozen USB sticks or better yet SD cards (why not? They can get played by a good number of cell phones lately. How many musicians do you know who don't have a cell?) are smaller and lighter than the CD equivalent, with fairly infinite storage and re-use possibilities. Another thing I like is the instantaneousness of small capacity removable media: Stereo file gets saved as it's recorded, virtual disk is ejected from Finder, next task begins (moving mics on stage, hitting the loo, flirting w/ bartenders/waitresses, whatever) as opposed to finalize and/or burn disc, chase band representative for exchange of product for money, etc. This is data we're talking about, and the technology exists to exchange it quickly and easily. Heck, where I work, I could e-mail the file to each band member from where I stand at FOH....wirelessly! (or stream it to their parents/wives/kids at home...when I figure out how to do that to add to my income streams, I'll let y'all know.)
This is where I see things going, based on where we're at right now. It isn't that tough, it just means accepting and embracing change.

[huub]

Originally Posted by mohthom

. . . 'fraid that's not what HHB say - and I've only had burnouts with 3rd party discs (frequently a problem with normal 'off the shelf' discs, never a problem with the HHBs . . . )!

MohThoM

off topic, but anywayyy..

We have hhb cd recorders in our trucks, don't use em that often, but when we do,
I just put in whatever disc I can find, works fine thusfar... Good to know that normal discs could cause problems...

[Shadow_7]

Not that I get out much anymore, but where can I get 2GB sticks for under $10 USD? The last one I bought about a year ago was $25 for 2GB in BFE Arkansas, the same device was still $40 locally. And the 2GB stick for my camera was $50 which I bought a month ago. Granted that tech device prices have been declining for a while now. But I don't think we're quite there yet.

[kooz]

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

Not that I get out much anymore, but where can I get 2GB sticks for under $10 USD?

My local computer electronics supplier (tigerdirect.ca) had (has?) them on special last week...cheapo, store brand, probably made in PRC, but my guess is at the same factory as the SanDisk stuff, or HP or whomever is the big player.
Here:
PNY 2GB Attache USB Portable Flash Drive - USB 2.0 P-FD02GU20-RF in Canada at TigerDirect.ca

I think they also play on your side of the 49th parallel, try tigerdirect.com