Core-sounds Pda Audio

[plaka999]

I'm looking to replace my minidisc recorder with a hard-drive based option, and, well, there aren't many. I'd prefer not to drop the cash on a newer md model that does USB transfer (I'm primarily on macs anyway, and i don't think the sony software supports macs), so I was looking into other options. I need more than mono recording, something smaller than a laptop, and would prefer hardware that does more than dedicated audio recording, so the zaurii with audio card might be a great option. I've checked out core-sounds pda-audio CF card, and sent email to Len, the guy who runs coresounds, and his response was that zauruses are too slow (which I'm not sure what that exactly means).

I'm leery of his response, thinking he may have not tested the most recent of the z's. The recent z processor is slower XScale PXA270 (416mhz, vs 624 MHz in the HPs), but is that enough of a difference for it not to work? anyone out there actually tried the card in a recent z ? or is there more to it, like bus speed or something?

thanks!

[ThC]

maybe he was talking of the CF and SD interfaces ... else i don't think zaurus is much slower than an hp and you can still overclock it a bit  ... maybe he did just try old SL5x00 with buggy PXA200 or even old ARM cpu

[Fromwithin]

Just had a look at that Core-sounds thing and it's only a digital in. You can't plug a mic into it or anything, you need a separate A-D converter for that. As it stands, I think it's pretty useless.

[plaka999]

I was thinking the same thing about speed, i don't know the technology enough to know if it's a cf bus speed thing or what.  

and Fromwithin, yeah, you're totally right about the interface being only the digital in. I was just thinking that was the first part of the battle, and I could grub up a DA converter, which is the second half of the battle.

Which actually gives me another idea: maybe use the usb host capabilites of the new zs to feed and usb audio interface into it? this might be a horrible idea, I know, since they suck power like mad, and drivers are probably non-existent. Any thoughts? I want this to work!

[ThC]

if your usb sound interface require no more than usb 1.1 then you should be able to use it ... if you find drivers  ... for the power consumption you can still use a usb hub with an external power supply

[ran]

maybe use the usb host capabilites of the new zs to feed and usb audio interface into it?

One good initial test would be to have someone time the copying of a few megs from a USB hard disk to a file in RAM.  The practical maximum throughput for USB 1.1 is about equivalent to a 4x CD-ROM,  but whether you can actually get that depends on the hardware and software of both the host and the device.

In the interest of maintaining compactness and low battery requirements,  it might make sense to record to flash,  and transfer to hard disk later.  That new WiFi hard drive from Asus (there's a recent thread about it here) can automagically copy flash cards for you,  and you'd only be using batteries to run the hard drive,  for a few minutes per hour of recording.

Ran