Posted by Marcelo Santos on April 04, 2002 at 12:24:44:
In Reply to: Re: Pretec Flash Cards posted by Michael on April 02, 2002 at 08:09:00:
Hi again Michael,
You definately got a great deal, even though it's not exactly "new", these synths are built to last. I've got a 6 years old QS7 working perfectly, without a single scratch.
About the card, yes, the part# for the 16Mb would be FAD016-P. If you can get it for less than an 8Mb card, then I guess you could go for it. But double-check with the vendor if he sells the 8Mb one as well, because if the 16Mb is so cheap them I reckon the 8Mb will be yours for free :) About the 16Mb, let me remind you that you will only be able to use 8Mb of it, in any case. You can't use 8Mb for the QS and the other 8Mb for storing files from your notebook, for example. So the only reason to get a card bigger than 8Mb would be if it was really cheap.
As far as I know, the basic differences between Flash and SRAM cards are the following:
Flash = best solution to store custom samples. Can hold 1) a maximum of 8Mb of sample data + 2) one bank of programs and one of banks + 3) 50 MIDI sequences. In fact, the space available to the sample data will be slightly less than 8Mb, because the banks and the MIDI files will also occupy a few kbytes.
SRAM = best solution to store user banks. A 512k SRAM card can hold 8 banks of programs and 8 of mixes. I understand that you can also burn samples to SRAM cards, but they're not half as cost-effective as Flash cards. An 8Mb Flash card at Pretec is $64, a 512k SRAM card is $43 (and a 6Mb SRAM would cost you $132!!).
One more thing about SRAM cards: I'm not 100% sure, but I think the QS can only read 8 banks from each card and 12 external banks in total. So if you wanted to use the entire 12 banks, you'd have to get a 512k card (8 banks) + a 256k card (4 banks). But I'm not really sure about this, you might want to ask more experienced people in the forum :) I only use a Flash card, never bought an SRAM and never will. 8 user banks is overkill to me, I can barely fill ONE bank with my custom patches..
That's about it.. if you have any more questions just write, good luck on your purchase!
: Hi Marcelo,
: Thanks for the information, I appreciate it!
: I got the 7.1 for $576 brand new at Sam Ash. Most stores on the Internet had it for around $899, so I got it for a steal.