Qualified Hard Drives

Recommended Hard Drives

We have found that Solid State Drives (SSD) are the most reliable type of hard drive for multitrack recording and playback for all TouchMix models. In addition, they are rugged, weigh next to nothing and can be powered from the TouchMix USB port. Here are examples of solid state drives that work well with TouchMix:

  • Samsung 32GB BAR (METAL) USB 3.0 Flash Drive (MUF-32BA/AM)
  • OWC / Other World Computing Envoy Pro Mini USB 3.0 Flash Drive (120GB)
  • Samsung T5 Portable SSD
  • Samsung T3 Portable SSD 250 Gb (MU-PT250B/AM)
  • LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt SSD 250 Gb (9000490)

Thumb Drives

Any thumb-drive with adequate capacity that can be formatted FAT32 should work for storage of TouchMix scenes, presets and firmware updates. Some thumb-drives may perform adequately for stereo or low channel-count recording but QSC does not recommend USB thumb-drives for recording.

Symptoms of an Under-Performing Drive

  • The initial few milliseconds of a wave may be corrupted.
  • Brief bits of audio may drop out of various tracks at random times resulting in loss of synchronization between tracks. This can also occur as a drive approaches its maximum capacity.
  • The drive may perform adequately when attempting to record a small number of tracks but exhibits some or all of the above symptoms when more tracks are armed.

Preparing a Drive for Use

The drive must be formatted as FAT32.

Note: If you are planning a critical recording session, we strongly recommend that you begin with a freshly formatted drive.

INFORMATION ON DRIVE FORMATTING

Be sure that there is sufficient space on the drive for your recording. To calculate the space required for your recording:

  • For 48 kHz – Space required (in MB) = 11.52 x minutes x tracks
  • For 44.1 kHz – Space required (in MB) = 10.58 x minutes x tracks

It is good practice to have more disk space available than you need. If the drive is nearly full, TouchMix has to look for nooks and crannies of available space. This will result in fragmented wave files and potential loss of audio data and synchronization across tracks.

At approximately 3 hours of non-stop recording, the maximum file size supported by FAT32 is exceeded. To avoid problems, stop and then resume recording. It is not necessary to create a new session. TouchMix will display a pop-up that warns you when this limit is approaching. If you do exceed the FAT32 limit, track synchronization may be lost.