Are we there yet?
By now you may know that Apple’s newest laptop, the MacBook Air, does not use a traditional hard drive, but solid state flash memory. USB memory drives, compact flash, Secure Digital (SD), SD mini, SD micro, and Memory stick are a mixture of brand names, buzz words, and nicknames, but they all use flash memory technology. In a January 28, 2008 article for the Boston Globe, columnist Hiawatha Bray details the future of flash media. In the article Flash Memory is Making a New Splash Bray quotes research group IDC Corp stating, “a gigabyte of hard-drive storage cost 45 cents last year; the same amount of flash storage cost $18, or 40 times as much…” But as we in the audio industry know, this is changing quickly. Trend is turning toward the favor of flash. The Senior VP of SSD (memory used in the above mentioned MacBook Air) at SanDisk told Bray,
“A gigabyte of flash 10 years ago cost $3,000. Right now you can go into Best Buy and get a gigabyte for about 12, 15 dollars.”
and IDC Corp figures reveal the prices of flash fell 60% last year and will drop by 50% in 2008. In a November 2004 study Joseph Unsworth of technology research corp, Gartner Inc. released the following graphics in relation to USB flash memory as used in the Edirol R4 Pro and Fostex PD-606.
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Worldwide USB Flash Drive average selling price 2001-2008 (actual and projected) |
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2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
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128MB |
$78.18 | $50.16 | $29.95 | $19.56 | $12.75 | $7.92 | $6.37 | $4.74 |
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256MB |
$156.83 | $98.5 | $51.11 | $34.89 | $19.83 | $13.71 | $9.76 | $6.97 |
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512MB |
$326.34 | $196.13 | $112.77 | $65.89 | $35.69 | $21.72 | $17.91 | $11.88 |
So what does this mean for the Sound Mixer? Two things come to mind. First when a 4 GB+ flash card is near the $5-8 price range, DVD-RAMs may go the way of the StellaVox. Many recorders use flash media, the Sound Devices 7 series, Zaxcom TRX wireless, Deva 5.8, Fusion, and 16, Edirol R4 Pro, Marantz PMD series, Tascam HD-P2, Fostex FR-2, FR-2LE, PD-606 et al. Zaxcom is even working on a lossless 2:1 compression for their files allowing a 32GB card to act like a 64 GB for a main recording medium. The manufactures realized the potential long ago, and it may soon pay off. Secondly, the common post systems in use today should be able to transition fairly easily to these media. For less than $30 a multi format card reader can be purchased at any discount store for use with PC/MAC based editors. For Fostex DV824 users, the upgrades are coming. In response to their PD-606, Fostex is writing software which will enable the DV824 to read flash media from its USB or Firewire connections. Currently the DV824 only allows USB or Firewire 1394 connections to a Mac/PC. Until that time, connect the DV824 to a network, USB, or Firewire computer and read the files from the same <$30 card reader. No, we aren’t there yet. But yes we are getting very close. Thanks again for reading. Thank you to Audioflow reader Rick, for this fine topic suggestion.
