Anyone Else Having Problems With SDJ2?

Well, I know in the past, gear was super fussy about what cards they would or wouldn't work with, and I remember this from my days of using my Roland MS-1 and my Alesis QS-8 keyboards. Seems Sandisk was the brand to go with unless you wanted bad results. Not knocking Sandisk, I like their stuff, a lot, and still use their brand.

I would think in this day and age, with memory cards and sticks becoming a commodity-type item, nobody can afford to be brand specific as long as the tech specs are met. I will say this though, DO be aware of big capacity cheap cards, because some use a compression algorithm that may double space(say a 4Gig card to an 8Gig), but they tend to have a high fail rate. You don't buy these from mainstream stores, you gotta go to questionable locations to get that junk.

I'm wondering if there is a voltage control issue in the interface, or else perhaps the contacts are just getting dirty? But I see you having 2 of these units, so why would one get dirty and the other wouldn't? I mean, you're using them at the same time and transporting them the same way...

This is definately a support issue. Call the main number and ask to speak to service. You might need to call back a few times to get through.

I do agree, it shouldn't be so fussy. If the cards meet the tech specs, it shouldn't matter after that.

Thanks for responding Chris, I respect your oppinion. I never considered the doubling up on compression issue. I really was shocked when you mentioned Sandisk because those are one of the two brands that seem to work best. I always keep my cards 4 Gb or less and even try to keep the tunes 200 - 300 at max. My brother had mentioned the pssibility of dust etc but we ruled that out as most of the cards are new and the best ones are the older ones. The freze ups I believe happens when the processor is over task...jump stick with 700 songs/ dialing through or playing one card on both sides and searching for a third song on the side doing playback. We thought the unit must pocess some type of Ram and maybe it was a Ram issue. We even wondered if maybe the unit tries to use part of the card/jump stick as a virtual memory. Anyways I got one wedding down and another this weekend and I crossing my fingers. Because I don't find these units reliable I am forced to play the dinner music on SDJ1 while SDJ2 is powered off and the laptop on hot standby feed to the mixer. Then when its bridal enterance or dances I flash up SDJ2, feel my lads crawl up into my body cavaty and hoped for the best...

As an after thought. I have done alot of research on MP3s and will say I wish I had of done the research earlier. I wouldn't have gone this route. I would have still gone digital probably....harddrive or something but definitely higher quality, not MP3.

BTW one cord running to the left speaker was shorted and the dial lock mechanism for the speaker stand was stripped. If that thing had of fell I'm pretty sure it would have been my insurance to get sued not the place I rented it from. If it wasn't for the rush of performing I got to tell you it's times like this after 31 years I felt like calling it quits.

I'll keep trying support but I really want to hear if anyone has had any issues with SDJ2 or 1. That is other then the known SDJ1 hardware/ firmware issue. Oh, I also agree that these days with competition units can't be fussy what cards/ jump sticks that they use.

Wow, you're taking a beating. My event in February 2010 was a success on the surface but a disaster once you did deeper. I took it so hard I was basically too sick to function(in addition to actually being sick, which didn't help!)

First, a note on Sandisk: Overall, they are my go-to provider for memory cards. I have a stack of PCMCIA storage cards for my MS-1 and 1 for my Alesis QS-8, and they all work fantastic. All my camera memmory cards are Sandisk, which is really at my insistence, plus I was getting 4GB cards for like $20 with a card reader 2 years ago when they were on sale, so I bought 8 of them before my wife took a 2 week vacation overseas with her family. Some of my USB flash drives at Sandisk. My only complaint about them is they sometimes cost too much!

I can guarantee that Sandisk won't be using that compression crap to squeeze more data onto a card or flash drive. Again, that sort of thing is done by cheap cards/drives and are typically sold through less than reputable retailers, typically of the Asian variety. One of my crew bought one of these, a 32-gig flash drive for like $30 a year ago, and that thing is unreliable as hell in addition to shoddy construction.

A note about the interface:
I can't say anything other than I don't know these units you're speaking of, but I suspect they are probably USB-based. I don't really trust USB all that much when it comes to high performance issues and concerns. USB is half-duplex, which makes it unsuitable for reading and writing at the same time. I don't think anyone would use USB for virtual memory or any sort of RAM-type storage becuase the devices are just flat out too slow and the interface is not suited to this sort of behavior(nor are memory sticks and data cards). Even a slower USB 1.1 interface at 11Mb/sec is sufficient for the throughput you're tryng to pass through it.

I think you might be hitting onto something though. You might be taxing the processor. As I'm ignorant on the units you mentioned and I'm try to respond somewhat quickly to provide "insight", I think you nailed it with your observation of playing 2 songs off 1 card and then doing additional searches. While the card can certainly support the throughput(regardless if you went MP3 or wav files, we're not talking bulk like video), then it sounds like either an interface issue(too slow) or processor issue. As the processors typically used are relatively inexpensive because we don't really need tons of CPU to get the tasks done, I think this might be the bottleneck.

I'm all for dedicated hardware whenever possible. While this is a computer in a box, we're not talking a laptop where we might be running things we don't necessarily need that could be hogging resources. So, you're already on the dedicated hardware route so theoretically, this should NOT be a issue for you.

Renting:
All I can say is that I own all my own gear and I in turn don't rent my gear. I don't have to deal with the joy of having my gear borrowed and/or trashed. Running into a neglect problem like you just shared, well, that's something I don't have to deal with. Still, I feel your pain.

Looking back, it appears you're constantly in the "doing the right thing" department.

Let me just share something, not that it makes any difference. We all know I hate MP3's. I made a 4-disc CD set of songs(all at CD quality). Now, it ended up all fitting onto a single DVD as far as raw data is concerned, with room left over. We're talking less than 100 songs in 3.7 gigs of space for full quality .wav files from my CD's(which was the source). I'm heading out today to actually buy some 32GIG sticks. I got the latest ProTools MPowered 8, and there's like 16+Gigs of stuff(Mac and PC, and my laptop does either/or per choice on boot) and some hard drives. With storage prices dropping like mad, it keeps getting cheaper every day.