FILE HUNGRY?

Why not admit it? Sooner or later, making music with your laptop means managing a lot of loops and samples. We bet you have been going through your carefully made CD/DVD backups for more than once to locate that one vocal sample you needed right away! With a high capacity USB stick you could have saved yourself the trouble - and you don't have to go through the hassle of burning and keeping those backups all the time as well. Another advantage is you can stream those loops right from your USB stick.

About one year ago 2GB devices were most common; higher capacity ones were very hard to find. Not so long ago sticks with a capacity of 8GB started to hit the market at attractive prices. Higher capacity versions start dripping in right now. We found prices on webshops that go as low as just under 10 euros per Gigabyte. But prices vary. So if your considder buying one, you can expect some effort spent on sourcing to pay off!

Take in mind that larger capacity USB sticks might not match your expectations when storing data on a them. Their speed is quite low compared to your harddrive, but typically their reading speed is double the writing speed. You will be able to stream multiple looped-audio files from most of them. Since the speed varies by brand and by model; it is best to always check before you buy. The faster the better. Also take in mind that when it comes to multitrack recordings with big audio files, a harddrive is better equipped to read/write data sequentially.

And before we forget: Don't forget to make backups of your USB stick! Once you're in the habit of using one, you'll find yourself using it as your default storage location before you know it. From that moment on your hard drive will be the proper backup location :)

Let's wait and see if one of them loop suppliers is smart enough to start shipping USB loop packs.