Wing Top / Front USB Port - FAT32 Format

Last year, when Goetz gave a sneak peek of the X32 Rack, I asked about ExFAT for the X-Live card so as to natively support large SD cards. Goetz explained that ExFAT requires an expensive license, and the SD Card Cartel does not permit slots with their logo on them to be formatted FAT32 if the device is larger than 32GB. OK, understand all, and my own research confirmed the situation.

Here is my ask, and please hear me out…

As far as I can tell, the SD Card Cartel does NOT specify what format you can use on USB ports, which do not have their logo, and are not under their license agreement (eg QSC TouchMix). Please correct me if I’m wrong. I also suspect that X32 & Wing run some flavor of embedded Linux, and if so, it would be basically trivial to allow the USB port to FAT32 format large storage devices.

It is my opinion that it would be incredibly useful if the USB port could FAT32 format large storage devices. Here’s why… you can build your own USB sticks using a USB-3 to microSD adapter, and a high quality micro SD card. I prefer this method to actually buying USB sticks, because most USB sticks do not clearly list their r/w speed specs, meanwhile most quality microSD cards intended for mirrorless cameras, drones & whatnot clearly DO state their specs, and they are quite often accurate. When you build your own USB stick this way, you control the quality and specifications. And here comes the most important part… you can slip the microSD card out of the USB adapter, into a MicroSD to SD adapter, and then insert that directly into the into the W-Live card. Problem solved, restriction bypassed. Examples of what I use:

Please consider that Macs and / or Windows PCs are not always available at a job / concert site, and that in the case of Windows, there is no native utility that allows FAT32 format of large storage - Microsoft removed that ability about the same time they started making bank on ExFAT licensing - coincidence? You decide. If you web search for FAT32 formatters for large storage, most of the early results are either scam software, or disk partitioning software far too complex for the requirement. (Rufus is a great choice - looks like the windows format utility, and can only access USB stick type devices… hard drives are completely inaccessible & thus safe from accidental formatting).