best digital recorder

steelguitargary

New member
hi everyone i've been playing music for 35 years and was thinking off building a small home studio wanted to ask the experience people here what would be the best digital recorder with cd burner
looking for good product that is exspandble i'was thinking of the yamaha o2r or the roland 2400 or 2480 or the korg d3200 and the ability to patch outboard effects and outboard hard drive
let me know what you think or if you know of a recorder other than these 3 that would work well

thanks gary
 
First question is always: what is your budget? Second one is 'why aren't you thinking of using a computer, rather than a stand-alone recorder?
 
hi everyone i've been playing music for 35 years and was thinking off building a small home studio wanted to ask the experience people here what would be the best digital recorder with cd burner
looking for good product that is exspandble i'was thinking of the yamaha o2r or the roland 2400 or 2480 or the korg d3200 and the ability to patch outboard effects and outboard hard drive
let me know what you think or if you know of a recorder other than these 3 that would work well

thanks gary

I got out of home recording 20 years ago when it was still magnetic tape (I used a Tascam 8 channel reel to reel).
Just recently dived back in and it seems to me that one of the most flexible ways to go nowadays is a very fast computer with two hard drives, a usb (or firewire) hardware interface and some DAW software. This way your hardware won't be obsolete nearly so fast and you can upgrade your studio as desired. It also offers a great deal in terms of flexibility for effects, plug-ins, etc. (you aren't constrained by the physical limitations of your recorder).

Bill
 
Yeah - go with a computer and an interface like the Tascam US1800 - your mixing flexibility will be much better using Cubase (comes with the tascam) than some stand alone unit you can't upgrade - read the "introduction to multitrack recording" sticky for more info
 
Others have covered this but, just for the record, the Yamaha 02R isn't a recorder, it's a digital mixer. If you go this route, you'll need something to route the output(s) into your recorder.

I work a bit like this, using a computer as a recorder and a Yamaha DM1000 mixer as the inputs via a pair of MY16AT expansion cards in the mixer and a Profire Lightbridge ADAT to Firewire adaptor. It works well...though nowadays I'd probably get the Audinate Dante expansion card(s) for the mixer and feed via ethernet directly into the computer. There may be stand alone recorders that could work with an appropriate Yamaha MY expansion card in the mixer but I have no personal experience of these.
 
I wouldn't go dropping 4 thou anything on a 4 track ! Regardless of the superior quality.
There are plenty of digital standalones that will net you great results {Tascam 2488, Akai DPS 24 to name but two} including the Roland and Korg you mentioned. The only drawback with them as far as I'm concerned is a futuristic thing ~ they've pretty much slowed down if not almost stopped altogether the making of them in general. Which has the knock on effect of making them harder to repair and be maintained in the future. But, on the other hand, as a standalone user myself, I'll worry about that when the time comes. In the meantime, I'm learning how to back up my standalone tracks on the computer to be used in a computer based DAW. In the meantime, have a look at this standalone directory here. There's some useful info there.
 
If I understand Gary correctly, his reason for wanting a standalone recorder is so he can use outboard effects with it. So my question is: have you already invested in a lot of outboard effects? If not, don't bother. There are countless plugin effects available for software mixers. These are all pretty much standardized so you can use them with any DAW software. You could put together a virtual "rack" for a lot less money than buying hardware.
 
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