Zoom MRS-802 or Boss BR864???

[Maximina]

Hey, I'm getting a digital recorder for the first time. I'm a soloist, and want to use the recorder for guitar(acoustic and electric), vocals and keyboard. I don't have a bass or drumkit, so I need a recorder with good drum and bass machines.

After looking around and asking for advice I'm now stuck between two models: the Zoom MRS-802 and the Boss BR864. The Zoom (can do way more than the Boss model, and has better reviews, but the Boss is cheaper and is apparently very good quality.


If anyone has either of the Zoom MRS-802 or Boss BR864, could you give me some advice on how good they are and which one I should get?

[adam_in_audio]

I would go with the zoom if I were you. From what I read, it has more options and is very sturdy. It has a 20Gig hard drive and phantom power (I don't think the Boss has this) and I understand the zoom has better drum sounds... It's pricey though. You should at least try it out if you can and listen to the drum sounds. I'm assuming this is for demos right??

Have you looked into computer recording at all? you can have a LOT more options spending the same amount of money, and there are plenty of free, great sounding samples on the web to get you started with your own grooves... It's something to look into. Not only that, but the zoom and the boss are 16 bit and the standard for digital recording is now 24 bit (and reasonable via computer). Hardware is cool, just check out all your options first!!

[Kevin Deschwazi]

I'd agree with Adam. The Boss uses little 100meg zip drives. Also the data is compressed which adversely affects the audio quality. The zoom does not compress data.

"Before you can use a Zip disk with the BR8, it must be formatted to work with the machine and this format is incompatible with desktop computers, which is rather a shame as it precludes backing up your Zips to a big hard drive or to data CD-R. You can back up one Zip disk to another using only the BR8, because it has enough internal RAM to allow this to be done in stages by swapping disks every few seconds. However, a full Zip disk, which will typically hold one or two songs, takes around 100 disk swaps to back up, so it's not something you'll probably want to do a lot of!" (from SOS review)

I've been using the Zoom MRS 1266 (the 802's big bro) and I've got on well with it.

I am now however saving my pennies for a PC set up.