Attention MD8 users......

[dmas]

I am looking at buying the Yamaha MD8 and was wondering about people's "Good", "Bad", and "Indifferent" opinions regarding the unit. Thanks in advance,

[Nilbog]

I would say it's a good piece of equipment. Sure the compression kinda sucks, but hey, who said it had to be big time studio quality.

The mixer is good, the editing is good (but slow), and all that.

I guess it kinda depends on what your doing. If your live recording it's awesome, but it also depends on a lot of other things. What are your plans??
nil

[Kelly Holdridge]

I love it. Used, it's cheaper than most field 2-tracks, and eight track simultaneous recording is more useful than you might think. There are others here that like the Fostex (my dealer loves it), but you only get two tracks simultaneously, and you've got to worry about hard disk vs. mini, etc.

For editing, use a computer. I have taken a vow NEVER to try editing music on an LCD screen again.

Ugh.

[Ray J]

8 tracks simultaneously is definately a plus for some people. But I record by myself and what I like about it is that it allows me to use all of my time recording and mixing. No waisted time figuring out how something works and no virtual mixer. Real knobs, so that you always know where you are by just looking at the mixing board. These two things are a big plus for me. The other thing that is invaluable to me is removable media. You can keep everything you ever recorded forever. No dumping tracks onto something else, also with removable media, when you get a better mic, or preamp, and you want to redo an old vocal track, just slip in that disc and redo the track. Same with any other new equipment that you might aquire in the future. I find the sound quality pretty darn good, and the mixer gets good reviews from almost everyone. It's hard to tell how much effect the compression has because very few people go from an uncompressed setup to MD. Most people are upgrading from 4track cassette to MD, as I did, so naturally the sound is gonna be impressive. If removable media and simultaneous recording of more than 2 tracks aren't an issue for you and you don't mind the learning curve that comes with some of the other units, then you might want to consider something else for that non-compressed "CD quality" sound, but just because you are recording with a unit that offers uncompressed recording doesn't mean your recordings are gonna sound like comercial CDs without a lot of other gear and know how. The MD8 offers a lot of advantages for the price and should probably be considered if you are looking at a stand alone unit.........Ray J

[dmas]

Thanks for the info. My plans are to finally get these songs out of my head and on to a decent quality format (not a tape, yuk!). I like the idea of being able to record 8 tracks at once or record some guitar at 3AM then record drums, bass and vocals sometime later. If I understand it correctly, the discs used to record on the MD8 can't be played in "commercial" MD players. If this is correct, what is the final medium you guys use? Is it hard to hook up a CD burner to the MD8 (is it even possible?).

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Dmas or Da-man:

I don't know how many people would record 8 tracks at once; sounds awesome to do. I use the MD-8 to over-dub and create some nice stuff.

I think the thing you'll enjoy about the MD-8 is that you can get up and running quickly; the manual is all right but, like other manuals, gets foggy in spots.

The Roland boxes probably have better sound because of more bits and no compression. But, the menus are followed by menus which are followed by menus.

I do believe you can burn CD's from the MD-8 via the RCA stereo outputs which would work with the Alesis Masterlink; also, it would probably work with a few other CD burners. Always check before you buy.

By By, must run; Kato is trying to nab the last can of Coors.

Green Hornet

[Nilbog]

Theres a few other threads with a lot fo info on hooking up your cd burner to your MD8. Just look in the main forum window.
Also, go to the main Hr.com site and do search on the "monkey method", you may find it interesting.
-NIL to the BOG

[dave ducharme]

I have not (knock on wood) had any problems w/ my md8. You have a lot of choices and flexability w/ this machine. I dig it. check out what I'm doing w/ mine at http://www.mp3.com/speaknoevil thanks dave

[skybolt6]

My band uses the MD8 as the foundation for a flexible home studio. We typically record 8 tracks at a time -
1&2 guitars via mic'd amps
3&4 bass (mic'd and DI'd amp)
The other four tracks are drums. We have a Tascam mixer, originally intended for a 4-track reel-to-reel as a submixer. It's 6-in, 4-out.
We mic the drums overhead with an MS stereo mic, plus one mic on each of 2 toms. These we mix in stereo to Tracks 5&6. We mic the snare with a combination of mics, usually a dynamic (for punch) and a condenser (for snap.) We tape a tie-clip conenser mic from Radio shack to the side of an SM57 and mix these together to Track 7. We mic the kick drum with an AKGD112 and also a transistor radio speaker used as a mic. These we record to Track 8.

If you wanna get fancy, you can slave the MD8 to a computer via MIDI Time Code / SMPTE like we do. We then use Cool Edit Pro to record vocals and guitar overdubs. We can record 10 tracks at once this way, and play back up to 20 or so (on a P200!!)

Otherwise, bounce your tracks down to 4 or so and do your guitar and vocal overdubs.

Works pretty well for us.
DON'T EVER PUT A 1/4" plug in CH1 or 2 with the phantom power ON!!!! EVER!!!. Don't even turn on the phantom power with the MD8 on either. See the thread about CH2 problems.

Seriously, it's a good unit. The DPS12 is nice, too but you've got to deal with an internal hard drive. If it screws up, you have to go dig up some obslete SCSI drives from somewhere.

Gripes: No digital outputs or inputs. No EQ bypass or phase switches on the mixer. Only 2 inserts (no biggie if you have a patch bay.) Only 2 sends and returns. Aux sends are mono. ATRAC compression sounds kinda funny and limits HF response. Not bad, just funny.

My 2 cent's worth.

[twist]

For editing, use a computer. I have taken a vow NEVER to try editing music on an LCD screen again.



Kelly,
Are you setting up your final mix on the MD8 and then downloading a two track stereo mix to your computer? If so, realisticly,how much editing can be done since the tracks are no longer separate?
This is something I'm interested in trying myself, but
I thought that I would have to download tracks two at a time to keep them separate.

[skybolt6]

I dunno about Kelly, but here's a way to do editing on your computer:

You need a decent soundcard (at least an SBLive! or AWE64) and one of those MIDI in/out cables. Hook the MIDI out of the MD8 to the MIDI in of the computer. In Cool Edit Pro, go to the Options menu and select the MIDI In of your soundcard as the MIDsync source. Open a new session with as many tracks as you want to edit, then arm 2 tracks to record (make sure one records on the L and one on the R channel of your soundcards Line In) and hook up the Track Outs for the tracks you want to edit to the Line In of your soundcard. Once you've armed the tracks to record, press F7 (enable MIDI sync trigger) and press Play on the MD8. The computer should start recording, and then the MD8 will dump the tracks to the PC. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SOME PRE-ROLL to let them sync up, it's best to have about 5 seconds of blank tape before your song starts.

You can edit away, and you can dump the material back over to the MD easily, and it will stay sync'ed up. If you need to do cuts or time-based edits then you probably wanna fly all tracks over to the PC first, then fly back to the MD8. There is some extra noise involved but it's not terrible.
You can dump all the tracks of your MD to the computer this way, and it's a good way to make backups on CD-R.

To record directly to the PC, I use CH1's mic pre and then go out of the AUX sends.

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