Akai DPS12i --- Easy to extract the track data?

[Speedy VonTrapp]

My drummer has an Akai DPS12i. I just joined the band a couple of months ago, and haven't really seen anything about it.

They've used it in the past to record a CD for the former band, and they just didn't like it's ease of use. It doesn't have a CD burner upgrade in it, so they said that after they recorded, they'd have to dump each track one by one into the computer, and then go through the tedious job of lining the tracks up in whatever software they used at the time.

I have a Yamaha MD4S, which is what we currently use for recording our practices. You can check out this thread for our current set up.

http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/sh...ad.php?t=165860

My question is this: Can the Akai be used easily to record to? With the Yamaha, I know it very well now, and can understand how to use it. The Akai, I’ve never messed with yet. But, if it is simple to get all of the tracks off of the Akai and into my computer, I’d have many more tracks available.

These recordings are just for practice sessions for the band right now. We’ll concentrate on better demo’s at a later time.

So, what should I do? Is there a way for me to hook up the CD-R that I have in my computer to the Akai? It doesn’t seem like it from the manual on the Akai. Or can I take a regular hard drive from a computer, and plug it into the back of the Akai? I don’t have a SCSI controller, so I’m guessing that this is a “no.”

My budget is $0.00 to spend on this thing. It’s possible that the drummer might be willing to upgrade it somehow, but for me, I am not able to put anything into it. So, assuming that I can’t upgrade it at all, what are my options, and which is the best one?

It seems from reading the manual that I’ll probably just need to stick with the Yamaha, and be happy with the 4 tracks for our practices.

If there’s a way to use this Akai, though, and getting all of the individual track data off of it is simple and cheap so that I can throw the tracks into Sonar, then that might be the way that we go, instead.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

-Speedy