VS recorder Hard Drive expansion & PC intigration?

[NRS]

I got my VS880ex and designated Que CD burner when they first hit the market but what I quickly found limiting was the 880ex's internal 2 gig hard drive and the incredibly slow 2x speed of the CD burner. After working on a small handfull of recording projects over a few years I finally got tired of spending half my time backing up my work and have been recording 2 tracks at a time on Cakewalk through an Audigy Platnum card ever since.

I paid so much for my VS880ex and Que burner at the time ($2300 total), I hate to see it sit there and collect dust while I continue to record to my PC but I was told the biggest hard drive the 880 will ever take is a 4 gig. Is this true?

Also when I updated the unit to add the Que burner, the maunual said the 880ex would lose its ability to back up info to PC but I did it anyway because I didnt even own a PC at the time. Is this reversable?

Now that I have a nice PC and a variety of multitrack software I'd like to learn how I can get the most out of intigrating my PC with the VS880ex if its even possible but would still like to expand the VS880ex's HD regaurdless. Any info on how I might update this unit so that it would be useful to me again would be greatly appriciated. Thanks

[ermghoti]

EX's do not play well with PC's. I think there is some third party utility that will let you store data on a PC, but all the EX users I know of use the burner, which, I agree is awful.

$ G is the bigest drive recognized by the EX. You can put a bigger one in, but it will only map and recognise 4G.

You may consider sending your tracks, two at a time through the digital outs into a multitracking program.

vsplanet.com is plagued with helpful people and EX tips.

[NRS]

Bummer, I guess I should at least try using the thing as digital submixer in front of my Audigy card in the meantime then. I'm sure its preamps have to be better than the ones on the Behringer mixer I've been using and I do remember liking some of the EX's onboard effects. I suppose it could also still be useful for an occasional mobile project and I have seen much faster non Roland authorized external burners out there for much cheaper than that overpriced Que hunk up crap. Such a shame it cant be upgraded much more than that though because the only difference I see between my unit and some of the newer HDR's is larger harddrives, faster burners, and USB interfaces. I'll check out that link to see what I can find though, thanks for the info.

[ermghoti]

More bad news: 4x is the max burning speed, regardless of what burner is used. Also, most people experience frequent burn failures over 2x. The lack of upgradability is a real sore spot for me with Roland. I like the thing as a recorder, and the effects are great, but I am thinking I'll build a computer before I get another console.

[NRS]

Your killing me here man! But thanks. Well, thats two of us now that have a sore spot with Rolands lack of upgradability. I was also dissapointed to see I cant get much on the used market for my unit now either (Maybe $500 or so if I'm lucky). Looks like it will be PC for me from here on out as well. Cheers

[Zeeb]

Originally Posted by NRS

Your killing me here man! But thanks. Well, thats two of us now that have a sore spot with Rolands lack of upgradability. I was also dissapointed to see I cant get much on the used market for my unit now either (Maybe $500 or so if I'm lucky). Looks like it will be PC for me from here on out as well. Cheers

Too bad Roland didn't put an R-Bus on the 880 and 880 EX. I got the rack mount VSR-880 and it's awesome!!! 24 bit, R-Bus, and 8 anolog outs like the 880. I got the RPC-1 PCI R-Bus PC interface to hook it to my computer. I can use it to record, use the all the VST effects to jam through...you name it. The latency and low use of resources is just great. Even the front panel preamp is killer. The sound and dynamic range is just amazing. I got the whole thing for 350 bucks, used. About all you can do with the EX is control it with midi and use the digital I/O. That is a bummer .

I got the VSR-880 to replace my Fostex VF160 when I went to get a new ADAT card for it because my Lexicon Core2 has no Windows XP drivers. It was a better deal than a new ADAT card and in great shape, so...lol. Glad I got it because the Roland sounds awesome!!!

You say you have the VS8F-2 effects board and CD Burner? If you'd buy an ADAT card, I'd swap my Fostex with you. It can connect to the computer via ADAT, has a 50 pin SCSI-2 port, 40Gb HD, 16 tracks and burns CD's on-board too. I'm in the same boat with the Fostex. With their new model being so cheap, i'm lucky to get 500 bucks for it.