Some more MR8-HD questions

[Alex H]

I asked a few of these in the VF160EX thread, but since learning a bit more about these machines, I am beginning to think that the MR8-HD might be more suited to my needs. If anyone can help with these questions, I'd be really grateful.

1) A past thread cast some doubt as to whether the MR8-HD had phantom powered XLRs. The Fostex website says it does, so I assume this is correct?

2) I intend to do most of my recording with a stereo pair (this is jazz/contemporary small group classical). Occasionally, I use vocalists, hence why I would like a machine with more than 2 simultaneous recording tracks. Does this Fostex sound, in general, suitable?

3) Depending on my cash situation, I may get the VF160EX with the CD drive. That is my optimum position. However, if I cannot afford this, the MR8-HD looks good. However, it doesn't have the inbuilt CD drive...All I have at home is a bog-standard, 3 year old family computer with a CDRW drive. No music software, no nothing. Will I need to buy any software in order to burn CDs from the MR8-HD? Or is software available as a free dowload from Fostex?

4) Will I be able to use the machine to send wav files, if I end up with a decent recording that I would like someone more skilled than myself to 'tidy up'? Or even, can I create a CD from which I can press others?

Thanks for any help you can be (and please keep it as simple as is possible - like I said in another thread, although I trust my ears, which I hope is as important as anything when recording, I do NOT trust my technical ability at the moment... )

[Ed Dixon]

There is lots of free software you can download for the PC. There is also lots of low cost software that does even more. I find that using the MR8 for recording and the PC for mix/CD gen is a very flexible combo.

Ed

[Alex H]

Hi Ed,

Thanks a lot for the response. So these machines will work fine with my average family PC?

Also, do I lose any functionality at all by not having the inbuilt drive? Is it simply the convenience which is surrendered?

Cheers,

Alex

[Jouni]

Mr8-hd xlr:s are phantom powered, it can be turned on or off.

It has 4 simultanius inputs. 8 in total tracks.

You can either mix in mr8hd to one stereo-wav file, export it to pc and burn, or, get the wavmanager from fostex site and export all tracks independantly for someone to tidy-up, mix and master.
Has worked well with my 700Mhz laptop.
BUT!!!....
be sure, very sure, that the software in mr8hd is up to date!!
to 1.27 or higher. It's easy to update from fostex site, but before I updated it my mr8hd crashed freuently, and once while crashing at usb-transfer lost a whole song from its drive. But once updated to 1.27 no probs at all.

[Ed Dixon]

Originally Posted by Alex H

Thanks a lot for the response. So these machines will work fine with my average family PC?

Also, do I lose any functionality at all by not having the inbuilt drive? Is it simply the convenience which is surrendered?

Yes and no. I much prefer to burn from the PC. Since recording is done on Mr8, mixdown on pc requires little hosepower. You can easily record and mix 4-48 tracks using MR8/PC combo. I use USB to get WAV data to PC from MR8. Record 4 tracks, move to PC. Mix a combined track and send back to MR8. Use as reference while recording the next set of tracks. That way everything is first generation when final mix is done.

Ed

[Alex H]

Thank you - looks like this'll be the right machine for me .