Boss DR-880

[philboyd studge]

Anybody know anything about them? A sometimes playing partner of mine has one and I'm trying to get her to expand on some of the things it can do, in paticular, adding bass patterns and upload midi files.

[Zaphod B]

I know it's the big brother to the DR-670 that I own, with the major differences being available memory (880 has more), guitar effects processing and amp modeling (880 has it, 670 doesn't) and the availability of some extra I/O capability on the 880.

Drum kits are completely customizable, from the drum sound in each kit, to their timbre, to their decay, and overlap. There are several bass guitar sounds that are available and these can be programmed note-wise or real-time into patterns right along with the drums. The key layout mimics that of a guitar neck, so it's very instinctive to play bass parts if you've had any experience as a guitarist.

As far as MIDI goes, that's an area with which I'm not familiar other than being able to sync it up and allow its timing to be controlled by my TASCAM unit. I know it can act as either a MIDI master or slave, and can perform bulk MIDI loads and dumps. The 880 may have additional MIDI capabilities.

Hope this helps!

[philboyd studge]

Thanks. Yeah, it's the midi capabilities I'm curious about. Apparently she's been able to load a few in but it only plays a few bars and then loops. It could be something as midi assingments of track, channel, and program. I mean if it can store midi files then it should be able to play the drum and bass parts. At the very least it can be a midi slave.

I'll get to putz with it a little on a job on Friday.

[Zaphod B]

If the DR-880 is in the pattern play mode, when you press the "play" button you will just loop through an 8-bar pattern, defaulting to pattern #1. But if you are in the song play mode, the 880 will sequence through all the patterns in whatever song is selected.

Pattern, song, and drum kit information are all transmitted during a bulk data dump. If that data existed in the transmitting device, you should be able to play it.

[philboyd studge]

Well what it seems to do is take pattern data from a midi file loaded in one at a time and play that but not the events within the tracks. And it seems to be useless for midi storage. It can store up to 100 songs that you create on it.....but that's not enough. I guess it could be a midi slave to a sequencer or laptop with a midi out but that's getting into additional gear.

[Zaphod B]

Originally Posted by philboyd studge

Well what it seems to do is take pattern data from a midi file loaded in one at a time and play that but not the events within the tracks.

That sounds right. If it actually loads in a number of patterns, then you could create songs from them.

I'm looking at the MIDI implementation chart for the DR-670 and it's pretty slim. There is not much there aside from basic MIDI housekeeping functions and the parameters associated with the drum sounds.

Originally Posted by philboyd studge

And it seems to be useless for midi storage. It can store up to 100 songs that you create on it.....but that's not enough. I guess it could be a midi slave to a sequencer or laptop with a midi out but that's getting into additional gear.

For the DR-670, you can store 100 songs at 250 different patterns per song, or a total amount of 3,000 patterns.

In my mind that's a signficant amount of music and pretty fair bit of storage unless you want to keep everything you ever created, forever. Your mileage may vary!

[philboyd studge]

Well she's ended up being fairly frustrated with it and the learning curve and is going with band-in-a-box to generate accompanyment for bass and drums. The DR 880 is a nice unit though and the best dedicated drum machine I've seen.

[Zaphod B]

I really like my DR-670 - it can do some very convincing stuff.

It keeps me from having to deal with a human drummer, if you know what I'm sayin'.....

But my implementation is very simple - program patterns, string 'em up into a song, sync it up with the TASCAM, record, done.

.

[philboyd studge]

Who knows, maybe she'll sell it to me cheap.

[Zaphod B]

If you keep telling her that it's a useless piece of crap, she may just give it to you.

.

[mikew]

Also thinking about getting the Dr-670. Do you think the DR-670 can be hooked up to control output for a sound module? it is a sequencer... but it just seems funny to me since the sound module could very well be its own drum machine I suppose? But sound modules don't have the touch velocity pads

- Mike

[Zaphod B]

Mike, I would think so.

I mean, it follows the normal MIDI standards and all of the performance keys are going to be sending control signals out.

It would be interesting if you could go to a GC and have the guys in the synth room try to set up a trial for you.

[MK-Ultra]

Does Roland still ship the Dr 880 with the buggy OS? Is this updated via midi sequencer or USB?

Also, I read that the velocity of the beats on the 670 could only be controlled via the pads, that numerical values could not be entered as I can on my Roland R-5.

I'd like the DR 880, but I don't see any good reason why, after 3 years or so, Boss would continue to ship it with the original buggy OS. Shoddy, imo.

[JAMESB]

Can You Send Different Sounds Thru Separate Outputs On The
Dr 880 If So How And Can You Adjust Levels On Separate Drums Parts Instead Of Just Eq'ing

[Mr songwriter]

Originally Posted by JAMESB

Can You Send Different Sounds Thru Separate Outputs On The
Dr 880 If So How And Can You Adjust Levels On Separate Drums Parts Instead Of Just Eq'ing

Yes you can, there's an assignable output especially for that, and you can create your own custom kits where you can individually adjust the levels of each kit element. I've had an 880 for about a year now, I was originally going to be using it for Bass and drums for practice, but the Bass on it sounds a bit off to me, so I really just use it as a drum machine. I've never tried using it to control other MIDI instruments, but if you're not using the Bass I guess you could use Cubase or whatever to write a track with all the MIDI control messages and save them to the free track.

You update the 'buggy OS' using the MIDI ports as described on here:

http://www.roland.com/products/en/_s...00006761&dsp=1

As far as storage capabilities go, you can, as has been mentioned, play in both song (a sequence of patterns that you specify - tempos can vary within the song) and pattern mode and the patterns can be as long as you want within the limits of the DR-880's memory, which I have heard will hold about 10 full songs, or a lot more if you break the songs down into loopable sections.

[The Green Hornet]

Yo:

One thing to mention that I dig about the Boss 880 is that it has some great preset patches.

I sometimes sit at the keyboard and scroll through the funk stuff, or Latin stuff and ZOOM, I'm recording.

The bass line with the patches can also be pretty creative; however, I like to add my own bass line so I use that feature about 1/2 of the time; depends how lazy I am.

A good friend of mine and excellent keyboard person could not believe one of the Latin drum patches I used to record a tune I put together.

If you notice the ads, the Boss 880 has not yet dropped in price, or very little in some instances. I would imagine the next model coming out will be awesome.

Green Hornet

[MK-Ultra]

Originally Posted by Mr songwriter

You update the 'buggy OS' using the MIDI ports as described on here:

http://www.roland.com/products/en/_s...00006761&dsp=1

.

Why would you put buggy OS in ''s? I would certainly qualify the possibility of losing all of your data after you reach a certain point in usage as a 'bug,' wouldn't you? The fact that there's a 'fix' is an actual 'giveaway' that there was, indeed, a 'bug.'

Now, I have a Mac. A nice, newfangled, Core 2 Duo. Boots faster'n shite through a goose. Great machine. I don't, however, have a MIDI interface, don't expect to need a MIDI interface for this computer for some time, and any time I've tried to install OMS onto my old Mac (for which I DO own an old serial port MIDI interface), I've wanted to go postal in a Pizza Hut.

So, honestly, screw that, and screw Roland. I own quite a few of their products, but, to me, shipping out a piece of equipment with a problem, 3 years after that problem was identified, is not a business practice that I intend to reinforce. It's too bad that so many people will, because that's why nothing ever changes.

[Mr songwriter]

Why would you put buggy OS in ''s? I would certainly qualify the possibility of losing all of your data after you reach a certain point in usage as a 'bug,' wouldn't you? The fact that there's a 'fix' is an actual 'giveaway' that there was, indeed, a 'bug.'

I was basing it on my own (very positive) experience with the 880, I've just checked the box it came in and the one I've got is in fact 'Version 2.0' (non 'buggy' OS) so you are in fact 'wrong' about them still shipping it with the 'buggy' OS - I used quotes because, to my mind, 'buggy' implies plural - more than one bug -and I have had no other problems with the 880 that could be attributable to bugs in the OS, and in any case, in that price range there are no other drum machines that even come close in terms of features or capabilities.