Fostex VF-16

[dragonworks]

This is a cross post and to all those offended I am deeply sorry.
We are recording on a Fostex VF-16 and want to archive our tracks. We need a
SCSI device to download to. It has S/pdif and light pipe but these take 4 to 8 times as long as the track to download. We have over and hours music on the deck and dont want to wait around that long downloading. I looked for an outboard SCSI device to download to at Stapels, Circuit City etc and no one could help me. I need to get the tracks out of the Fostex and on to a cd so I can load into my pc and edit. Any suggestions.
Thanx to all.

[jcorliss]

... A 1 or 2 GB SCSI Jazz drive will work. all tracks transfer. You can get a SCSI toUSB converter to make the drive hoot swapable on you PC. Or you could get a SCSI card. I'd go for USB then you could move data to any computer with a USB.

I've found the people at www.v16.com forum to be very helpfull .

Best regards. Jim

[dragonworks]

Jim, thank you. Could you clarify one thing. By "all tracks" do you mean tracks within a program or all programs? You know how these manuals are, it gets a little confusing. My buddie was told by fostex their cd burner CR300 would do the trick so he bought one at the price of 700.00 and we have had very little success with it. We have been able to burn stereo mixdowns with it but not individual tracks within the programs and it was a very lengthy process. I have to check my pc and see if has a usb port but I think it does.
Thanx again.

[PapaJack]

Dragonworks

This is sort of a cross response to your cross post. My experience with the CR300. It was $489 from zzounds.com when I got it. It is an excellent unit but is not ideal for backing up the vf16. I say this only because it is slow. It is the only method I have at this time to backup. The CR300 has about every I/O connector you can think of. The S/PDIF optical is what I am using and the vf16 save pgm operates two tracks at a time, with a minimum of 8 tracks. By that I mean if you only have recorded to tracks 1-4, when you save, your options are to backup tracks 1-8, 1-16 or 1-24. It then saves two tracks at a time. I learned quickly that if I want to save time, don't record on 1-4 then have something on 10. Move 10 to 5 to save 20 minutes on a 5 minute song. It does backup in the fostex fdms3 format but does not back up scenes or other settings. A CD created through save pgm will not work on a PC. The only 'data' it backs up is the name of the pgm. One advantage of backing up pgm's to CDRW's on the CR300 is you can back up more than one pgm per CDRW. Again, its not the best for backups, you have to keep a notebook of all the settings per pgm. I have sent to the CR300 realtime mixdowns, not mastered, by pressing play on the vf16 after setting up record on the CR300. The result is cda files on a CDRmusic CD. As far as wave files, I have'nt really tried to copy single tracks. I guess if you just sent a single track that was center panned from the vf16 to the CR300, you would end up with a cda file format that could be digitally extracted on the pc thus giving a single wave file containing equal right and left signals. These could be seperated to single wave files via software. All that work seems like going around your elbow to get to your talehole. So again, while the CR300 does have some advantages, backups ain't one of them. Unfortunately I feel like Fostex is going to push one of their products even if it is something you don't truly need. The CR300 does have a lot of features and seems to be heavy duty. Looks good too. Also, the only media it will accept is the CD's with the Digital Audio logo. Data CD's will not work. Where I live, I can find CDR Audio CD's all over the place but CDRW Audio CD's seem to be few and far in between.

Keep us posted on what you find works for you. Good luck.

Jack

[dragonworks]

I own an adat and have an adat pcr card installled in my pc. I can download from my adat via lightpipe in real time to my pc, I am wondering if this would work for the fostex?

[jcorliss]

The SCSI JAZZ Drive can take all 24 tracks of one song with data such as scenes, etc. this is to backup in the fostex format. A SCSI hard drive would also work but needs to be formated by your computer FAT 16, not FAT 32. FAT 16 only recognizes the first 2 GB so a larger drive would be pointless. If you want to export in wave format you must select which tracks to transfer and you lose all scene data/settings/ etc. ... but other software can use these wave files. I have not done this , but have been following the posts at www.v16.com and reading the manual and the version 3.0 owners manual supplement. Again, only one song at a time can be transfered... but all 24 tracks. I am a newbie at this, so not an authorative source... Someone out there might be able to explain it clearly.. where are you guys ?

Jim

[jcorliss]

Here ia a thread at v16.com board which has some info I'm talking about. Jim

http://pub15.ezboard.com/fvf16frm2.s...picID=12.topic