Zip-Drives

[BrettB]

Hi all,

I was going to purchase the Boss BR-8, but everyone gives me the advice that the zip-drive sucks. It can carry only about 2 songs and it's a hell to back-up. My question is: Is there no other way to work with the Boss Br-8, like linking it to an external hard-disc, or dumping the data from your zip-drive to the zip-drive on my Pc, so I don't have to buy new drives all the time?

Thx for your advice!
bye!

Brett

[ranchfield]

BrettB,
I have the BR-8 and have been very happy with what it can do. Yes, it does have limitations in recording only 2 tracks at once, and the Zip drives don't hold much song info. (You're right, about 2 songs max on each disk)

The swapping you were asking about was if you wanted to copy song data from one Zip to another. The machine only copys about 3-4% of the song each time, and it will take about five minutes of swapping the Zips back and forth between the source and destination disks... but really, don't let a five minute task sway you from the machine. It can do some really good stuff (as it advertises) and I've been able to get some really great sounds out of it.

My band Merry Cherry (www.mp3.com/merrycherry) had every song recorded using the BR-8. I just bought a 10 pack bulk of Zips and had to make copies only twice. I've also seen before somewhere on this site the mention of being able to back up the song data from Zip to PC, although I've never tried it. Good Luck!

[CIRCA33]

This is actully for ranchfield. First, let me just say I dig the Merry Cherry sound..very catchy. kind of Material Issue-ish. Cool hooks.

How did you record the drums? Given the 2 simul track limitation, I'm having a hard time figuring how to lay all the different parts. Did you lay drums first, guitar, bass...? Can you please sketch the steps for me? thanks

[ranchfield]

Hey Circa! thanks for listening to the Cherry.. (and a comparison it Material Issue is a compliment, that band kicked butt)

As for the drums? I must confess I cheated. Merry Cherry is currently only two people, myself and the female vocalist/write/bass player. The drums came courtesy of Mr. Yamaha and his sampled sounds and were recorded directly from/to stereo to the BR-8. Since I could only do 2 tracks at a time, I actually recorded only the left track of the drums along with either a guitar or bass on the right chanel. This provided the foundation to later add the right drum track and other guitar/bass/vocal parts.

However, I am in the process of building a recording studio, so in the real world of live drums, it's gonna have to be done with a mixer. It'll take some time and patience, and the big downside is that what you record on the BR-8 will be rather unchangeable, in terms of individual drum soounds and levels. You'll have to nail it the first time through the mixer.

Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions.

Ranchfield
http://www.mp3.com/merrycherry

[Edited by ranchfield on 08-03-2000 at 07:15]

[tawalker]

On the subject of backing up BR-8 Zips to PC:

I'm currently awaiting delivery of my BR-8 (supply problems in the UK, it seems), and while I was researching the machine before buying, I came across two letters in the July 2000 issue of Sound On Sound magazine. They're both accessible on the SOS Web site, at

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jul00/a...s/boss_xtk.htm

In a nutshell, according to these letters the BR-8 formats the Zip disks as FAT16 (i.e. the old DOS filing system), with a few modifications. However, a modern PC should have no trouble reading and writing to the disk, as long as it was initialised (formatted) on the BR-8. The letters are well worth a look - assuming the information is accurate, you should be able to write BR-8 songs to CD-R from the PC, and restore them to the Zip if you need them again.

Of course, I haven't tried any of this, as I'm still waiting for my BR-8... hope it's useful, anyway.

All the best,
Tim.