Fostex recording format on FD-4

[cliffspab]

HI,

I'm still playing around with my FD-4 that I got recently. I now have 7 songs recorded, I'm happy with that and to listen to them before going into the studio to add stuff like strings and drums I can connect easily to my stereo and record onto tape. Nice for listening in the car to come up with new ideas, etc.....

The thing is, the format that the FD-4 (and I suppose all other Fostex digital recorders) has is this own format. I wanted to just bring my Zip discs along to the studio, stick them in the studio Zip drive and the tracks are there. This way, no need to lug the FD-4 to the studio every time. I tried briefly last week with a zip disk with my stuff on it and immediately the Apple Mac in the studio came back to me saying something like "unreadable format". This is a shame, but has anyone been able to get around this in some way? It would be great for everything to be compatible.

I haven't tried a connection to a PC yet to see what happens as I don't have a PC with a SCSI port.

By the way, I still haven't worked out this copy and paste stuff (mostly due to laziness about reading the manual). Any good quick tips.

Thanks

[Twitch]

Apple/MAC has their own software so alot of things are not compatible with mac.. However it will work with a PC.. just fine, Fostex has their FDMS-3 formats that's their own software for their products but it is compatible with PC.. macs and apple computers you might need something else

[A Reel Person]

but you'd need an S/P-Dif input on the computer side.

[carelessorc]

FDMS3 cannot be read by a PC (Win or Mac) except in one particular case. Owners of more recent Fostex models can export tracks as WAV files. I think the FD-4 can't do that by itself, but I seem to remember seeing somewhere on the web a shareware program that made the conversion. Try a search engine or two maybe?

'Orc

[Ravenwing]

I think the only way you can do this on the Fd-4/FD-8 is to mix-down. That converts it to wav.

[JR#97]

If you're good with Linux, there is a program called fdms ripper that is freeware/opensource. I've never used it, but a few people I know say it works great. but again.. it requires linux.

[carelessorc]

Thanks JR that's the program I was referring to!
Ravenwing: so on the FD-4 if you only mixed down two tracks at a time, one panned left and the other panned right, you would effectively be converting each track to WAV? ( I assume that the stereo mix down is in fact two mono tracks, like on other Fossie machines?)

'Orc

[Ravenwing]

Originally Posted by carelessorc

Ravenwing: so on the FD-4 if you only mixed down two tracks at a time, one panned left and the other panned right, you would effectively be converting each track to WAV? ( I assume that the stereo mix down is in fact two mono tracks, like on other Fossie machines?)

'Orc

Um, I think that is true. I still don't know if this is going to work though. I was looking through the manual, and I didn't see any reference to mixing down to the zip drive. It speaks to mixing down to a master recorder, either through analog (stereo out L/R) or digital means (optical), but I don't see how you'd mix down *from* the zip drive *to* the zip drive. In other words, I don't think you can mixdown through the scsi port.

The program JR#97 spoke of might be your best bet if you have a zip drive on your computer, I'm clueless when it comes to fdms ripper. Other than that, the only option I can see for what you want to do, would be to mixdown to a recording program on your computer, then burn a disk. Certainly more cumbersome than just bringing your zip disks to the studio though.

The lack of easy digital transfer capability is what drove me from my FD-4 to the MR-8. I was transferring everything through analog mixdown into my soundcard, which adds another layer of D/A A/D conversion. I never could get the light-pipe connection to work with my soundcard. And either way, you have to mixdown, when all I wanted to do was export the raw tracks to my computer.