Roland CD burner??

[Jon X]

I have the original CD-RW burner that Roland came out with (it's a JVC in a QPS marked case.) It's not the best quality and at the time I paid close to double what a good CD-RW drive would have cost me. Even though I have this thing, I still mix everything down to my PC as a stereo wav file before I burn CDs. The 1680 might be a little easier to burn CDs with, but the 880 having only 8 tracks can make it tough. I have to bounce everything to a stereo pair that the 880 burns to CD. It can get cumbersome when I have used all 8 tracks in recording (which I always do) and can get way out of hand if I have used lots of virtual tracks. It's been much easier for me to move everything to the PC, sometimes a single track at a time if I want to do any major editing on it, and then combine everything from there and burn discs. Matter of fact I'm thinking of getting a higher quality soundcard with multiple inputs so I can move every track to the PC. It's so much easier for me than editing on the 880. There are lots of high quality soundcards out there (even as cheap as the Soundblaster Live with the digital I/0 at < $150 US) that should be able to transfer tracks to the PC without much of a problem. I'm using a SB Live card right now, and find that it doesn't add noticeable noise to my tracks as long as I use the digital input. The reason I'm looking for another card is to get more inputs at a time.

I would only get the Roland CD-RW if you will be using it to backup the 1680, or you just don't want to move to the PC at some point during the mixdown process for burning CDs. Far as I know Roland has only written drivers for the CD-R drives they support (at one time it was two drives.) No other drive will work with the VS recorders. I think Roland charges so much for it because it's the only option for the people that don't want to transfer to a computer for making CDs.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

 

[Masala]

Hello,
I have a 1680 and I inquired abouta CD-R burner for it and was informed that Roland makes one and it is the only one that can be used with the 1680....is this right?

If so, this thing is retailing for $550 +, which feels like an awfull lot of money when I see other brand new CD=R burners for less than half that.

So, my question is, is there any way around using Rolands CD- burner, and if so, is it worth it?

I am imagining that I can hook up the 1680 to my computer somehow, andthen burn from my computer using any burner I want to.....is this correct, and in the end will I spend 2x as much time and almost the same amount of money this way??

To tell youthe truth, after tossing down the $$ on the 1680 (which I am very happy with mind you)to have a self-contained system, my ego is having a little trouble with the idea of transfering stuff to my comp for burning, as this is just the kind of thing I was trying to avoid by buying the 1680.

Last question; is the Roland cd burner for the 1680 as expensive as it is because it is a high quality product, or is it that expensive because people HAVEto buy it if they want to burn right from their 1680/880??

Regards

 

[jnorman]

the roland cd-r is made by a company called plextor, and you can buy and use the plextor cd-r just like you would the dedicated one form roland. there are several dicsussion of this on the VS-Planet website. if you haven't visited vs-planet go there and do some reading. personally, i went ahead and bought the roland unit, and it works flawlessly for me - i did not want ot have to solve any more technical problems with unmatched equipment. just learning to use the vs-workstation is plenty hard enough all by itself! i have burned several data back-up cd's and have burned many very good sounding audio CD's for my performers. cd is also the preferred format for submitting your work to a mastering lab these days.