BR1600CD question...

Q

qtowens

New member
Hi all,

Just recently had to wipe the HD in this unit (due to being too fragmented to boot up...). Followed the steps from the BOSS rep, now it's back to normal... sort of...

Now the unit will not write to the discs we were using, either finalized or backup! BOSS says the unit may do that, they recommend uning Taiyo Yuden media. T.Y. cdr's are a bit on the expensive side, so I'm wondering if any other owners of this unit have had this problem and if the T.Y. fix did the trick?

Thanks in advance,

Q.T.
 
One of the great faults with this machine in my opinion is it's sensitivity to CD-R media. Asides the few CD-R's they mention (that are not readily available where I am), I've had most luck with TDK. They used to make a CD-R that was specifically for audio that was red book standard compatible and that was the best that I had found but they are not available any more where I am. So I now use the TDK bulk blanks (50's) that can be inkjet printed. Mostly they work, sometimes they don't. If one doesn't sometimes slowing the speed down to 4x can get you there. I believe the issue is the actual cd-r drive itself they use in this machine. In the old BR1600 forum that seems to be no longer active, one member replaced his cd-r drive with a generic one and he had no further problems. Sometimes I just give up and USB the completed track out to a computer and burn it off that.

I think I'm going to replace the cd-r unit in my machine soon.

Hope that helps.

G
 
Fancy meeting you here Frambo...:)

I found the old BR1600 forum again today. Dunno what happened to it over the last few months
 
Hey guys,

Thanks for the info, seems like the drive may be the culprit...

BOSSUS advice was to try the T.Y. brand CD-R's (or any MIJ brand...). So, I go to my local Guitar Center, get some Microboards CD-R's, go to burn a tune or two and... ERROR! (what it actually says, lol...)

I am going to do the copy files to my PC and burn thing, but I am intrigued by the replacing the drive solution. What brand did you use? Any problems along the way or was it just a regular replacing of a CD-R drive (which I've done on many PC's...)?

Thanks again,

QT

p.s. By the way, the product coming out of the 1600 is sounding surprisingly good...!
 
Regular replacing the drive from what I remember. Just a generic CD-R drive the right physical size.
 
I gave up using the BOSS BR1600 to write to disc. Too much inconsistencies from player to player not recognising the disc is even in a player.
I just use the USB now and burn discs from my pc using Nero. A million times quicker as well.
 
My wife found a problem with the memorex discs she was using (which I never use-- didn't like their tape definitely don't like their discs), and roland told her the same thing.
If we are archiving tracks or handing out demos we only use the T.Y. Microboards; otherwise, like if we are giving examples to band members she uses anything. I like the TDKs myself.
BTW, we never use the burner in the BR900. Levels are too low, and if you push them, they start to distort. So I actually just drop them in Sonar HS7 or for completed recordings I'll do some level, comp and eq tweaking in Goldwave.
Good Luck
 
Hi all, sorry for the long absence. Here is where I am as far as the issues I'm facing with the BR1600CD...

I commenced making two complete backups of all of our recorded material (one each on separate drives). The process is pretty straightforward. Once you get the PC to "see" the 1600, it's basically another hard drive to which you then copy and paste all the files from the 1600 to your PC. Hey, I can do this!

WOW!

13GB of info took over 6 HOURS to copy to my PC!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 complete sets = 13 hours or so... WELP!!!

Anyway, I digress...

After talking with a tech guy from Roland/Boss, he said there is one of two things that might be the problem:

CD drive: He said an easy way to tell if the CD drive is defective is to try to play a commercial CD. If the unit can't do that, then the CD drive is faulty. My 1600 ca play regular commercial CD's, so I'm assuming this is not what plaguing me.

HDD: I guess the alternate startup and initialize that I did was not enough. There may still be bad sectors that are still fragmenting the disc so much that it is preventing any type of burning a CD-R. Since all data has been backed up, he recommends doing a "low level surface scan" initialize of the HDD. This will identify any and all bad sectors of the HDD and make them inaccessible. This sounds more like what my problem might be, as this inability to burn a CD has happened only since I did the initial initialize (hmmm, does that sound right...?).

So, today I will proceed with this low lovel surface scan, reload our data and see if the burn ability is back!!!

I shall post an update of my progress as soon as I can...

QT
 
OK, here's the latest...

After all of my efforts, the unit STILL will not burn a CD-R!!!!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Another chat with Roland/Boss support (which, for the most part has been tremendously helpful every time I've called...THUMBS UP!!!) has narrowed it down to a faulty hard drive, as I encountered a "HDD Read Error!" after the surface scan. Even though a second surface scan allowed me to boot up normally, the tech guy said it is prolly not good enough to let the machine do what it needs to burn my CD-R.

OK, now I think we're geting somewhere...

Now I have to go and get a 80GB 5400rpm Maxtor 3.5 EIDE drive (or equivalant), install and do a surface scan, then reload my files again.

THIS SHOULD WORK, I've been told...

Question: Has anybody opened up this machine and can you see the drive and drive connections pretty easily? Did you remove all of the screws underneath or just the ones around the perimeter (underneath)?

Thanks,

QT
 
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