840EX sound quality

[raab]

A couple 840EX questions:

I've been trying to figure out the RAM on this unit. Anybody know? I heard it may be 250MB. How would this stack up against a PC using 500mb RAM? Would there be a noticeable difference in sound quality?

Anybody used this unit for micing guitar amps? Did it come out sounding better than plugging in direct with the internal inside fx (amp modeling) in the 840EX?

Has anybody used a tube mic preamp with this unit? Was there a noticeable difference in the sound quality?

Would running the output through a tube preamp into a DAT during mixdown improve the warmth of the sound?

 

[MK-Ultra]

A couple 840EX questions:

I've been trying to figure out the RAM on this unit. Anybody know? I heard it may be 250MB. How would this stack up against a PC using 500mb RAM? Would there be a noticeable difference in sound quality?

Anybody used this unit for micing guitar amps? Did it come out sounding better than plugging in direct with the internal inside fx (amp modeling) in the 840EX?

Has anybody used a tube mic preamp with this unit? Was there a noticeable difference in the sound quality?

Would running the output through a tube preamp into a DAT during mixdown improve the warmth of the sound?

Hi,

The 840 doesn't have RAM, per se. It reads all of the data off of ZIP disks, and some models are fitted with 100 megs, and some with 250. This is significant. I'd pass on the 100 meg machines, because you would generally have to use a recording mode with higher data compression.

No idea how it would sound against a computer.

It depends on your micing ability. Some of the internal guitar FX are quite good.

The VS machines are not known for great pre's, so an external pre will improve the sound. Again, though, it will depend on your engineering skills as well.

I wouldn't run the signal through tube pre's into an ADAT.

I've heard good things recorded with an 840. It all depends on what you can do with it.

Cheers,

 

[raab]

cool

Yeah, I really like the internal effects on the 804ex. I've found them to be alot better than those on the more expensive roland recorders. Thing is, with the internal fx for distorted guitar tones, they're just thin and digital sounding alot of the time...

Do you know of anyone who has released a project I could hear on their 840ex that sounds really good? I remember hearing some subpop band recorded an album on their 840ex and hearing that it sounded really good, but I can't remember who/what.

What could I do as far as the mixing stage in terms of beefing/warming up the sounds I've recorded?

THANKS FOR THE HELP!

 

[MK-Ultra]

Hi,

Someone did an VS-840 Comp CD over at VSPlanet.com a couple of years ago. If you did a search there, in the 840XX forum, you might find reference to it, and, possibly, how to get your hands on it.

As for 'warming' things up, a tube mic or pre would do the job. I have a Røde NTK tube mic, going through a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro and a RNC. Sounds fine to me.


Cheers!

 

[Porter]

raab,

I used an 840EX (originally with a 250MB and then I upgraded it to a HDD..check out VSPlanet to find out how to do that).

As was answered earlier, there is no RAM per se, however from memory (it's been a couple of years since I used it), it will record a short amount and keep it in some sort of memory.. if it had any, it would have to have 250MB I'd guess.

Comparing it to a computer is really no comparison..RAM wise at least. The only difference in sound quality will improve with better converters.. it's the old story, you will only find out how crap the converters are once you upgrade you system ;-) which is what I did.

When i was recording with it, I was recording straight to the box. Reason being that the effects were the same as all the Boss pedal effects, plus the mic I had at the time wasn't the best.. ie further reducing the quality of the signal chain.

It was probably a combo of my guitar pickups and the grounding of the room I was in, however I remember the Hi-Z input wasn't the quietest.. effecting the likes of overdrive.

As for using a Pre-amp for recordingto the 840 would not improve the quality until it hits the converters.

Adding warmth to the sound.. just use a compressor on the way out, or even compress in the box. The only other way would be tape saturation.

To make the best recording possible with the 840EX, make sure you record in MT1 mode (using a HDD you can get 8 track playback), bounce as few times as possible and when exporting, if the sounce has an optical connection available, use that.

Just some thought,

Porter

 

[raab]

I stopped using the M1 setting for recording very early on, it kept freezing up in the middle of recording playback. I'm talking about a 4 minute song with 8 tracks recorded, and it would do that.

 

[Porter]

I stopped using the M1 setting for recording very early on, it kept freezing up in the middle of recording playback. I'm talking about a 4 minute song with 8 tracks recorded, and it would do that.

MT1 is only supposed to play back 6 tracks, not 8.. that's where one of your problems lie.. MT2 is supposed to play back 8 tracks, however I've had a drive busy error whilst playing back 8 tracks.. just optimise, however DON'T optimise further!

Even with a HDD in there 8 tracks won't always play back at one time.. most of the time it will, however there is always the exception.

Porter

 

[Jim Y]

VS range preamps are not the finest - most use an external preamp or mixer.

840 FX are from the Boss range. Some are instantly usable, some need tweaking and some you will never use - just like any multi FX. However, you can only use one at a time. The reverbs are certainly better than the plug-ins supplied with computer based multitracks.

Having looked inside, the audio memory is 1meg. This is enough to temporaily hold the audio as the disk access time is not too fast. The Zip disk is too slow for a lot of tracks at best quality, but at least zips are easily available and will be for some time, unlike Data minidisk with which the 840 (and its cousin, the Boss BR8) competed with when introduced.
That 1meg of ram only bites when you have a disk to copy - copy 1meg, write 1meg, copy...etc. You end up doing countless disk swaps.

On the mod front, there are several things you can do due to the zip drive being an IDE/ATAPI model.

Fit a hard disk - up to 2.1gig, though only 1gig is usable. This needs to be a laptop type disk and this size is long obsolete but still available from spares companies - they're slow by modern standards but still faster than Zip.

Fit a 750meg zip drive. About twice as fast as a Zip250 but for some reason the disk eject doesn't work until you power off - small loss for the gain.

Compact Flash - CF type 1 and 2(microdrive) are actually IDE and all you need is a simple IDE reader card (not one of the fancy multicard ones). This is what I have done and use a 512MB CF card - no noise and no busy errors.

With an 840EX (GX doesn't work for this) and some way of mounting the disk on a pc, you can move .wav audio on and off as well as archive your disks. Wav file conversion requires the Boss BR8 converter program (it's free!) because an 840 uses a Roland data compression file format that no PC audio program can use. This cannot be done with 250meg zip disks either - windows just does not like the 840 disk format and scrambles it. It works fine with 100 or 750 meg zips and 128 or 512MB or 1GB CF cards (you can use USB readers, drives on the pc) - or indeed a hard disk if you can arrange to fit it on the pc.