Boss BR1600 and Zoom MRS1608
My small business does some live event recording, and had the similar requirements that you're looking at for recording your band. Researching all available recorders, I looked at the Zoom MRS-1608 and the Boss BR-1600CD extensively.
The Zoom MRS-1608 user's guide is available on Samson's website and should give you a feel for what the unit can do.
The Boss BR-1600CD user's guide is now available (thank you Roland) on Roland's website (
http://www.roland.com/manuals/en) .
Essentially for my decision the criteria for purchasing was this:
1. It had to have 8 channels minimum and without the need for an external mixer. Translation: 8 XLRs mandatory.
2. It had to have compression on every channel.
3. It had to have a USB port for exporting WAV files (We use Cakewalk SONAR for post-production).
To me it looked like both units provided these items, and basically I chose the Boss BR-1600CD over the Zoom unit because of my familiarity with Roland's products (I used to own a VS-840) and the addition of the Bass machine and COSM effects were nice in case I wanted to do some portable song-writing. Also the Boss offers Phantom power on every input whereas the Zoom I believe offers it on maybe 4 of them. I also like the quality of Roland's effects in general, so because I'm not familiar with the quality of the Zoom box's effects, I didn't want to take any chances.
My only dissapointment after I purchase the BR-1600CD unit so far was the WAV export function - it limits you to one mono or stereo track at a time - but I've since been able to address this limitation by developing a software utility to deal with this (WAV-MAKER-1600 details on my website).
Using phantom power on dynamic mics should NOT damage them - I've done this before and had no problems. I'm a little cautious though and always cut phantom power before hooking up or disconnecting mics.
The Boss BR-1600 unit has excellent COSM modeled guitar effects, a drum machine and bass machine build it, plus the ability to import drum/bass loops as well.
I hope this helps you in your decision...
