Digital or not?

[tuckerdrez]

just wondering if anyone has a recomendation on hard disc recorders. i've pondered the roland series, which i think are high priced. i noticed that boss has an 8-track machine, the BR-8, which loooks to be more user friendly, and have the price. what do you think?

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo TUCKERDREZ: [Spelled backwards is:

OY ZERDREKCUT:]

The Yamaha Digital MD-8 tracker is fairly easy to get started; however, its manual gets muddy as do all of them when you have to get into the nitty gritty; that's why DRAGON SHOULD INITIATE A MD-8 FORUM.

However, if you read this site as you should do, the Korg digital recorder gets kind words for ease of operation; it, however, can record only two tracks at a time while the Yamaha can record 4 tracks at a time.

The Rolands also get good words here but are probably harder to understand; however, that's why there is a Roland forum on the Dragon's Fire-learn site.

As for the other boxes, you need to converse with people who own them or are stuck with them, whatever. Also, if you can get a live demo at a dealer's store, you can pick up much information; however, the best buys usually come from the big joints that sell via catalog and UPS, like Full Compass and Sweetwater, and a gaggle of others.

So, man, look, listen, read, shop, evaluate and BUY! There are better boxes to come soon. Tascam still believes in tape; they have a couple of 8 trackers that are big bucks but supposed to be very good.

Green Hornet

[This message has been edited by The Green Hornet (edited 03-14-2000).]

 

[Gentleman J]

I have been drooling over the 1680 and lately the 1880 but took a chance on the new BOSS BR-8 as a much cheaper alternative upgrade from my old Fostex, tape based, 4 track. All in all the BR-8 is an excellent unit especially at $664.00, rich with features like great guitar and vocal effects, very easy to use format, simple drum machine that can be used to sync to a better sounding drum machine later, Acoustic and Bass guitar simulators from an electric guitar and it makes great sounding recordings. However there is one major flaw with the BR-8, they chose a 100MB Zip disk which limits the recording time to under 50 minutes, (at the highest quality recording mode,) or about 6 minutes per track (X 8 tracks). This leaves the other 56 virtual tracks almost useless because by now you have just about run out of recording space on the zip disk. The only way I can see to fully utilize the power and quality of this unit is just before running out of space on Zip disk #1, make a copy of it to preserve all your original tracks- (in case you don't like the mix you will still have the unmixed tracks for a re-mix). Also, unlike the 1680, the BR-8 has only one level of undo so you're stuck with your 1st save decisions after the second save. Once Disk #1 is safely set asside, mixdown or pin-pong tracks to a single mono or pair of stereo tracks as appropriate. If that works out and you're satisfied with the mixdown, continue recording until the next ping-pong is necessary and then make a copy of Disk #2. This can theoretically go on for some time and you could easily use $50, or $75 worth of zip disks to create a single song keeping all the original tracks. IMHO, it's not worth it and the BR-8 will be heading back to Musician's friend before the 45 day trial period ends and I will just go ahead and shell out the $ for the unit I really want, the VS-1880. If they had put a 250MB zip instead of the 100MB, I'm sure I'd be singing its praises. BTW, I did call Roland to ask if a 250 MB upgrade was available or if there were any plans to offer the BR-8 with the 250MB zip. The answer was no on both counts. Too bad

[This message has been edited by Gentleman J (edited 04-17-2000).]