Korg D1600 vs. Roland VS1824

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ghostwolf

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So, I hav a budget of $1600 to spend on a good DAW. I am wondering what the major differences in the D1600 and the VS1824 are. The D1600 has 4 XLR, which is a big plus for me, because we will be recording primarily bluegrass music. So it will be all acoustic, with the excption of an electric bass every now and then.

What do y'all think about it?
 
This is a hard decision. I went with the Korg for the reason you state. I have not been dissapointed, and I doubt you will be either.

The Roland might be built just a little better quality in my opinion t(more history and experience at Roland). The Korg seems a little fragile for transporting - although I have several times now.

Good luck - I bet you can hardly wait!!!
 
Very very excited! Woohoo!

Your right, I have been racking my brain for the last week or so over these different systems. I have never had experience with Korg products, but I know their triton is great. After I posted this, I went over to korgboards.com and found a post from a guy who recorded some bluegrass and it sounded crisp and clear.

So, that finally made my choice for me and now I am waiting until friday when I will pick it up here locally. Nice christmas present, can't wait to get it and start laying down the tracks.

Thanks.
 
I went for the AKAI.

The DPS16 is out of production, but you can find it on ebay for $800 - $1000. Look for the 20G upgraded units. 16 tracks, killer preamps (for the class of machine), stable O/S and intuitive to operate. There's a vendor on ebay that sells SCSI CD/R units matched to the DPS (or to other units as well) and you can pick one up for under $150.

The primary advantage over the Korg and the Roland is resolution, better A/D/A converters, and higher quality preamps; it's capable of 24 bit, 96mHz material. Also has .wav copy capability; the Roland is a proprietary storage & copy format. The DPS16 does NOT compress data to store it. No concatenation. Sound quality over the Roland is noticeable.

The Korg is limited to 44.1 mHz, but has an onboard burner and drum synths.

So, for about $1,100 to 1,200 you can get outfitted with a little higher performance unit. Check it out on ebay.

Resources: www.akaipro.com

Representative auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=928914083

I had the same thought about multiple XLRs; solved with a couple of preamps.
 
Well, I own the VS1824CD, and it-s no big deal, at least the inputs. My tracks are all coming from outboard pres anyway. I agree, though, if I was using it as a remote recorder with a lot of mics, I'd probably want a separate mixer.-Richie
 
6 or Half a dozen

Thanks all for comments.
Seems to me though that, you wind up having to buy preamps anyway, or I would, so the price winds up being the same.

I checked out the AKAI, but I don't want to buy something there is no support for. Besides, even if you record in 24 bit 96khz, your going to have to reduce that quality to make a CD from it. So why not record uncompressed in 16 bit, your already there and no loss of quality.

I also like the Drum synths on the Korg because for what I want I will hardly ever use drums. I will do some Contemporary Christian things and maybe some Country Demos, but very seldom will I use it, though I do need it. Beats having to go buy a drum pad too. The AKAI is ok to me, but the D1600 has won me over. Thanks again for your comments though.
 
Well, don't be afraid of the Korg; it's a blistering machine. Although I have design issues with the Roland approach, there's no question that the 1824 is one hell of a box as well.

But you might be under a misconception about the AKAI. From what I've seen, the AKAI unit has the best support of anything on the market, including BBS access to the software developers at AKAI. (Who else gives us that?!) The final software build is fully developed and essentially trouble free, and the user interface is so intuitive that people typically are recording before they crack the manual.

The other thing about the option of doing 96 mHz recording (other than that no other machine in the class even offers it) is that you are at DVD audio quality at every link in the signal chain until you actually get to the CD burn. That means you have vastly superior A/D converters for a better signal at the outset, the effects path is uncompromised, and mixdown is at a higher resolution than either of the other units.

When you do the burn to a CD (which is limited to 16 bit and 44.1 mHz rate) the AKAI allows full dithering in its bit conversion protocol, which means that you don't run into a rough conversion; you actually do get the benefit of the higher quality signal path and you can hear it in the result when you do get to 16 bit.

Again, either of these machines will do a beautiful job, and they took a bigger slice of a very competitive market than the AKAI did (probably because of the onboard burner capability) so the DPS16 went out of production and AKAI focused on higher end machines. My point is that the AKAI is still available and is very nearly in a class by itself. YMMV!:D
 
Very nice.

I see, I just assumed that because they weren't making them anymore, that there would not be any support for them. That is how it usually goes anyway. They leave them behind and do not develop anything further for them, but with your statement it sounds like there is plenty of support.

Thanks again, I'll let you know how I like the KORG.
 
Just FYI, I was at the Samash store in Hollywood not too long ago and saw the Korg D1600s without CD burners being sold for $1099 each. Apparently that's the new adjusted price w/out the burner. You can easily get a plextor plexwriter CDRW that's less than $100 and is compatible with the Korg probably a lot better than the burner that used to come with it. Most stores seem to still have the old $1599 price though. So look around a bit ... you can get away with a better setup for $1200.
 
Korg D1600 demos

The D1600 is a great demo maker, but unfortunately it's lacking in the pre-amp department. Also, the drum samples loose a lot when converting to mp3's. At least, that's what I found out. Other than that, it's a great little unit that travels well. I've hauled my unit all over the place and it still works great. You can hear some sample recordings from the korg unit on the "Guy Solo" link @ www.thegrins.com over 50% of the tunes on this page were recorded on the D1600... Rock on.....
 
bluemoon

I have already gotten the D1600, and am very pleased with it.
As for the comment about being a "Demo maker", well...it all depends on how many bananas you put in the pudding.

I have so far, created some very cool music with it and it is sounding top notch studio quality. In other words, the D1600 is more than just a demo maker.

THanks for your help.
 
The Korg

Your absolutely right, the D1600 is a lot more than a demo maker... I guess I was just stating the application in which I use my Korg. Sorry, I wasn't thinking straight! I just meant that the unit was "great" in the fact that I can turn it on and an hour later walk away with a complete finished tune. (demo in my case) The unit truly is amazing, I've recorded over 50 tunes and I still have space left on the hard drive for more... (I've saved over $400 bucks in tape cost alone....)

You'll be pleased to know, that the Korg D1600 has also proven itself to be very rugged. I have hauled it over 3,000 miles and put it through some torture and it still works fantastic... Reliable and always ready... Happy recording!!!
 
bluemoon

cool, my bad, I misinterperted what you were saying, which isn't hard to do in the world of unemotional typing.

Glad to hear your comments on it, thanks a lot.

I intend to do a little traveling with it, but mainly it will be stationary in our studio.
 
I solved that preamp problem with an 8 channel preamp a yamaha mla7. Fine match for the akai dps16, which is the most powerful 16 channel made.
 
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