More BR8 questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter David B
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David B

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Consider a BR8 and weighing the pros and cons. To me the primary benifit is Simplicity (over the VS840&880 series) --I'm new to home recording, and I REALLY don't want to spend 90% of my time tearing my hair out.

And the biggest drawback is only being able to record 2 tracks at a time. If I stick with drum machines, this may be less of an issue.

Here are some questions that I have:

How many minutes of music do you really get on a 100mb Zip?

How much addtional gear do I need to be up and running (mics[how many], monitors, Roland's CD burner, what else?) It's not that I want to "cheap out," but I'm trying to determine how much money I can expect to lay out to get decent reliable gear.
 
David, the amount of time depends on how much material you end up tracking and which recording mode you're in... although if you're using all 8 tracks (and the highest quality recording mode), you really can't get more than two songs per disk. If you use a lot of virtual tracks, you won't even get two songs.

Most of my material uses drum machines, so the two track limitation wasn't a huge issue. (for sound comparison, listen at http://www.mp3.com/merrycherry or http://www.mp3.com/zumsteg; all songs were recorded using the BR-8)

And as is usually the case, the amount of outboard gear will probably be determined by how much $$ you have to spend.. although the built in effects on the BR-8 really save in terms of effects processors. With all the tracks I recorded, I really ended up using only 1 mic.. the vocals were overdubbed one track at a time. I have a decent pair of monitors and burn cd's directly to a Phillips home unit. (The Br-8 does have digital outs)

Good luck! If you end up with the BR-8, you're gonna like it!
 
I agree with ranchfield, the BR-8 is easy and a blast to use. I have a friend in his mid-50's who had never used a multi-track in his life, 30mins after explaning the BR-8's setup, he was recording. He thought that I was going to record some parts, ie, the bass part. I had him do all the parts, he went out and brought one the next week and is creating all kinds of songs. The BR-8 made him start back playing and made him a more creative person!
 
Thanks guys.

I think this is going to be the answer for me.
I think if I have to rely on "other musicians" to get my rocks off musically, I'm going to go nuts.

At first I thought being able to only record 2 tracks at a time on the BR-8 would be a serious limitation if I wanted to do live drums. But now I've sort of come back to the notion: Why the heck do I want to put up with a live drummer anyway--ESPECIALLY in a recording session? And hope he shows up when he's supposed to, hope his drums are in tune, hope he has good meter, spend hours miking his kit, teach him my songs, and on and on. I don't need a bazillion overdub tracks either.

I'll use a drum machine and do the whole thing myself, at my own pace with the BR-8 a pair of minitors and a pair of mics.
 
Another question:

Recording Magaizine review the BR-8 states
that if the Zip is formated on the BR-8, a Windows PC will be able to read it--so you could back up your data.

My question is: is there a way to convert the BR-8 files to .WAV files on my PC?
 
I don't have a ZIP drive and so I can't answer your question but I do know that Roland/Boss uses a proprietary software for the compression. There was a thread about before check the history flies.
 
To David B

No it is not possible to convert BR8 files to .wav files. You would have to actually record the music into your PC's soundcard.

Trak.
 
Thanks again guys. With your help, I settled on the
VS-840GX.

BTW, with this box you CAN convert to .WAV files internally.
You mix down to two tracks (stereo) and save them as a .WAV. You can then copy them to a PC formatted 250MB Zip via the old disk shuffle method, or by hooking up an external SCSI Zip drive (via a $130.00 SCSI port add on)
 
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