Mr-8 Effects And How To Use Them

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ivan1

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I recorded a song, acoustic guitar instumental, with one microphone on track 1. I then copied the mono track to track 2. I then added a couple of effects( Delay and Powerful), and set the pan on track 1 to halfway to left, and the pan on track 2 to halfway to right. I'm tying to simulate using two microphones.on each track to and bounced the tracks to 7/8. When I run it through my home stereo, it sounds great.

But I don't really know what I'm doing with the effects. What is the best way to use these effects on the MR-8. If there is anybody out their who has played with these things, it would be great if you would share some of your experience.

Thank you everyone for all your help so far.
 
You just have to listen to the different settings and adjust to your liking before you commit to final mix....Even then, as long as you don't delete tracks 1&2 you can keep re-doing it until it's right. That only applies to the reverb and delay. The mastering fx (powerful, natural & bright) do not have any controls. Just keep resetting to the beginning and hitting play, adjusting the fx until you're happy with it.

I hope that's what you were looking for.

bd
 
Hi,
I've had some great experiences with the Bright Button !!
oh yea !
rs8
 
I wish Fostex would actually reveal what the 3 matering fx actually are doing. Page 41 on the manual says nothing much about them. "Powerfull add power." Gee, thanks.

I do notice that the levels are boosted, and there is compression on them. Try it, play while using a master fx and bring up the level on a track, you can hear the compression, the trouble with that is, that it sounds really obvious. Like a cheap guitar pedal limiting the top end. I usually lower the levels a bit when using the master fx - and, i have to use them if my original track wasn't recorded hot enough.
 
For a real nice tone for a something that you want to "stick out," (i.e. - vocals for a strong chorus, a lead acoustic part, etc) I really like the MR-8 delay. I used a pedal for my sound most of the time, DOD delay (i know, i know... DOD sucks, but it did the trick!) but there's no need with the MR-8.

I keep the effects level of the track at about noon, so the delayed signal is just slightly less strong than the original signal... and turn the master effects knob all the way left for minimal delay time. Sounds REAL big, I definitely dig that extra warmth and tone. I wanted a slide lead in one of my first tunes, and was friggin around with mic'ing an amp. I decided to give it a shot direct with a little dirty tone on there. It sounded OK, but then I put that delay on there and POW. Sounded real full... didn't sound direct at all.

So that's my happy MR-8 effects story... :^)
 
One thing about effects:

Check out the manual's illustrated bus-flow things.
Tracks 1-4 will allow you to send to effects BEFORE they get to mixing level, the other tracks do not let you send to effects.

The basic concept is that you have a 'dry' signal that you can send to the effects processor-magic area. That signal gets doped by the effects and then gets back into the regular bus (i.e the 'total' mix that you are monitoring) afterward. Think of a car factory with a series of conveyor belts each building a series of different cars, and ultimately ending up with the completed cars coming out of the end of the factory on their own converyor. To 'send to effects' you are diverting one or more of these conveyors into a separate area (say, the painting room). The restriction is that the painting room only is painting red at the time, so you would only divert the conveyors that you want to produce red cars to the paint room at that time. After getting painted (the effects are applied to the signal) the conveyor eventually all flow into one (well, two really, one left and one right) and this is the 'finished car' line that spits out completed cars (i.e. the mix you hear through the monitors). I guess with more complicated equipment, you could have different tracks go to different paint rooms at the same time and have less time and use less rescources spent adding effects to individual tracks, one at a time.

You can also add the effects before sending them to the recorder, they will always sound like they were recorded, but you could send them to additional affects afterward also. Confusing enough?

You can record a track (say electric guitar) with distortion etc, and that track will permanantly have it, but playing with mine last night (the first night I got it home, so I am still very green), you can also record dry and add efects to the track afterwards.
BUT, I believe you can only have one set of effects going at a time, and all tracks that are sent to effects will have the same effects. So this means you can't give one track reverb and another delay at the same time. You could probably add effects to a track, while bouncing it alone to another track and thus process each effect with different effects, as long as you have room to bounce/add effects to each track one at a time.


This is how I understand the process to work, please correct me if I'm wrong

Daav.
 
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