MR8 - 2 More things that S U C K about it

[junplugged]

1. punching in and out leaves an audible click that totally fu<ks my track.

2. the thing squeals when some of the buttons are pressed, and the click track that is actually off is heard electronically thru the machine w/ nothing hooked up to it. so when you record w/ a nice sensitive condensor mic, if you aren't up close, the mic picks up the noise from the machine.

more - no inserts, you wanna add outboard effects to a printed track and monitor it at the same time? YOU CAN'T!!!

No other outputs than the stereo outs so I can't bounce external and still hear it out the st. bus. I have to use the st. bus and bounce and the only out left is the headphone jack. * but you can't up the fader of the destination track b/c it'll come out the st. outs and loop and feed back. Little fu<king red evil sh!t box.

 

[ch2os7]

mr8

wow dude, it's $299.99...you need to get a more expensive recorder. It does have limitations, for sure

 

[A Reel Person]

It gives you 8-tracks, in the box, for $299,..

and you get what you pay for!
/DA

 

[radiorickm]

expected more

you know, for someone who has over 600 posts, i actually expected a lot more from you than this post presents.

you said
1. punching in and out leaves an audible click that totally fu<ks my track.

i have never experienced a click when punching, either on autopunch, a foot switch or manually with my MR-8. I put the locate a&B in a quiet part of the passage and have never had a problem.

2. the thing squeals when some of the buttons are pressed,

ok, i have to ask. which buttons? mine sure as heck doesn't do this (unless i create a feedback loop when i arm the channel....which is my bad....not the machines)

and the click track that is actually off is heard electronically thru the machine w/ nothing hooked up to it.

once again, mine has sure never done this. now i will admit that there is some bleed thru when the click track is on and you record a track. When you listen to the track with the click off, you can still hear a trace of it recorded as cross talk. But if i never turn the click on, you can't hear a thing.

so when you record w/ a nice sensitive condensor mic, if you aren't up close, the mic picks up the noise from the machine.

now dude...there aint a SINGLE MOVING PART in the whole damn machine. what can the mike possible pick up??????

i have read a lot of your posts and respect your opinion. But you just went off the wall with this one.

sorry......had to vent

 

[dave in toledo]

mr8

as Rick said, i havent had one problem punchin and out PERFECT, no noise at all, and for outboard effects, the thing was designed to be used in conjunction with the pc, (although it is not marketed that way) maybe think you have a problem with YOUR unit and shoud think about repairing it (warranty)

 

[ch2os7]

mr8

In spite of the limitations, I am getting the best sounding recordings ever. All in all, I'm glad I bought it. I think I may have noticed a "click" once when I punched in. I also detected a sqeaking chair in one recording. I have a friend with an expensive (over $2,000) Roland that gets professional sounding quality. Maybe that's what you should try.

 

[junplugged]

With nothing plugged in but the power, I hear squeaks from the box, for exaple, the locate buttons, I press A and the box squeaks, yes it's very low, but I can hear it. If you have good hearing check it out. Put your ear up close to the box and set 2 locate points a couple of minutes apart, and then press A, then B, and listen to the box. If your box doesn't do it, then you got a better one.

I'll check my warrantee but I've had it over a year and didn't punch until now. If your punches are clean, then you got a better box, I guess.

As far as your expectations about me? who cares?

 

[junplugged]

the fact that it's a low price doens't mean that it should function poorly. All the other technology that is advanced and is lower in price doesn't come with low quality attached to it. I can buy a $50 motherboard, a $50 mic, a $50 preamp, I don't expect them to not work correctly. Features may be missing, fine, but the one's that are included are expected to function correctly. my Fostex X-15 didn't have noisy punches nor did my Sony mdmx4 or my tascam 488.

 

[radiorickm]

who cares

You said:
As far as your expectations about me? who cares?

well, i thought about this for several hours before I answered, and even debated whether to answer it or not. Guess you know which i decided on.

Who cares....well I do. and i really bet that you do or you wouldn't have 620+ posts on the forum.

look. I'm not here to make enemies. I do that professionally at work (ask if you really want to know). I am here to hopefully make a new friend.

I am a new-bie. I have been around music in one form or another most of my life. I have been in broadcasting. Live performance. Now, i have chosen to explore recording music. And I must admit that so far it has been an extremely rewrding experience.

I have only posted about 125 posts, but i assure you i have read a heck of a lot more that that. I just volunteered to help update the MIC FAQ pages, and read well over 4,000 posts on microphones.

I look to these forums, and more specifically to people I trust to lead me down the right path to recording. How do i decide who to trust? I read many posts that the person has made, and look at the total post count.

If JOENEW123 comes on the forum with a grand total of 2 (count them...2) posts and swears that the farfugnugen 556 is absolutely the best do-dad ever made, i would tend to take that with a grain of salt. Now then, if BlueBear, or MassiveMaster, or Harvey Gerst comes on and says "Hey I own 4 of them in my studio, and they are great" then that is totally a different story.

We look up to you guys to lead us in the right direction. At least I feel with that is a bit of responsibility.

maybe not. any way.

hope you get the MR-8 working for you.

 

[groucho]

Before the "personality wars" take over as usual, let me just say to junplugged: the mr-8 has a crapload of limitations, but the first 3 you listed are not among them (punch in problem, squeal problem, click track problem). Your machine is messed up. Send it back. End of story.

Fostex's consistancy of product is a joke, but they do seem to be pretty decent about returns/replacements.

Chris

 

[Dave52]

If your Mr8 isn't doing the monkey, splash a bit more cash and get the VF160. This thing kicks my arse everytime I switch it on!

Dave.
www.DaveWare.co.uk

 

[dave in toledo]

mr8

as i said you have a faulty unit, the machine really does a good job of what it is supposed to do....record tracks so they can be moved to the pc for mixing....

but, people get some pretty good recordings just from bouncing down and burning to cd, there are some pretty bad recordings also...

i have a full pa system with delays, compressors, 31 band eq's, and rarely use them except when playing live, after i started moving tracks to the pc, the quality was amazing, the effects great, the results, unbeleiveabel difference,

you really should give it a try, down load any free or demo program and you might jst be amazed....

recording streight into the pc is a reall pain in the a-- for me...to many issues, latency, sound card driver conflicts...thats why the mr8 works so well for me, i get the best of bothworlds, effortless recorded tracks, with the bonus of mixing on the pc..

thanks for EVERYONES opinions and input....

 

[cellardweller]

The "squeal" you speak of, is it like the nearly inaudible noise it makes when you delete unused? I've heard that before...

I'm guessing junplugged had a bad day. We all have them.

Now everybody shake hands, hug, and return to recording...

 

[junplugged]

rad - I have 2 posts on PSW. People are people. Dr., PhD., MD, President, anyone can be a raving lunatic. Some famous producer came here, had 2 posts, he's still very capable. I'm still a newbie at recording, drumming, bass, but not guitar. I can say that but who knows for sure? It doesn't matter. Any decision I make comes from more than one source and I think everyone should consider multiple sources. People say some wacky stuff and they have over 1,000 posts, but I take it lightly as I do anything I read from anyone. When an MD tells me it doesn't matter what I eat, I know he's an asshole protecting his fragile ego from having to admit to me that he never took a nutrition course in his ten years of medical 'school.' So I go somewhere and get another source for my info....

So I don't really have expectations about people and what they say and I don't get let down.

As far as the MR-8 goes, or any piece of gear, no one knows, especially for new products, how it's supposed to work or how it is in it's ultimate functionality. I only have one lousy compressor, how do I know it works right? How do I know if all the MR-8's have wacky electronic squeaks coming from the actual unit? I can only speculate so MY MR8 sucks for a lot of reasons. So I get some info here that says that someone elses doesn't suck for the same reasons, but it sucks for other reasons. Great, that's why we're here, to find out why all the gear sucks but for what reasons, and we all get educated. No problem. Well, no problem with the communication, but obviously tons of problems with gear.... of course I'm still stuck using it and will continue for some time. I'll be working around the problems.

 

[junplugged]

as i said you have a faulty unit, the machine really does a good job of what it is supposed to do....record tracks so they can be moved to the pc for mixing....

but, people get some pretty good recordings just from bouncing down and burning to cd, there are some pretty bad recordings also...

i have a full pa system with delays, compressors, 31 band eq's, and rarely use them except when playing live, after i started moving tracks to the pc, the quality was amazing, the effects great, the results, unbeleiveabel difference,

you really should give it a try, down load any free or demo program and you might jst be amazed....

recording streight into the pc is a reall pain in the a-- for me...to many issues, latency, sound card driver conflicts...thats why the mr8 works so well for me, i get the best of bothworlds, effortless recorded tracks, with the bonus of mixing on the pc..

thanks for EVERYONES opinions and input....

I don't know much about audio on PC's I've used PC's for years since invented in the early 1980's and worked for a few years as a tech. and LAN/Wan network whatever ya call it. I hate working w/ all the crap of PC's Windows, drivers, updates, viruses, hard drive noise and having to constantly upgrade the hardware, drivers, security updates, and on and an and.... So I like the stand-alone units. I'd like to mix on them too. I'd like to backup on the same unit by burning cdr's and not even bother usb-ing to pc for backup. Also, knowing first-hand how flakey computers are, I just don't want to trust my tracks to them. "Personal" computers have to be worked on constantly to make them anywhere near professional.

I'm considering a 16 track, so I have a ton of research ahead of me, again.

Even considering software on PC, I'd have to test my setup first. Test hdd latency, test if cpu can handle it, memory, any other potential bottlenecks, sh!t, you can't even force the system to put the swap file at the front of the disk to keep it from fragmenting, it's a big test of everything, that I'd rather pay for something that'd dedicated, and already tested and proven to work for the application I am putting up to.

 

[Tubedriver]

I don't know much about audio on PC's I've used PC's for years since invented in the early 1980's and worked for a few years as a tech. and LAN/Wan network whatever ya call it. I hate working w/ all the crap of PC's Windows, drivers, updates, viruses, hard drive noise and having to constantly upgrade the hardware, drivers, security updates, and on and an and.... So I like the stand-alone units. I'd like to mix on them too. I'd like to backup on the same unit by burning cdr's and not even bother usb-ing to pc for backup. Also, knowing first-hand how flakey computers are, I just don't want to trust my tracks to them. "Personal" computers have to be worked on constantly ......

Jeez mate....why the hell did you buy the MR8 then? Sounds like you should be doing that research about the 16 track pronto!

 

[junplugged]

yea exactly, then i'll be stuck with some other boatload of trouble. I can't wait - I think I'll just synch up my 488 8 tracks on cassette and I'll have 16.

Oh, you aked me why did I buy it? Well, I didn't, it was a gift

 

[pjh6467]

bad MR8

I have been fortunate not to have squeaks and squeals when using my unit. And no problems with buttons or punching. But to say that we come here to discuss what sucks and the reasons why I don't think is accurate. Most of us come here to learn and help each other with methods of recording,tips on software,user experiences,etc. And yes, we do see a thread titled Problem with MR8 once in a while.But when you read,we don't discuss why it sucks. We know it sucks.We find out maybe how to fix the problem,where to go to fix the problem,the number of people having the same problem. And yes, some just want to bitch about the problem. We all know Fostex takes a peek in here once in a while and we can only hope R&D looks at this stuff and does something about it. It seems like a lot of hoopla over a unit that was never going to fit your needs in the first place. I'm amazed at the quality I get from the MR8 and my software. So I'd like to say thanks to all who responded to my posts and helped me shorten up my learning curve in the past year. It has been greatly appreciated. Pj

 

[BentRabbit]

Interesting thread....
I'm about to become the proud owner of a VF-16 and I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep my MR-8 as well... Even with it's 'limitations' I'm still happy with all it can do (and does).

Just another 0.02 from someone with more tracks recorded than posts posted...

 

[junplugged]

Actually this thread sucks, who knew that using the word, "sucks," would piss off so many people Gee, I'll have to use the word, "sucks," in my posts more often, I'll get more responses. Hey, maybe I'll use the word, "sucks," in one of my mp3 listening posts and see what happens.... Anyway let's just let this thread die a slow death into the archives and fade away.