mr8 black

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douglas662

New member
can you take out the compact flash put it in the pc and then slect each individual track and mix with mixing software? I am new to the pc/digital era of recording sorry:eek:
 
You may need to download (free) Wavmanager from the Fostex International site or from fostexsupport.com.

This will deal with the Fostex recording at track level. For a stereo .wav file, direct downloading will do.
 
The manual strongly discourages copying anything but the stereo mixdown WAV file. Bad things will supposedly happen if you do.
 
The MR8 is designed to download to a PC.
The recommended method is to set up the USB connection and to download the tracks using WavManager - otherwise how can you edit your tracks using a PC based editor?
As an MR16 owner, I admit I do not know what would be the effect of reading the Compact Flash card in your PCs card reader but removing a CF card from the MR8 and reading it in a PC reader should be possible. If all else fails just re-format the card.
 
Look at the sidebar titled <important note> on page 89 of the owner's manual. My PDF reader won't let me copy and paste it, and I'm not going to type it all out here. Basically, it says the MR-8 will malfunction if you export from any folder other than the "2 MIX" folder on the CF card.
 
I have a black one, but I don't think it's the Mk II. It has 4 cursor keys like the red one instead of a knob like the Mk. II.

The MR-8 was produced back in the days of ME/2000/XP, but maybe Wave Manager will work on Windows 7. The manual only says it won't work on non-Windows systems. It's worth a try.
 
ty very much...............i am still lost as to why you have to bounce over to 7/8 to get the export to work on a pc
 
WavManager has been loaded onto Windows 7 and has worked OK.

The MR series records a set of mono files. These need to be converted to a stereo file before they can be burnt to a CD or loaded on to a player. This process is carried out by mixing (bouncing) all your recorded tracks to a stereo pair using 7/8 as the final tracks. From 7/8 the MR processes the recording to a stereo .wav file in the 2Mix folder (7=LH and 8=RH). This is the stereo file that is exported to your PC.

WavManager is a software interface that can extract the individual tracks from the MR to your PC. You would edit the tracks in a PC editor such as Audacity, then combine them into your stereo pair and convert into a stereo .wav file in the PC for a CD etc.
The individual tracks belong to one Song and you need to repeat the process for each Song.

Hope this clears up your confusion.
 
douglas662 said:
ty very much...............i am still lost as to why you have to bounce over to 7/8 to get the export to work on a pc
Click to expand...

It's designed to be a budget standalone mixer/recorder. They had to forego a lot of extra features to meet some corporate MBA's predetermined "price point".
 
Terfyn said:
WavManager is a software interface that can extract the individual tracks from the MR to your PC. You would edit the tracks in a PC editor such as Audacity, then combine them into your stereo pair and convert into a stereo .wav file in the PC for a CD etc.
The individual tracks belong to one Song and you need to repeat the process for each Song.

Hope this clears up your confusion.
Click to expand...

Indeed it does. What you're saying is, the WavManager fills in the PC interfacing capabilities that are missing from the MR-8 itself, right?
 
Basically Yes. It permits the extraction of the track files and sets up a series of files that can be accessed by a PC editor. The MR looks to a PC like an external disk but without all the control you would expect from, say, a backup drive. This is why you can directly download a stereo .wav file and use it in Windows Media Player for example.
Wavmanager sets up an interface to extract the RAW track data.

The original MR was designed as a front end recorder to a PC based editing system. It was only later that hard drives and CD burners were added.
 
ok , i have four recording softwares----- audicity, cakewalk-sonar, guitar pro tracks 3, and reaper. Let me understand, I can use wav manager and export each individual track to one of these softwares and edit/mix there into one ? And, if i export using the 7/8 tracks then i will have one wav file to mix with?
 
There are two options for you to download your recording:-

(1) First record your mono music tracks. This constitutes a Song. Then you can combine these tracks to form a stereo "master" (using the Pan controls to give Left, Mid or Right for each recorded track) and record this on to 7/8 (bouncing). The final step is to turn 7/8 (still both mono tracks) into a Stereo WAV file. (7/8>STEREO WAV FILE) This file sits in the 2Mix folder and can be used directly on to a CD or into a player. No PC editing is required.

OR

(2) First record your mono music tracks. This constitutes a Song. Then you can download these tracks directly into your PC using WavManager and you can edit and combine them using your PC software.

To summarise:- (1) gives you the final stereo Wav file that can be payed back directly and (2) gives you the raw tracks to edit in your PC.

Hope this is clear!
 
Good luck with it.
One trick that helped me understand where Fostex was coming from was to look at the thing as an eight track tape recorder.
And just one more point. With the hard disk machines it is very easy to overload the disk. The solution is to re-format the disk after every major recording session. If your MR8 starts acting funny, a re-format of the card may help.
 
I have an MR8-MKII and its served well as a portable recorder. But its maximum sampling rate of 44/16 makes it somewhat obsolete since nearly everything made today is sampling at twice that or even better. Nevertheless I like the MR8.
 
Sampling is in the ear of the listener. Is it good enough? I thought that the 44/16 rate was the standard used on a typical CD so any better sampling rate was wasted when you turn the recording into a CD - maybe I am wrong in this.
 
Terfyn said:
Sampling is in the ear of the listener. Is it good enough? I thought that the 44/16 rate was the standard used on a typical CD so any better sampling rate was wasted when you turn the recording into a CD - maybe I am wrong in this.
Click to expand...

I have an MR8 MKII that I use for remote recording to be exported to SONAR. The 44/16 sampling rate of the MR8 is adequate since it is CD standard. But nearly all digital recorders are now up to 44/24 or 96/24 which somewhat antiquates the MR8. I hear quite a bit of difference between 44/16 and 44/24. The CD standard I suspect will be obsolete in the not to distant future. Its worth having a high sampling rate recorder for creating audio DVD's and such. You can always step a high sample rate down but not the other way. However the MR8 is a pleasure to use nevertheless.
 
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