Recording Rookie wants to buy a Boss BR-8

[cbreezefdl]

Glad I found this site. I would like to purchase the Boss BR-8 digital recording studio but know nothing about this new gear. I've played with a friends 4 track analog and that's the extent of my recording experience. Before I spend the bucks I would like to get feedback on if this system. Is as good as it sounds in the catalog? Sounds like an easy enough unit to operate. What other gear could I buy to get the best quality recordings. Money is a factor but I would like to be able to buy stuff I can grow into. Any hints would be greatly appriciated. Craig (Recording Rookie)

 

[K-wey]

One major limitation of the BR-8 is that it uses 100-meg Zip drives. From lengthy discussions on another board - full of people whose technical backgrounds I respect - they point out that this means a total of about six (6) minutes of recording time with all 8 tracks engaged and then your Zip disk is full.

Six minutes is not enough to record one song and make a copy to play with. Boss needed to have equipped this with the 250-meg Zip drive, at least. I really wanted to like this BR-8 unit, but 6 minutes is practically useless. Just a dumb idea.

Some better options would be:

1) Record to a PC equipped with a good sound card and mondo hard drive space.

2) Buy a digital 4-track or 8-track that uses mini-discs (MD Data discs). In 4-track mode, you can get 37 minutes of recording time. In 8-track mode, you can get 18 minutes per MDD. The MDD discs are $13 each and infinitely re-usable.

Whatever you do... go digital. Skip the cassette-based systems. You should be able to find a clean used 4-track digital mini-disck recorder (Sony or Yamaha) for about $500.

 

[K-wey]

And as for other equipment....

You will want an amp to play back through; monitor speakers to hear it play back; and something to make your masters on (cassette deck or maybe a CD burning system).

For home studios, I'd recommend skipping the aggravation of numerous mikes and do direct-input recording. That means: Get a drum machine and record it directly. Same thing for guitar: Get a recording pre-amp and skip miking an amp unless you really want to. The Line6 POD is probably the best idea for recording guitars.

 

[cbreezefdl]

Thanks for the info. I am wondering about recording through a powered pa system to utilize the EQ or is it better to go straight through a multitrack machine? From the looks of things around here I should get over my fear of the unknown when it comes to computer mulitracking and midi. I have a Kawai keybord with a midi port and am an old fashioned rock and roll guy with guitars, harmonicas, amps, mikes, and powered pa. want to build up to a decent home studio for serious demos for myself and friends. Are there any good books to read to get me started without too much technical jargon?
still a rookie, Craig