Roland Digital-Recorders...HELP!

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herringscales

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I've been looking at the Roland Digital Studios. I'm interested in recording mainly acoustic instruments (guitar, piano, cello, etc..) What's the general difference between the following units:
VS-840EX Digital Studio Workstation
VS-880EX Digital Studio Workstation
VS-840GX Digital Studio
VS-890 Digital Studio

I've read up on the specs, but I'm new to recording world and the technical lingo is confusing to me. It appears that the VS-880EX Digital Studio Workstation is the top of the line and is quite possibly out of my budget, unless I could find a used one. It seems the the VS-840EX Digital Studio Workstation works well for guitar players. Is it still a good unit for recording acoustic instuments/vocals, etc...? Are some units going to give better sound then others? Better mixing capabilities? Any help would be great...Thanks!
Scott
 
Of the machines you mentioned,only the 880EX and the 890 allow uncompressed linear recording,which may or may not matter to you at some point.The 840 and BR8 machines store data on Zip disks which have a relatively high cost per meg. of storage compared to CDRW's.The 880 and 890 also offer 8 seperate faders as opposed to shared faders for track pairs.They also have Digital inputs as well as Digital outputs.
 
VIRTUALRAY,please explain the pros and cons of the shared faders as opposed to the 8 seperate ones(besides the obvious),i assume that it just doesn't have as much freedom when mixing and just plain adjusting volumes,or is there a way to go around this?i have the br-8 ,(8 faders)and in a thread above this ,i am asking about switching to the 840ex.anyway please ellaborate.i rarely use stereo left and right 2 tracks,only for drums.but i keep the tracks freed up,because i like to leave lots'a room for overdubbing.as of now i record alone ,playing all the instruments.so can you see that is crucial i have faders for each track?or am i not seeing something?
 
My only experience with Roland VS machines is with the VS880EX which I've owned since 12/98,so I don't really know if you can record the tracks seperately on the 840 even if the fader is for a pair,but if it was me I'd still want complete autonomy for both the faders and the tracks 'cause you never know when you start where a project will take you.I may have an acoustic guitar on track 5 that I decide later I want to submix with a clean Strat on track 3 by bouncing both of them to track 7,you see? I really think the extra features and flexibility of the 880/890 series is worth the higher cost if you can swing it.BTW,now that the stores all have the 890 in stock,you should be able to get an 880EX pretty cheap,maybe not much more than a new 840GX.Cheers!
 
compression

someone in a different thread mentioned that with the 880 it records in a compressed mode unless you toggle it off.

but he claims that when you do so, you're down to 6 tracks for recording instead of 8. is that true? if so, that really bites. the whole reason i'm trying to get an 8 track is because i NEED at least 8 tracks of recording without having to bounce tracks.

thanks

tony
 
What he was saying is that in MAS mode you can record uncompressed but you only get 6 tracks to work with instead of 8. Unless you get an external mixer to do some submixing before hitting the 880ex your only limited to recording 6 inputs at the same time, no matter what mode you use. If you need to record more than 6 mics at a time then you'll either need the VS-1660, 1880 (which have 8 inputs) or you'll need to get an addditional mixer to do some sub-mixing before goin into the recorder. With all that said, remember the 880ex has 128 virtual tracks. So you can record quite a bit before you need to start bouncing, only thing is you'll have to record it using 6 inputs at a time.

SWG
 
okay thanks!

whew...

so from what you wrote I gather this is only about recording at the same time? i hope so.

i acutally do all the production, vocals, instruments, etc by myself at home. thus, i only record one thing at a time (at the most 2 inputs at a time for stereo drums).

so recording 6 at a time is definitely not what i'm worried about. So even if i record in the MAS mode I still have "8" tracks to record onto separately for final mixdown without having to ping pong tracks, right?

thanks man.. let me know if I misunderstood. but yeah, i only record 2 lines at the same time at the most.

tony
 
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