Should I Purchase a 1680???

[Chubby]

Hi All,

I'm new to digital recording, in fact I'm new to recording full stop, so I was hoping for some assitance with a decision.

I've been offered a expanded Roland 1680 for £400 / €570 / $740.
I doesn't have a CD-RW, it is 3years old, in excellent condition and has had little use (haven't they all!!!).

1. Is this a good price to pay for the unit?
2. Considering my budget is up to £500 / €710 / $920, what can I get new for my money which is on a par, or better than the 1680?

I'm new to this, but this much I know: This generally won't be used for recording live, or be used for recording 8 tracks at a time. It will be used mainly for composing good solid backing tracks, so It will generally be recording a track at a time for both live insturments and sequenced (drums / bass). I'm not sure how many features of a modern device I would actively use as I'm new to all this, but I would hope to purchase something that will do anything I need it to, as I learn more.

Thanks Everybody.
Chubby

 

[manning1]

chubby. if your open minded . a pc offers a lot of flexibilty in terms of editing imho. as well as lots of tracks. an amd athlon can do 40 tracks for example. or maybe you already have a PC ?
for example for sequenced drums and bass for pc you might want to check out band in a box from pgmusic.com. as the name implies it lets you build a back up band in software. or for multitracking on a pc powertracks. an exciting new feature of this one is vocal pitch correction and harmonisation and many other features. these are examples of the flexibilty i'm talking about plus the fact you have a large viewing area on the pc.
plus youll be able to mixdown to a cd like i do.
the vs machines are good machines. but for your 920 bucks you could probably get a cheap amd pc with a little yamaha mixer and an audiophile soundcard and the software i mentioned if you shop wisely.
if you wish to learn more about audio recording on a pc there are free tutorials in the support section at pg. and many others on the net if you google. peace.

 

[Chubby]

Many Thanks for your reply.

I have in the past attempted to use Cubase for harddisk recording, but found I was getting major issues both with the quality of sound recorded (the level was never the same as I recorded) and with syncronisation.

I also like the flexibility of plugging what ever I like into the back of a unit and recording it, as opposed to using (at the time it was a Creative Soundblaster Live) the soundcard's one / two input.

Having said that, it was a few years ago, and I'm sure that computer recording has come on a lot. I'm already running an Athlon 2.6K at home

Alex

 

[manning1]

if your running an athlon. YOUR THERE. athlons are great. good for 40 tracks
easy if set up right. but you should look into a delta sound card if possible (a pci sound card). and a cheap mixer like a yamaha mg. and the software i use.
post your athlon confign INCLUDING whats in your pci slots and i'll advise further. many thousands of folks are running successfull athlon based daws. just read the back posts on this bbs.peace.