stupid question?

[Crazy Diamond]

Thinking of purchasing a Roland VS-880 for my guitar studio. Unfortunately, I'm a musician more than an engineer. Can anyone explain to me what those technicians mean when they call the 880 a 16-track (8-external, 8-internal) recorder? What's the external/internal thing? Do I have to record some tracks out in the street or something? Clueless....absolutely clueless...

 

[Jon X]

This isn't a stupid question at all. Matter of fact I'm only partly sure I know what they are talking about. I've never heard it called that, and I have an 880. I'll give it a shot as to what they are saying though. The 880 has 8 'channels' (fancy word they use for tracks) that you can record to. Each of these channels has 8 'virtual tracks'. That's where the 64 track capability comes from, and the 880EX has two different banks of virtual tracks so you get 128 virtual tracks on it. The reason they are called virtual tracks is you can only play back 8 of these at once, and only one virtual track per channel can be played back at the same time. On the 880EX you can only access one bank at a time, so you can't playback a virtual track from bank one and another from bank two at the same time. I don't have the EX so I'm not exactly sure about other benefits or limits this extra bank of virtual tracks might have. It's possible to route any of the inputs via one of the 8 channels to any of the 128 virtual tracks.

I hope this is what you were referring to in your question. I'd be happy to try and answer any other questions you have about the 880. I've had mine for over two years and it's great. You don't have to be an engineer to use the thing, but it can sometimes get complicated if you want to use the advanced functions. I've found that downloading all the documentation from Rolands website helped much more than the manual ever did.

 

[jethani]

Hi Guys.

While I don't even have the unit in question (Was it the 880?), Jon you are absolutely right about Roland's website. As the owner of a Roland XP-50, I found information on the website that really *should* have been in the manual. Like how to hook up the unit to an external sequencer such as Cubase. I guard my Roland website documents as much as the manual.

Cheers!

 

[tmcbrinn]

Hi. I got a 1680, so I think I can help.
Think of the 880 as having 2 separate mixers, the input mixer and the track mixer. Normally, the input mixer is routed to the corresponding channel (input 1 goes to track 1). The track mixer only controlls tracks that have already been recorded.
The 8 external channels can be used if you want to run a midi device through your mixer. For example, if you wanted to synch up your drum machine to your 880, you can run it through the input mixer only. It is never recorded, but you can send it along with your 8 recorded tracks to your Burner, DAT, or whatever. It can save you some tracks. You can synch 8 external devices with your 8 recorded tracks, and send 16 to your mastering device. Hope this helps