gatorhaus said:
I own an MR8 and it does not fit my needs I was thinking about getting a VF80, but the button thing is making me very leery.Does the VF160, have the same issues, or are these different altogether?
In reality, I don't really think the VF80 has major button issues... The assembly that holds the REC/PLAY/STOP/REW/FF buttons perhaps could use a tad more support in the chassis, but in over a year of coming on this site, button "issues" on the VF80 have been extremely rare. Having owned one (now a VF160 owner), it seems to me that the buttons don't need much pressure to activate them in the first place. So pushing one through would require some consistently hard pressure. Although, a little more support would add more solidity to a machine that overal feels more solid than anything else out there in it's price class. The VF80 is a great machine, capable of excellent recordings.
The VF80/160 are in the same "family" and they aren't much like the MR8. The VF160 has more support directly under it's REC/PLAY button assembly. But even here, I just use enough pressure to get the job done. Of course I do this with all my gear anyway.
In terms of overall build quality, data security, stability of the operating system, and ease of use, I think the VF series is excellent. These machine save and optimise the harddrive as you go. So even in the event of a system freeze, you don't lose data. This is a very big plus because ALL systems will lock up on occasion, but while I've commonly heard of people losing data on other products, I've never heard of people losing a night's work on a VF machine. Obviously in the event of a full-on hard drive crash, this would not be the case. Even here, Fostex's use standard 3.5" major manufacturer hard drives, easily changeable or upgradeable for larger capacity.
My VF160 is running on the version 1.15 software. It runs beautifully. Version 2.01 was released a few months ago, adding a few features I didn't need, but I believe if you try to open a new program after already recording on an existing one, the system will sometimes freeze and you may have to restart the machine. Fostex has just been released ver 2.02 which I would assume addresses that issue.
Anyway, after more than a year of using the VF's, I am a VERY happy customer. I moved up to the VF160 simply for the ability to record more tracks at once, and in total (16)...