vs 880 /sonar 1.31

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dolomite

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I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this question but I can't find the answer anywhere so here goes... I have a vs880 and have tons of tracks archived to cd and zip.
I'm currently using sonar1.31w/motu828 and would like to move the archived tracks(once loaded into the vs880 of coarse) onto my hard drive so they can be manipulated inside sonar (and I can get rid of my 880)
Question:
Is there a way to load all of the virtual tracks etc. at once without having to digitally tranfer one track at a time. I know roland uses it's own proprietary code-- and is there a converter or interface available that would allow me to load all tracks: virtual etc. directly into my p.c. in one shot? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Nope. You can do a digital 'copy', two tracks at a time with the spdif connections. You can keep everything in synch with the midi connections. It will take as long as it takes to listen to everything, two tracks at a time.
 
If the songs on your archive disks are in MAS format and you can mount them on your pc, they can be opened in a wave editor like Cool Edit using the "open as" file menu. Choose 16bit 44.1Khz Motorola. You can then "Save as" Microsoft PCM .WAV. If the sample rate of the 880 song was anything other than 44.1 then substitute that rate in the "open as" dialog. I think each v-track appears on the disk as TAKExxxx.VRx or somesuch. I don't think Sonar can do an equivalent of "open as" with an unknown file format.
As I understand it, MAS is a simple uncompressed 16bit pcm recording but the 2 bytes of each 16bit sample are stored on disk in reverse order as used by Motorola systems compared to the Intel Byte order used by Microsoft.

MT1 and lower formats are a problem due to them being compressed with Rolands R-dac audio compression. You may be able to use the Boss BR8 .wav convertor (you can d/load free from Roland support) which allows selection from 1 or 2 of 8x8 virtual tracks to make a mono or stereo .wav. The VS song must be at 44.1Khz sample rate. I don't know if anyone has tried this with an 880 disk, but it works with the 840EX (not with a 250meg zip though, but that's a special case with the 840 only). For MT1 songs, the data type displayed in the BR8 convertor goes blank because the BR8 does not do MT1, yet it works. What happens with the other modes for an 880, I couldn't say. If memory serves, 880 LV1 is BR8 MT2?
Otherwise, MT1 and lower will have to be re-recorded over to the pc.
 
vs 880/sonar transfer

thanks jim and monty -- will try the br8 or spdif...
 
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