vs880 to pc More Specific

[trane65]

I've had my Roland vs880 for 3 years now and I love it to death except for the fact that I don't have the expensive Roland burner. I recently scored a Dell Dimension 1.9 GHz + 100 Gig hard drive that has a Soundblaster Live! sound card and Cakewalk 9.
I'm trying to dump tracks from the Roland to Cakewalk in order to free up space on the vs880 and to do more precise editing/mixing. I need information on how to connect my vs880 to the Soundblaster live card: ie cables, etc. (I have a midi to "joystick" cable)
I read a post where someone configured his soundcard joystick port to recieve midi. If this works then can I dump songs/tracks to Cakewalk 9? If so, how?
I was able to sync up Cakewalk with the vs880 (I would press play on Cakewalk and it would start when I pressed play on the vs880) through MTC. Unfortunately there was no sound: my song wasn't actually playing in Cakewalk.

Confused yet? Me too man. What can I do? Any feedback would be very helpful although I need very specific advice since this is all so new to me.

 

[TexRoadkill]

You can only use midi for sync and transferring data. Not audio. You would need to use some analog or digital outs and connect them to the SB. Then with the midi sync you can transfer the tracks over 2 at a time.

 

[geekgurl]

I'd recommend getting a better sound card -- specifically, one that has SPDIF -- and transfer two tracks over at a time (SPDIF is a stereo data format .. you pan one track hard left, the other hard right, assign each to a different Cakewalk track, and voila, digital to digital transfer). Because you don't care so much about recording directly into your PC (ah, but this is how it starts, I know), you don't care about having lots of audio inputs ... so you could get an M Audio Audiophile 2496 card or the like. In fact, because the 880 stores data at 16 bit, max sample rate of 48 KHz, you could even go with a cheaper 24-bit 48Khz card or if you can find it. It sounds much better transferring this way rather than going thru Roland's less-then-stellar converters one more time. I compared and it was night and day (I don't remember which was night and which was day, but the SPDIF transfer definitely sounded better).

Once you have said card, to do the transfer you need 2 75-ohm RCA cables. Radio Shack can help you out with that.

 

[monty]

Geekgurl is right as usual but I'll add my 2cents here as I have done what you all are talking about. The M-Audio Delta Dio with optical spidf is perfect. It was $100 new when I bought one from Musicians Friend. 2 tracks at a time from the 880, pan one hard left the other hard right on the 880. Set your levels. Midi for synch, spdif optical for copy to computer. My playback amp is a good Marantz unit and the speakers could be better, but I was unable to tell the difference between the original in the 880, and the copy in the computer, doing a blind comparison test. You can keep your present card for record/playback and use the Dio for copying.

 

[volltreffer]

High!

Though geekgurl and monty show the 'best' way an alternative might be to look for a used scsi burner at ebay. I got one for about 40bucks, a JVC 2010 and it works fine (though slow)...

With it, you can burn song data into stereo tracks AND do those nice backup cds (that you can't read with any other machine - yeah that's right ;-) ) CON: you won't be able to go back into the vs this way...

Just my 2c

aXel