Digital Recorder Advise

[Jim Eller]

Looking for "what to buy" in the digital recorder world

Info:

For home use.

Inputs....Five piece band record for the fun of it.

With hard drive.

With or without CD recorder????

Price range........say up to #500.

Easy to use.

????

Thanks,
Jim

[Bob Cox]

A 8Track Fostex is easy to use and does a pretty good job.

[Jim Ives]

I have a Fostex VF160 for sale if you are interested. It is about three years old with roughly 1 hour of recording total, ie not used very much.I just do not need it anymore.
-Jim

[Jim Eller]

I thought I was the only person who didn't have one of these things, but from the lack of responses it looks like I'm in the majority.

???

[Jim Eaton]

I have a Boss 1180CD that does what I need.
Only drawback is it only can record 2 tracks at once, but I can only play one instrument at a time so it works out! LOL I had the Boss BR-8 before the 1180 and both are a good buy for the $.
JE:-)>

[Tom Jordan]

I have a Fostex MR8 HD. It can record 4 tracks at a time. Easy to use? That is relative...each one of these units seems to have it's own language. I use samplers or sound moduals from Roland, Yamaha, Boss and Korg and each one needs a special woodshed session to get going.

Tom Jordan

[Tony Prior]

I suspect there are plenty of us that have units.

Under $500..that could be a different issue..

Fostex, Boss, Zoom , each offer an 8 track that is simple to use and give quality results.

Zoom MRS-8
Fostex MR8
Fostex MR8HD
Boss BR-600

You can't go wrong with either, but I recommend that you do some WEB research on any unit you intend to purchase before you make the buy.

Are you planning on recording a 5 piece band, drums and all Instruments at the same time using multiple mics each with there own track ? If that is the need then these 8 tracks are not the right choice and you may have to stretch your budget.

generally recording a band with LIVE drums needs 4 or 5 tracks just for the drums. So if home demo's are the plan with this in mind I would recommend a 16 track unit that can record 8 tracks at a time.

yes you can mix 5 or 6 drum mics into a small mixer and send them to a stereo feed, but the right thing to do is have the ability to master ALL the tracks at the end, as part of the final mix.

If you are building songs, 1 or 2 tracks at a time then the small 8 trackers like the ones listed above can do a very good job @ under $500.


research

good luck

tp

[Jim Eller]

OK Tony, what about the slightly over $500 area????

[Joey Ace]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/ ... sku=241112

The Tascam 2488 can now be found on sale for $800.
A newer model has been released, but that doesn't matter.

24 Tracks, 250 Virtual Tracks, Record eight inputs at a time, and a lot more.

I've been using one for three years and am very happy with it. I had a Tascam 788 before.

Read the reviews at the above link.

I think you can download the manual at the Tascam site.

[Jim Eller]

Thanks Joe.

I've been waiting for your reply.

Jim

[Tony Prior]

I think 24 tracks at $800 bucks as Joey mentions is gonna be very hard to beat for the $$$...

Tascam has been a leader from the get go, this one is no exception.

http://www.musiciansbuy.com/MB/item.asp ... UoqaJeP2GT

[Bob Martin]

I have a BR-600 just to take to live gigs and record the band but it is capable of so much more. It records to Compact Flash cards and mine came with a 128mb which I upgraded to a 4gb card immediately. Actually I already had on and the manual does not guarantee any of them bigger than 1gb but when I popped this 4gb in and formatted it shows almost 4gb free and ready to record on.

I'm guessing that the 4gb card will hold about 10 hours of music across 8 tracks before you would have to dump or backup to PC via USB2.It has great effects and a drum machine with velocity sensitive pads. I got mine for 329.00 I believe. It's 16 bit 44.1 or you can bump it down to make more room in case you need more room on a smaller card.

I tried the highest of the compressed audio recording modes and it sounded like a MP3 recorded at 128bps which would be passable for a live band recording but with the great big 4 gb card why not record at top notch?

Bob

[Jim Eller]

Bob,

How many inputs at one time??

Jim

[David Doggett]

I don't have a dog in this hunt yet, but if you read the customer reviews, the Tascams seem to be more user friendly than the Fosdexes. Also, for me the ability to burn CDs would be secondary, because the contents of any digital recorder can transferred to a computer to do that. And most people transfer to a computer anyway for the mixing, rather than use the small screen and inconvenient menus to mix in the recording unit. The only reason you might want to make CDs with the recorder would be to burn a CD immediately after recording in the field, such as at a live gig. Also, be careful if you want to record multiple tracks simultaneously, Under $1000 many of the "4 tracks", "8 tracks", etc. only record two tracks simultaneously. My small inexpensive Zoom H4 will record 2 tracks simultaneously, as will many other small inexpensive (under $300) digital recorders. So you might want to get one of these for starters, and save up your money for a real multitrack recorder that will do 8 or more tracks simultaneously, if that is what you want.

[Jim Eller]

David,

Thanks for the advise.

I have already decided I want more than two tracks simultaneously. That's why I've been looking at the Tascam 2488 and the Boss BR1600. The Boss is really more than I really want to spend on this project. I think the 2488 will fit my needs. Or is that "wants"? I'm just concerned about a steep learning curve to get some basic product.

Jim

[Bob Martin]

Hi Jim, I didn't notice you needed more than 2 inputs. This unit only has 2 input recording at one time. Sorry I should have read your post more carefully It's a killer little unit but it won't work for you sorry.

Bob