Digital Recorders

TheBa

Howdy!

I'm thinking of buying a digital recorder tooy with recording for our band before we go spending tonnes in a studio or anything.

These are two which I've considered:

http://www.thomann.de/ie/boss_br600.htm

http://www.thomann.de/ie/yamaha_qy100.htm

Does anyone know are these good or could you point me in the direction of better alternatives?

That's all folks!

Welease

TheBa wrote: »

Howdy!

I'm thinking of buying a digital recorder tooy with recording for our band before we go spending tonnes in a studio or anything.

These are two which I've considered:

http://www.thomann.de/ie/boss_br600.htm

http://www.thomann.de/ie/yamaha_qy100.htm

Does anyone know are these good or could you point me in the direction of better alternatives?

That's all folks!

I have not used either of those machines, but I used to have two Zoom MRS1608 machines (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan05/articles/zoommrs1608.htm).. They are great little machines for getting rough demo's down, but the one big drawback i found (which is why I sold them) was a real lack of editing capability that you get with something like Cubase or Logic.
It lacked the ability to easily (given the screen size etc) play a 2 second base line, copy and paste it to 30 seconds for example, modify the volumes on the fly, add new effects etc etc etc..
I found for direct recording of a demo.. they worked fine.. but for song creation or trying new things it was very limited.
In the end, I sold them and went with a Phonic Helix 18 MK II (i think there was one on ebay.ie for 300 euro recently) linked via firewire to my PC.. that might be an option worth considering...

Eoin Madsen

Get an inexpensive computer interface. As much as I love to dust off the old four-track now and again for nostalgic reasons, standalone recorders are well and truly dated.

TheBa

Eoin Madsen wrote: »

Get an inexpensive computer interface. As much as I love to dust off the old four-track now and again for nostalgic reasons, standalone recorders are well and truly dated.

Sorry, the only experience I have of this type of equipment is when I borrowed the Boss, shown above, off a mate.

Could you give me a link to some examples of what you'd recommend?:o

Eoin Madsen

Eh... I'm actually not really clued in to what's out recently, and these things change fast. This sort of thing: http://www.thomann.de/ie/presonus_audiobox_usb.htm
With decent software included being a plus. Cubase is simple and dependable.

Look for similar things. I don't really like Presonus. I used a firepod for a recording once and had an abundance of problems with the firewire interface. The box just wasn't all that great for what it was supposedly worth. Alesis are pretty oldschool and more respectable as a budget brand than Behringer. Mackie are also solid. Bear in mind that the number of inputs only affects how many mics you can use at the same time. You can layer up and playback as many channels as you want with any of these things (until your PC runs out of CPU power or memory, basically).

If you have a PC with a Windows OS, go with USB, not firewire.

Do make sure it has 48V / Phantom power for using a capacitor microphone. Most if not all should anyway.

For demoing, you absolutely do not need a sample rate higher than 44.1k or 48k or a bit-rate higher than 16 bit. In the 80s, they made professional commerical records at these rates. The quality of the A/D converters is not at all reflected by how high the numbers go, and until you're getting serious kit, the difference is going to be incredibly marginal.

Something with Protools software/hardware is also a waste of time and money. They cost more for what you get, and the LE system has track limitations etc. Protools is worthless until you get to serious systems. I'm not even a fan of the serious systems, tbh.

Welease

Eoin Madsen wrote: »

If you have a PC with a Windows OS, go with USB, not firewire.

Be careful with this.. When i was looking for an audio interface most USB interfaces only sent 2 channels to the PC.. So you could have 8/10/whatever tracks going into the mixer, but coming out across USB and into the PC (essentially what you were going to record) was only stereo left and right. Hence the reason I went firewire.. I get the full 18 channels sent to Cubase.

This may have changed recently, but its worth checking out before you purchase any USB based interface.

Edit - To clarify, that is assuming you want to record more than 1 channel at a time (which was the case for me)..

-=al=-

pro tools has a 32 track limit, but theres lots of ways around it and u can add extra tracks if you want too, im the opposite REALLY i hate cubase

pt does piss me off sometimes but id miss it if i had it, its easy enough to use

once its usb2 its fine, firewire is fine also

Eoin Madsen

I can't imagine there's anyone making devices with USB 1.1 interfaces these days. Firewire drivers in Windows systems are not terribly reliable by comparison to USB, and USB 2.0 is theoretically slightly faster than Firewire anyway (Firewire 800 does not appear on devices in the OPs implied price range). Sometimes it works fine, but given how many options are available anyway, I'd avoid the risk.

Welease wrote: »

Be careful with this.. When i was looking for an audio interface most USB interfaces only sent 2 channels to the PC.. So you could have 8/10/whatever tracks going into the mixer, but coming out across USB and into the PC (essentially what you were going to record) was only stereo left and right. Hence the reason I went firewire.. I get the full 18 channels sent to Cubase.

This may have changed recently, but its worth checking out before you purchase any USB based interface.

There was/is a series of small format mixers (Alesis, I think) which had a two channel USB interface for some useless reason, and there are a few other similar devices, but the vast majority of USB interface boxes I've seen will send the same number of channels via the interface as they can input, and this has always been the case. But I'd definitely agree that it's important to check.

-=al=- wrote: »

pro tools has a 32 track limit, but theres lots of ways around it and u can add extra tracks if you want too, im the opposite REALLY i hate cubase

pt does piss me off sometimes but id miss it if i had it, its easy enough to use

They're all easy enough to use - they're all basically the same thing with different GUIs. It's ridiculous that any sequencer would require a work-around to get more than 32 channels to begin with. Until you're at least using a basic Protools HD system there is nothing essential you can do in Protools that you can't do in Cubase or any other sequencer in its latest version, and vice versa. But despite the fact that Protools LE doesn't have the advantage of its own DSPs (which is pretty much what makes Protools HD), you're still tied to using Digidesign hardware, which is just silly. You pay more than the hardware or software is worth for equal quality and functionality in alternative systems, and you completely sacrifice the versatility of mixing and matching system components to suit yourself.

Don't get me wrong, if you're going pro recording, you have to be able to use Protools software purely because there will be a Protools HD system everywhere you go. But there's just nothing whatsoever to recommend it if your interest is demoing a few songs.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

While USB2 is faster in theory, Firewire 400 is actually faster in practice.

-=al=-

yes i agree about pt mr. madison, you hit the nail on the hammer

Cool edit pro is usualy used for my main audio works, i know it inside out and being using it for years, but im kinda transfaring all the stems and sessions over to pro tools

reason and pro tools paired together is the bees knees, probably my favourite to use together, Logic is very cool also, cubase is good alright but i just dont like it for some reason

and id prefare firewire over usb also

Eoin Madsen

Sean_K wrote: »

While USB2 is faster in theory, Firewire 400 is actually faster in practice.

It depends on the device, the I/O controller in the computer, and the I/O controller driver. Besides which, the speed of it is a moot point. For an audio interface the format will either handle the intended bandwidth of the device or it won't. Whether it goes out of sync every couple of minutes because the drivers are crap is somewhat more important.