Boss BR8 to PC...How??

caesura

Hi folks,

A long time ago i put up a post here asking how to get tracks from my BR8 onto a cd.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055346499

Anyway in the end I solved it with a bonkers set up (resulting in terrible quality transfer...which i wont go into now) and basically moved on to Audacity and eventually Reaper software options and the poor old BR8 was put away.

Recently i took it out and popped in some of the zip disks which the BR8 records onto and discovered that there were some really decent songs I'd written back in the day and I'd love to be able to:

A: Save the tracks so that i have them stored somewhere safer than just zip single disks

B: Get them up onto my software DAW and see if i can remix them there

If I put the zips into a computer zip drive it would wipe them as they're 'initilised' specifically to work with the Br8.

So i'm just wondering if anyone knows what my options would be for doing this? How could i go about getting tracks from my BR8 onto my PC?

I know this is a bit of a long shot...but I'm hoping some of you out there might have used these back in the day and hopefully discovered a way...online searches are not proving very fruitful.

Thanks
C ;-)

TroutMask

You need:
BR-8 Wave Converter Software - ZIPs to Wav

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.php?ProductId=437

Always check Roland US & then Japan as Roland EU often does not have stuff. Enjoy! They claim it works on Win 2K & XP (which means there's a good chance it'll work on Win 7)

caesura

TroutMask wrote: »

You need:
BR-8 Wave Converter Software - ZIPs to Wav

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.php?ProductId=437

Always check Roland US & then Japan as Roland EU often does not have stuff. Enjoy! They claim it works on Win 2K & XP (which means there's a good chance it'll work on Win 7)

Thanks TroutMask do you know is it a case of just downloading the software and popping the disk into the desktop - the thing i'm afraid of is that so far as i know putting the disk into a computer automatically reformats it from the state it was in with the BR8 and wipes it clean...have looked online and can't find any reference to this (there's step by step guides to using the software but no reference as to whether or not I just pop the disk into computer or somehow hook the BR8 up itself.)

Thanks

TroutMask

:pac::pac::pac:****DISCLAIMER****:pac::pac::pac:

I only know Win stuff up to XP intimately - I've faffed about w/ Win 7 & Vista but not in depth so proceed with caution if on these OS's!!

:pac::pac::pac:****DISCLAIMER****:pac::pac::pac:

Whenever I worked with proprietary files/disk formats (like your BR-8) - they would not show up at all on the desktop or navigator. Sometimes Win would *ask* if i wanted to reformat the disk - I would never say yes, of course! Win sees this as being 'helpful' - but it's no help to the BR-8 owner!
If you suspect an 'auto-reformat' process on your system - then you might want to use an unused ZIP disk to verify that your OS is not going to auto-erase your stuff before you use - maybe system settings you can change.

Then, the typical Roland/Boss scenario is this: yes, the the disk does not show up in your OS ('cos it's Boss formatted) - but it *will* show up in the proprietary Roland Boss software. It is out of this software that you will read disks, save off WAV files etc.

So mabye install the software first, then write a new ZIP with your BR-8. Use that to test the system so that you don't accidentally erase your musical tracks :pac::pac::pac:

caesura

Mate thanks a million once again.

I finally got back to the desktop only to find it doesn't have a zip drive (neither do any of my own laptops) so it's back to the drawing board until i can afford an external zip drive or something.

Gonna try rigging it to see if i can play a single track at a time in through the inputs on br8 via a guitar lead and see if i can record it like that...long process but if it works at least it'll be something.

Cheers!

stateofflux

i would use the optical output on the back of the BR-8 and record each track separately into your pc.