the 8-track digital recorder

really need to get into some home recording, don't want to go the software route. tell me what's up.

these are all in production now:

Zoom R8
Tascam DP-008
Boss BR800

or, something older?

?

It might be a bit more but I have had a whole lot of fun with a Tascam 2488. That thing is great for recording a band as you can record 8 tracks at once and have like 16 more for over dubsand I think really easy to use.

Get something like that and then use the USB to move the files to a PC and you can do most anything.

I still use my Akai DPS16 (launched in 1999, I think; we got ours for about half original retail in early 2001); latest software update for it was 2003, I think - adding multiband compression.

It's a beast, 16-channel mixer, four FX sends, XLRs + phonos, AES/EBU in/out, phantom power, 10GB HDD, not terribly portable* and you can only export WAVs via its SCSI connection to a very slow external CD-RW drive (I paid some outrageous amount 11 years ago for a 8x Plextor).

(* - the one time I took it out of the house was to record a baby grand piano in North London, it nearly broke my back)

Quality is very good though. I'm sure you can do better for far less $$$ and a smaller footprint thesedays. The great problem with the DPS16 has been the noise - the HDD ticking, its own internal fan and the fan of the Plextor drive (I used to be paranoid about not having that on the whole time - supposedly the DPS16 wouldn't recognise a CD drive if it wasn't on *before* the recorder was on). Mics always have to be in another room.

^i do believe i've mixed songs containing some vocal tracks recorded on that machine

You certainly have!

I screwed up the hard drive controller on my DPS16. I miss it and got the Tascam years ago.

That Akai has the easiest to use auto punch I have ever seen on a recorder. With the scroll wheel you just go and set the input and output points back it up and start playing with the track, it just pops the part in and out automatically. I miss that feature. It was badass and great to fix a small flub, easier than even most software.

They sound good too, I'd imagine is uses the similar converters to a Akai sampler, as that DPS16 was about the first one that could export as wav files without having to some kind of conversion (like an MPC2000xl or S5000/S6000 sampler from the same time period).

They make good stuff.

I want to buy a multitrack recorder that is easy to use. That is my primary consideration.

New or old, number of tracks, editing and effects capabilities — those are secondary. I just don't want to mess around with menus every time I go to record a track.

Got any recommendations for a recorder that will help, not hinder, the recording process?

Again, I don't care how many tracks it has. Just more than 2.

So I'm thinking about setting up the most very basic of home recording setups, just to fool around with and make demos and stuff, but better sounding than just using the mics in my laptop. I had been scoping out interfaces like the Lexicon Lambda and the Focusrite Scarlet, etc., but just found out that companies like Boss and Tascam are still making stand-alone digital multitrack recorders, which just appeal to me because I used to drool over their analog ancestors in musicians friend catalogs when I was a kid.

Any of y'all have preferences or opinions on the ins-and-outs or recording via either format?

bump?

there's definitely something to be said for a purpose-built device (eg i would always choose an mpc for live sequencing over a laptop w/ daw) and if you're treating it much like you would a 4-track it's probably a decent option. if you were looking to get into much in the way of non-linear editing and plugins etc it starts to look like a bit more of a pita

the standalone option that is

Thanks! Still not quite sure which way I'm going to go, but that gives me more to think about.