Me and My New Digital 4 trak

No mo SEX witcha FOSTEX?

I have a Roland digital 8 track that uses zip disks. I don't want to burst your bubble, but if yers is the Sony, the discs use compression and that's not so cool. It doesn't sound really professional like you'd expect from a digital recorder. If I was you, I'd turn right around and sell it again on ebay and look into some of the newer digital recorders. They come with a whole shitload of onboard effects. Mine actually has dozens and dozens of settings for realistic guitar amp effects. Look online for something called COSM technology by Roland.

Its a tascam and it sounds prety good. My brother got the br 8 but he hated it and sold it on ebay. now he is back to tape! I hope this thing wasnt dropped or something.

Yeah, if I had the space and privacy, I would shell out the bucks for some tape, too. As it is, though, I'm in a small apartment. The COSM tech combined with a pedal or two is all I need to get very kickass guitar sounds. And, it's nice to have it in perfect levels that don't need to be fussed with. As far as the BR8 goes, he's the first guy I've ever heard of that didn't love it. My guess is he wasn't happy with the initial guitar presets and didn't want to dick around with an LED screen... you know, he's probably more of a straight-ahead kinda guy that likes to see and know all the knobs and devices. The Roland and Boss BR8 boxes have so many features, you really need to read the book to use it to it's full potential. But, other than toggling back and forth between a few screens, there's no problem with 'em. Plus, if you factor in that this is almost all you need, it cuts a lot of time and hassle out of the whole thing. No extra peddles and wires and once you save your stereo pan and eq settings, they're not going anywhere, they're on disk until you change it. Same thing with all the tracks and effects. They really are pretty cool... But, you always end up with something very, very produced and clean sounding, even if you use all the old 60s and 70s tube amp sounds it sounds like you did it in a high quality studio environment, which isn't cool if you want a really lofi rough sound.

I wish I had a drum set and place to record it. thats my recourding wish. the better your recourding equipment is the more you have to care how crappy your instruments sound

Tascam and it smells nice.

Yamaha and it's broken. I haven't used it for 2 years, and I think it's only the transformer that's up the spout. When I'm unemployed I shall become a popstar.

(good Chris T-T review in last week's Time Out, btw)

I have a Tascam...not sure of the code and stuff. It was £200, I got it last year! It's pretty good, old school tape style!

Mike H - the worst thing about those MD 4-trackers is not so much the inevitable data reduction, but the fact that you have to use super- pricey and hard-to-find MD Data discs. But it'll sound better than cassette and it was cheap, so enjoy...

I've got an Akai 16-track HD recorder. Very easy to use, onboard FX somewhat lacking, 24/96 available, WAV import/export, yada, yada. The only real bottleneck is me: I think I need to take a course on mixing and EQ.

The data Minidiscs are pricey but I plan on just using one and erasing agian and again

korg d8 - sits on the koffee table and is coverd in petals at the mo - AAARGHHH 1stborn - no harry potter fer you, xmaz is off!!!!!!

I have thee Vestax HDR-V8. 8-trax0rz, built in digital mixer w/3-band EQ as well as balanced seperate outs, 3 FX sends & returns per channel. It's fucking great. I thought all the roland table-top HDRs had data compression?

Oh, it's champagne beige, with sea blue eack ears, and the transport kontrols & data knog are carved from wood. This was a consideration when I bought the thing.

Well, I don't know the entire history of Roland, but the newer boxes, as well as the Boss BR8 record digitally, with no loss, at the DAT quality range, slightly better than CD, at 48 KHz. But, ALL digital recording has some loss compared to analog. It doesn't matter if you record in analog or not. If you transfer to standard digital, you'll lose something... something very, very tiny, but something that vinyl purists swear they can hear (above all that surface noise that they're not supposed to be hearing in the first place). Fact: a lot of the "warmth" from vinyl comes from misconstrued sound. While the physical contact of the needle against grooves causes a deeper bass reverberation, the "depth" associated with vinyl is actually ADDED sound or "air" from the contact of the needle, which is not found on the original DAT tapes. So, yeah, vinyls cheaper, but CDs are better. Just get a good stereo. The hubbub about CDs chopping out a large portion of sound had relevence BEFORE they doubled the sample rate, long ago.

"But, ALL digital recording has some loss compared to analog."

Sorry, but analog(ue) has limits too, y'know. 30ips reel-to-reel might get you more HF extension than Red Book digital, but it has slightly less dynamic range. 24/96 (or 24/192) digital recording is pretty commonplace now, and if you can think of an analogue alternative which has greater resolution, please tell me.

Analogue gear may be lossy in ways *more pleasing to the ear* than digital (debatable point, and very application-specific), but lossy wrt mic feed it is.

"If you transfer to standard digital, you'll lose something... something very, very tiny"

You mean going from 48k to 44.1k? Well, yes, you'll lose frequency response between 22-24kHz but you'll also be going through a non- integer sampling rate conversion which is more likely to have audible artefacts. If the final product is going onto a CD-R, you're probably better off recording at 44.1.

"Fact: a lot of the "warmth" from vinyl comes from misconstrued sound. While the physical contact of the needle against grooves causes a deeper bass reverberation, the "depth" associated with vinyl is actually ADDED sound or "air" from the contact of the needle, which is not found on the original DAT tapes. So, yeah, vinyls cheaper, but CDs are better. Just get a good stereo."

I'd agree with most of that. Phase anomalies with vinyl 'enhance' the stereo imaging too, and the broadband compression typically used at the vinyl mastering stage (pulling musical details out of the murk of stylus contact noise) can make for a more pleasing balance too (though again, further away from the master). In a strict information theory sense, CD has greater resolution than yr typical vinyl LP, but there are plenty of psychoacoustic reasons why the latter can sound better in certain circumstances.

"The hubbub about CDs chopping out a large portion of sound had relevence BEFORE they doubled the sample rate, long ago."

They didn't double the sample-rate on CD though, did they? On the recording side of things, perhaps, but the delivery format is still 16/44.1. Probably the biggest improvement = recording at 24-bit and dithering with clever noise-shaping algorithms to get 18-19 bit resolution on CD. HDCD goes one step further, and encodes the raw 20- bit data on the disc (unpacked by special hardware).

Oh God, I really hope this doesn't start some rec.audio-style never- ending argument. I'm away this weekend for starters...

Well if the md recourder still rcourds at normal minidisc compression, thats fine with me, I think mds sound great. In fact , my favourite format is vinyl recourded to md.

Michael, I've read several times that DAT is best for recording to get all the nuances which are then equally smooshed just a little bit down to 44.1. I mean, I'm sure the difference is minute, but that's what the pros do, ya know? The CD sample rate was doubled WAY in the beginning when this was actually sort of an issue and CDs were brand freaking new, so 16/44.1 was what they ended up with as a standard. Somehow, the complaints lingered on, however, helped out by people like Neil Young complaining that all the sound wasn't "there". Well, yeah, the added sound from your needle that's not supposed to be THERE in the first place is missing. People have grown to like that sound, but it's not more accurate than digital. The sounds that are lost from a CD are less noticable than the sounds that are ADDED by vinyl. Surprisingly enough, sound replication is more accurate when interpreted through LIGHT. Who woulda thought?

When I say "pros" I mean home recording set-up suggestions pros have committed to print. Obviously, the pros in big studios use big reel to reel tape and all kinds of shit.

"Michael, I've read several times that DAT is best for recording to get all the nuances which are then equally smooshed just a little bit down to 44.1. I mean, I'm sure the difference is minute, but that's what the pros do, ya know? The CD sample rate was doubled WAY in the beginning when this was actually sort of an issue and CDs were brand freaking new, so 16/44.1 was what they ended up with as a standard."

The story behind how DAT and Red Book CD ended up with their respective sampling rates is not one I can go into now (I've got a train to catch), but I'm fairly sure that CD (or any precursor thereof) was never going to come to market with half the sample rate it does now. Slightly higher (50kHz) with a smaller bit-depth (14) was proposed early on, but dropped.

"People have grown to like that sound, but it's not more accurate than digital. The sounds that are lost from a CD are less noticable than the sounds that are ADDED by vinyl. Surprisingly enough, sound replication is more accurate when interpreted through LIGHT. Who woulda thought?"

Or rather, through discrete instantaneous measurements stored as binary code, rather than through a constantly varying voltage captured in some other way. I *broadly* agree with you re: vinyl, but there is a bit more to it...

Right, I gotta run...

Well, whatever.