My choice was the Boss BR-8. I was (and still am) very pleased with the feature set, reliability, great price, portability, ease of use, and the sound quality of this unit. It raises the bar for what a digital recorder should be.
Those are just a few of the features. There are several more. If you'd like to read the PDF spec sheet from the Roland/Boss site, click here.
In addition, the BR-8 package also included an easy-to-read, illustrated user manual, a Turbo Start sheet to get up and running in five minutes or less, a Quick Start VHS video that demonstrates the recording process and features, an outboard AC power supply, and even a 100MB Zip disk containing two demonstration songs.
Some of the mic effects include algorithms taken from the VT-1 Vocal Transformer, that will turn a male voice into a female (and vice versa), or turn you into a chipmunk. Could be a lot of fun at parties!
The built-in tuner shows a virtual moving meter, like a regular guitar tuner. This may not seem like a big deal, but believe me, it is. Tuning to the BR-8 before each instrumental track assures you that all takes will be tuned the same.
Individual slider controls for each track, and master level control, too. Status LEDs below each track slider show which ones are armed and ready for recording (red) or in playback mode (green). And if 8 tracks aren't enough, there are eight virtual tracks available for each channel track. You can record three different solos on track 3, then pick the best of the litter for the final take -- or take the intro from virtual track 3-1, the middle from 3-2, and the outro solo from virtual track 3-3. All this and you still have seven tracks left!
Bouncing tracks down to a single track is a piece of cake, too. since it's digital, there's no noise. You can bounce virtually forever. Now you can layer vocal tracks like Freddy Mercury or guitar tracks like Les Paul. Remember that the Beatles recorded Sergeant Pepper with a 4-track. Think what you can do with 64 virtual tracks!
Don't have a bass? No problem! The BR-8 includes COSM modeling, taken from the VG8 guitar processor, that makes your electric guitar sound like a bass! Or if you want to sound unplugged, you can make your Paul Reed Smith sound like an acoustic. There's also pickup modeling so you can turn your Strat® into a Les Paul® or your SG® into a Tele®. Of course, if your spouse knows about this, he or she won't be nearly as agreeable the next time you get a bad case of GAS (guitar acquisition syndrome).
Amp modeling is also excellent, with sounds ranging from California surf to English stack to custom boutique models all nicely emulated. There's even a wah that you can use with an optional expression pedal! The guitar effects are so nicely done that I don't even bother with an effects box -- I plug my guitar straight into the BR-8, dial up an effect, and bang away. I especially liked the tremolo. Since the effects are all adjustable, as far as parameters go, I was able to come up with a great, moody, trem tone that was so good it inspired me to build a song around it.
The Rhythm Track feature adds studio-quality drum sounds garnered from Roland's V-Drum technology to the BR-8. This is much classier than having a metronome to keep time on your music tracks. You can choose from several different drum phrases, as well as have control of the tempo and mix volume. Best of all, this doesn't take even a single track! It will stop and start with your song, in perfect tempo. And unlike most drum machines, you can even vary the tempo during a song! You can also sync the BR-8 to an external MIDI device, or sync a MIDI device (such as a keyboard or PC) to the BR-8 so your composition is in perfect time.
So how's the sound quality? In a word: great! You can select at the time you set up a song to be recorded whether to use MT2 for the highest audio quality, LIVE for longer recording capacity (such as when recording a live performance), or LONG to allow for the longest recording time with a slight sacrifice in quality. I always use MT2, which easily allows me to keep an entire 5 minute song on a single Zip disk. If you're curious about the total amount of time that each mode allows, MT2 gives approx. 50 minutes of one track time (shared among the number of tracks used), +60 minutes for LIVE and +75 minutes for LONG.
Incidentally, I LOVE the convenience of Zip disks. I use one disk per song, then back the disk up onto my PC, where I can burn it onto a CD-ROM at my convenience so I'm never at risk of losing a masterpiece. Zip 100 disks are really coming down in price, too, so that makes it all the more attractive to use them as a storage medium. I feel sorry for those people with an older digital recorder that requires them to back up the internal hard drive after they have half a dozen songs recorded onto it. They have quite a process they have to go through before they can unload the disk to make room for fresh recordings. And good luck trying to recover a song and put it back onto the hard drive for later editing! With the Zip drive, there's no problem. Push a button to eject the disk, insert a different one, and you're all set to record or edit a different song. It's that easy. And if it's easy, then you'll end up using it -- again and again.
My wish list for the future? I'd like Boss to consider adding additional tracks. 12 would be cool; 16 would be awesome. Then increase the number of simultaneously recordable tracks from 2 to 4. I realize that having too many tracks initially recorded will cut into the amount of disk space available, so I have a solution for that, too: change the storage medium from Zip 100 to Zip 250 disks. I realize that this means more expensive media, but as long as I could still store the data on my PC (where I can burn backups onto a CDRW disk), then I can keep my Zip disk investment to a minimum. (Without meaning to, I just about summed up the VS880 unit from Roland, Boss' parent company!)
Other wishes for an upgraded model would be a pair of XLR input jacks. The BR-8 was designed for guitarists, so that's why 1/4" inputs were provided. I have no beef with that. I already own a handful of Hi-to-Lo-Z transformers, so I just pop one on the end of my XLR mic cable when I need to record vocals. But if the number of inputs was expanded, then a pair of XLR ins would be most welcome.
And the BR-8 is very easy to use. In fact, it's so intuitive, you literally don't need to open the manual to make your first recording. But to get the most features (and fun) from your BR-8, be sure to watch the short video included with it. That video will certainly set your creative juices flowing! And for a real jaw-dropper, listen to the song Finder's Keepers that is on the demo Zip disk. You'll be having fun trying out different mixes on that song alone!
The US list price for the BR-8 is $839, but you can get it for a lot less online.
During the sumer of 2001, Boss introduced a scaled-down version, the BR-532, that records to SmartMedia memory cards instead of Zip disks. It is a 4 track recorder, each with 8 virtual tracks.
BR-8 Resources | Musician's Worldwide Net | Discount Music Gear
MWN Product Review by Brett McCarron
Having owned a variety of cassette and reel-based analog recorders, including a $3500 8-track deck (Tascam 688 midistudio), I decided to enter the realm of digital recording. The advantages of digital include random access (ability to move to a certain spot in a song instantly), cutting and pasting of entire measures, unlimited bouncing of tracks, and best of all ... no tape hiss!
Introduction
Are you kidding? This baby is loaded!
Features
This rig is loaded and is ready to roll right out of the box. I plugged into the instrument input, adjusted the level pad so that the level wasn't above zero on the LCD meter, then pressed the effects button. I was impressed that Boss added intelligence to the input subsystem. When an instrument is plugged in, 50 effects pertaining to instruments are available. If a microphone is inserted, you'll get an additional 50 effects that are mic-specific.
Strengths
Boss has a new program called BR-8 Wave Converter Software (downloadable for FREE) that lets you take BR-8 Zip disks, mount them on any PC with a Zip drive, and convert single or stereo BR-8 tracks to .wav files. Or you can take .wav files from the PC and load them into pre-formatted BR-8 songs. The BR-8 Wave Converter Software lets you:
Free Software
My wish list for the BR-8 is surprisingly small. After owning it for over a year now, I'm still amazed at how well it holds up. This is, bar none, the best value I have ever seen for any musical instrument, accessory, or recording gear.
Wish List
Boss really accomplished something by cramming so much technology and sound-capturing power into such a compact unit. When I bought my BR-8, I was expecting to use it strictly as a scratchpad for capturing those amazing riffs we guitarists come up with at 3 am. What I've since discovered is that this professional quality deck is also great for learning songs and solos, and also for making demo songs for my band to learn. I've even used it to record sound samples appearing on the web site I work for.
Conclusion More...
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Boss BR-8 Digital 8-Track Studio
BR-8 Resources | Musician's World Net | Blame Productions Mega Site
