Not to beat a dead horse:
1. Roland br532
2. Fostex VF80 w/cd
3. Korg D12 or D16
4. Roland 840GX
5. Tascam 788
All above are within my price range. Any thoughts?
1. For studio use (doesn't have to be world class)
2. Perhaps to incorporate in live down the road.
3. Easy to hook up to a cd burner without having to use software.
4. Ease of use.
Thoughts are appreciated. Again, only need 4 channels - dumping my finished sequences into stereo tracks and adding a vocal here and there. Simple. No advanced editing required. My only concern is that the finished product won't sound like a toy project compared to the upper end recorder results. Or am I wasting my time and should go with a more powerful unit for better sound.
Zuki

Check out the Zoom MRS1044
http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=162&brandID=4

great unit.

I'm still trying to get info on the Fostex MR-8. This uses CompactFlash storage and is the next level "down" the price range (and capability) from your list. Definately portable, though, and you are doing the sort of things I'm thinking of.

dnj was kind enough to point me at this review of the Fostex:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=...ts/doc_id=90893

Hi Zuki,

Still think you should record directly from your keyboard to the computer, thereby eliminating the headaches and expense of placing a recorder between the two devices. Give it a try and I sincerely believe that you'll achieve great results.

Gary

Gary,
Doing both and just having gone through another round with my computer and Sonar....when they work they are great when they don't work right what a royal pain. I love the editing capabilities, but spent the last 2 days hassleing with corrupt drivers, loading and unloading etc etc etc to get it back to working right again and when I did, I shut it off and went back to my stand alone zero hassle hard disc recorder.

For staight up ease of use hassle free a stand alone is the inly way to fly IMO.


------------------
jam on,
Terry
http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

Hey Zuk,
I tried messing around with the digital recording. I had a fortex for about a week.
The best results I've gotten so far. And I've been really trying!!!!! Is to do all the arragments on the keyboard in the built in sequencer. Going from that to a mixer. using the mic into the mixer. Then hooking up the mixer into the line in on the sound card. Then recording that into the computer using goldwave. Still needs some tweeking but I'm getting better results... For the old b-day I'm going to get a better sound card (Right now I'm using the on board sound and I'm surpised it can record so well).

------------------
I don't steer the ship, I bail out the water.

I totaly agree with Terry. I gave up on recording with the P/C Acid pro 3.0, Sonar, or whatever. Hard Disc recorder is the way to go.

------------------
www.donnypesce.com

Terry & Donny,

Were you connecting your keyboards to the computers via a midi or usb cable, or were you doing directly through the sound card's line-in input jack? There's a major difference in the complexity of recording, depending on which source you select. Most everyone that has used either GoldWave or SoundForge XP 4.5 and connected directly from the keyboard's audio out to the computer's line-in have not had a problem. However, I have talked with lots of folks that used either the USB or MIDI connections and reported nothing but greif. Later on this evening, I'll put together a couple MP3's and post them on my website using the technique I described on Joe Waters forum http://psrtutorial.com/ . I'm using a Compaq Presario with a Pentium III 933 mhz processor and 128 megs of RAM. The sound card is the standard card that's part of the computer's motherboard--nothing special. I have tried other programs including Acid-Pro and Sonar, both of which are good programs, but they were not user friendly. Additionally, they did not work well with processors that were slower than 500 mhz and 128 megs of RAM was the bare minimum for nearly all of the programs released lately. I'm in the process of testing Aduacity for Windows and while it seems to be a bare-bones recording program, it may prove acceptable for what most of the musicians on the forum are hoping to achieve.

Gary

Thanks for all the suggestions. I went ahead and purchased a used/mint 840GX ($350). I've worked with the 880 before and understood it enough for what I need. I felt with this unit, I could experiment with the Audiophile 24/96 too to get my feet wet on using the wife's cd burner in her computer (she's already paranoid that I'll mess up her programs). Also, I have the Roland VA-76, so I can take advantage of using zip formats. Wish me well. (Most problems lie in the fact that I sell stuff before I learn it, thus getting nothing done!)
Zuki

Gary,
I have done all of the above that you speak of here. I started going straight to the sound card and no offense (different strokes) but the quality was no where near acceptable to me with a sound blaster live.

Both my machines are P4's one with a 1.5 ghz processor and 512 ram the other a P4 with a 2.5 ghz processor and 384 ram, so they're not slugs by any means.

I have a Delta 4x4 card, with a midiman midisport 4x interface and a 4< & 4> breakout box. The other a M audio Quattro box. Near top of the line stuff. All of which works real well and with midi there are really no problems analog wav's is where the grief is.

I get how the programs work and have that down. The inherent hassles really are about computers themselves and the stupid things they do because of conflicts, IRQ sharing, driver sharing etc. and the rest of the unexplainable things that computers do on a whim. As I said when they work right they are great, one of our best inventions, when they don't they are a pain to deal with.

On the other hand my h/d recorder, I push the button and record....period. And there is no hassle with then taking those tracks burning them to a cd and loading them to the pc to put on my site.

If computer based recording works good for you as it does for many....great. I think for the most part it's more trouble than it's worth. I'm about making music rather than trying to figure out what's causing the program to crash.

I get it all and how they work and how computers work. I just think for recording music they are often times too much hassle.


------------------
jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 01-29-2003).]