Need to Choose

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I sing lead and play guitar for a acoustic/folk/bluegrass trio, and we
also (try to) do our own sound. We haven't come close to "making it,"
and don't really expect to, but we are making some progress. We have
not gone into the studio to record, but may within the next six months.
In the meantime, we'd like to add a small recorder to our equipment, to
(a) record practice session tapes; (b) record a monitor-send signal
during our live performances; and (c) produce audition discs for venues
that insist on one. I don't see us doing our own mix: strictly live
stereo. We use SM-78's for live voice, Oktava 319's for voice on our
home-brew recordings, and small diameter condensers for instruments in
both applications. The two recorder options I'm looking at are the
Edirol R1 and the Fostex MR8HD. These are about the same price. The
Edirol is very portable and has built in mics. It will give us 3 hours
at 16/41.1 (with the $150 2GB flash card). The Fostex is not
battery-powered, but will give us 14 hours at 16/41.1 and permits four
channel recording, so we could experiment with some crude
post-production mixing/editing. Field recordings would be nice, but
for 99% of our uses, we'll have power available. I guess I'm leaning
toward the Fostex, although I love the lean/clean design of the R1.
Can I get some advice from wiser heads? Which would you select at or
around the $400 price point - or is there another unit I should be
considering?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Don

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

> I sing lead and play guitar for a acoustic/folk/bluegrass trio, and we
> also (try to) do our own sound. We haven't come close to "making it,"
> and don't really expect to, but we are making some progress. We have
> not gone into the studio to record, but may within the next six months.
> In the meantime, we'd like to add a small recorder to our equipment, to
> (a) record practice session tapes; (b) record a monitor-send signal
> during our live performances; and (c) produce audition discs for venues
> that insist on one. I don't see us doing our own mix: strictly live
> stereo. We use SM-78's for live voice, Oktava 319's for voice on our
> home-brew recordings, and small diameter condensers for instruments in
> both applications. The two recorder options I'm looking at are the
> Edirol R1 and the Fostex MR8HD. These are about the same price. The
> Edirol is very portable and has built in mics. It will give us 3 hours
> at 16/41.1 (with the $150 2GB flash card). The Fostex is not
> battery-powered, but will give us 14 hours at 16/41.1 and permits four
> channel recording, so we could experiment with some crude
> post-production mixing/editing. Field recordings would be nice, but
> for 99% of our uses, we'll have power available. I guess I'm leaning
> toward the Fostex, although I love the lean/clean design of the R1.
> Can I get some advice from wiser heads? Which would you select at or
> around the $400 price point - or is there another unit I should be
> considering?

The discontinued but well-field-tested Nomad Jukebox 3 is worth considering
at under $200 on eBay. It records to a 20GB hard drive (33hrs at 16/44.1),
does fast transfers over Firewire for editing to CD, and has proven to be
adequately user-friendly and very reliable.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Tim Martin wrote:

> I'd go for the Fostex or a similar multitrack device. The reason is you'll
> be able to make pretty good multitrack recordings with it.

I was going to suggest the cheapo 8-track devices, but most of them
(not sure about this Fostex does) record only two tracks
simultaneously. Since he's mostly interested in recording live shows
and rehearsals and making something sound pretty good from it, he
really needs to be able to record 8 tracks simultaneously.

If he had a bigger budget and an excuse to buy a new mixer, I'd suggest
a Mackie Onyx 1620, the Firewire option card, and a laptop or other
portable computer. But that would be on the order of $1200 without the
computer.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

I checked that out last night online. Doesn't appear to allow
recording from live sources - downloads only. The capacity and quality
seemed excellent, though, and the price was certainly nice.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Mike:

$1151, plus shipping, actually -- and I'm tempted. That would be a
very elegant solution, since we would ideally be running 7-8 separate
mic inputs. There are present budget considerations, however (I also
need to do something about our PA mains). The Fostex actually records
(to 40GB) simultaneously, and preserves them in that fashion for later
export. I think we could record pretty well with four well-placed
mics, or by using more mics and assigning them to subgroups in my
mixer. Musician's Friend sent me a promotional E-mail offering to sell
the Fostex new in the box for $349.00, and when I compaire that with
the Edirol at $439.00, plus $149.00 to get the 2 GB CF card (+/- $600
total), the choice is beginning to look clear.

Thanks for your input, however - I lurk here and you generally seem to
make sense. If this goes group goes a bit further, the Onyx 1620 +
Firewire would be perfect. I have a laptop that could handle the chore
in the field, I think, and we could use my big desktop unit at home.

Thanks again.

Don