I'm thinking of laying my Tascam multi-track cassette recorder to rest and finally go digital. I've been looking at the various digital multi-tracks from Roland and others....I recently seen the Boss BR-8 demoed and was really impressed. The sound quality was awesome and the effects were great...and the price? Wow! I'm a keyboard player mainly, i do play a little giutar so the cosm effects really interested me as well. Is this unit good for keyboard players???I know that it is marketed mainly to guitar players because of the guitar effects. I have a midi setup which involves a few keyboards and a sequence program. cubasis running on a mac. The Boss only has a midi out...so would there be a problem integrating it into my setup? My other concern is, that i want to take my music and convert it to mp3 format and post it on the net...how would i be able to do that if i purchased the Boss BR-8???Thanks in advance for any advice...

The BR-8 does sound good, and it has a lot of nice features, but consider carefully a couple of things before you ditch your cassette based recorder. First, the BR-8 does not have a lot of inputs. Second, if you are planning to record on all 8 tracks, you'll only be able to record a few minutes of music on a Zip drive. Don't expect the thing to happily record your band for an entire set. You would have to swap Zip drives between every song!

[This message has been edited by dansouth@yahoo.com (edited 11-20-2000).]

So...my question is this:

Since you've already got the computer running a decent chunk of your studio, why not just upgrade to Cubase VST 24 or reasonable facsimile? Do you need the portability?

dB

Thanks for the response...I don't need the portability....i'm using an older mac performa...but i do have a new imac dvd special edition...it has lots of ram (128) and a good sized hard drive...and runs at 400mhz...the Tascam us-428 was mentioned to me before...it's usb and midi compatible and comes with a scaled down version of cubase (i believe it is cubasis av)....my only concern with that option is computer power....is my imac capable of handling multiple digital audio tracks????Thanks...

Your 400 mHz imac should be able to handle quite a few more audio tracks than the BR-8.

dB

Yeah, You're Mac should run fine. A friend of mine has a 233 pc with 64 meg's ram and he does a ton of midi and audio recording on it without a hitch. If you really want portable and can handle 16 bit maybe take a look at Fostex VF-8. I can't vouch for the VF-8 but I have a VF-16 which I just purchased and I LOVE it, perfect for a bedroom recorder like me. If I remember correctly the VF-8 is in the same price range as the BR8.