Boss BR-600

Its basic functions are very easy to use; you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. But in order to be able to do some track- or effects-editing, the small screen will prove to be a nuisance, and you'll need the manual nearby.

The manual wasn't written that well IMO; very 'all over the place'.

I rate this a 7, since for ME the 'ease of use' factor (or lack thereof) was my main reason to sell it and get a used Korg D1200 instead.

Sound quality is o.k., but not up to par with the Yamaha AW-series, Korg and Akai recorders. But you have to see it what it is; a quick sketch pad for demo-recordings or quick location-ideas.
Yes, it will sound way better than a 4-track portastudio on tape, but to me there was a little room for improvement, as it does record in a lossless format, and not uncompressed.

Drumcomputer: only a few kits and those sound very produced/static. Not much nuance there.

Guitar effects: nice to have them, but don't sell your Pod/V-Amp/J-Station just yet.

It's Boss, so it's pretty dureable. Yes, the case is plastic and I wouldn't want to drop it 5 feet from a bar or something, but it will take some road-abuse.

Yes, I've dealt with them. It did take me 2 attempts mailing them, before I got an answer, but when I did, I was helped very well

It's useful for any style of music, but the main limitation will be the fact that you can only record 2 tracks simultaneously.

It was my 3rd DAW (after a Korg D16 and Yamaha AW2400) and I sold the BR-600 to get a Korg D1200 (for roughly the same price).
If you REALLY want the most portable, flat type of recorder and you're aware of its limitations (1GB cards max., small screen, etc.) then it's a decent buy. If you just want a good small home-studio, I'd look to recorders with a bigger screen and better pre-amps and options. I've hooked an Art Voice Channel (preamp) to one of the mic/line inputs, and it would quickly clip on the BR-600, even with the gain and recording level minimised.

I wish it had:
-a (way) bigger screen
-uncompressed recording quality
-support for 4, 8 and maybe 16GB CF-cards.
-pan pots per channel.
-an aux send, to connect an external effect.

Well, all those wishes were granted when I got the Korg D1200. Sure, the Korg is bigger than the BR-600, but given the current used-prices, it's a no-brainer, at least for me.

This not an easy product to use. I bought it primarily for taking some simple recordings of band rehearsals.
You really need to know what you're doing and take time to read the 200+ page manual. It does have quite a wide selection of features (which is good) and its not really intuitively designed so its really easy to get lost.
Its also pretty unforgiving - I found myself accidentally deleting tracks or missing a button and finding that it hadn't recorded. I'm far from a technophobe having worked in IT for many years and I certainly wouldn't recommend this to people who like things nice and simple.

Its pretty faithful when it comes to sound. Your recordings will only be as good as the mics and other equipment you use obviously.
It does come with a whole host of different effects and equipment models. I tried recording a bass and was pleased see that I could do most things. For instance not only did it have flanger, but you could vastly alter the various properites of the effect. The same was true of delay, distortion, chorus and the other kind of effects you'd expect.

I have serious gripes abouts its reliability. Structurally it seemed Ok - no bits falling off or anything like that but the USB connection was a different matter.
Twice I found the recorder wiped the whole memory card! It will not tolerate any kind of connectivity issue with a PC. If anything goes wrong, you're likely to lose EVERYTHING!
On one occaision after spendong a good few hours recording a session with my band, I tried to upload to PC and it froze accessing a file - next thing I knew everything had gone!! I wouldn't rely on this to hold on to your recordings at all!
Add to this an overly complicated and unforgiving interface and you may find it upsetting you quite a bit!

Never used

The only positive for the product was a good sound and decent range of FX.
On the negative there's plenty wrong.
Easy of use and reliability both very bad as I have said.

Default memory card is 128MB which is hardly worth having - you'll get just a few minutes recording time if you're using a few tracks. You can upgrade but you better be sure the recorder likes your memory card - it's fussy!
It has no phantom power or XLR ports. Basically you'll need to get a mixer too if you're wanting to use decent mics.
You'll get just 2 tracks recording simultaneously.

I wouldn't recommend anybody buy this!
Maybe a few years ago it would have had appeal but it's well past it's best before date now. The price of c??250 is a bit of a giggle unless you're one of the poor people who actually bought one.

I can't wait to get rid of mine. I found a Fostex MR8 HD CD for just over ??300 with a CD writer built in, 4*phantom power, 40 GB hard drive and 4 tracks simultaneus recording. Shop around, there's better stuff out there for sure.

AVOID THIS PRODUCT!!

Very easy to use. I hadn't recorded with a multi-track recorder since the mid 80s, and I was up and running within minutes.

Good sound quality for the price: crystal clear, and the drums sound fantastic. Only about half of the guitar effects seem useful; the rest seem like gimmicks. Record without the effects---i.e., mic your amp---if you want a fuller, livelier sound. The built-in mics are good, but they are way too sensitive, and will record everything in the room, including the shape of the room. Use low impedance, uni-directional, dynamic mics (e.g., SM58, SM57) for superior results.

Dependable, but not rugged enough for a gig situation.

Never dealt with BOSS customer support.

Been playing rock for 30 years: mostly Gibson guitars and Fender amps.

This little machine blows away the old analog multi-track recorders I used in the mid 80s. I'd definitely get another one if it were stolen.

The punch-in edit feature is great and, with a little practice, it's "seamless."

The only real problems I have with it are that it only uses a 1 gig card, and the drums are very difficult to program/arrange.

yeah this thing takes about a week to really get the hang of but you should expect that with all the cool things you can do with it. i watched a lot of youtube tutorials of the br600 before i received my unit and then i used the manual to put it all together and i have no problem putting songs down now. very fun when you get the hang of it.

the songs ive put together sound like cd quality. the effects that you can add into each track are great. after you record a guitar track and add reverb to it and it sounds amazing! the pan option can really make songs stand out and give them character. i always use the jazz drum kit thats biult in but i think the snare could sound a little better....but it still decent. putting songs onto your computer and burning them to cd is very easy. once a song is recorded you can pretty much have it burned to a cd within 5 or 10 minutes. the first time i burned a song to a cd and listened to it in my car i was blown away at how great it sounded.

ive had mine now for about 6 months. i use it about 10-15 hours a week. never had a problem with it. i would use it at a gig, very confident in its performance and reliability

havent had to deal with them. havent had any problems.

i play music that is kind of a mix of alkaline trio, smiths, m83, deathcab for cutie. i play out of a line 6 spider 100watt tube head, mesa rectocab, goldtop les paul. i also have a yamaha 223 keyboard with tons of different sounds that i can add into songs. the keyboard can directly be hooked up to the unit with a quarter inch cable which makes it sounds perfectly clear in recorded songs. i can get my equipment to sound great being mic'd to the br600. but the amp models that are built in sound great if you dont feel like having a lot of equipment set up. all you really need is a guitar, headphones, and the br600 and you can make a song with bass, guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals, and drums. i think this one is just as good as the 900cd. the 900cd just has the cd burner built in. im just so happy i can write songs exactly how i want them and no one else has the power to screw them up.

This is a fairly straight forward product, the biggest problem I had with the manual is that it didn't explain the Drum machine in a way that made sense. I found help online and now have no problems using it.

The sound quality is decent no extra noise, I like a lot of the built in effects especially for Acoustic guitar and Bass and the vocal effects are nice.

Mine has always worked flawlessly that is all I can say.

Now we are getting to why I'm really writing this reveiw. I have found that Boss and Carvin have the rudest Customer service around. Carvin being first and Boss a close second. The main issue with the BR-600 is that they take an old style CF Card which can be difficult to find because of the speed and size of the card. I emailed Customer Support about getting cards and they give you links to CF Card Manufacturers the only problem is digital cameras moved forward and started using faster, larger cards so even the manufacturers don't have them. I did find an SD to CF adapter once and emailed Boss support to see if that would work I also asked the question if it was possible to offer some kind of upgrade to the machine to allow it to run with more current cards. The first question was answered no pretty short and sweet the second question wasn't answered.

This was a good buy 4 years ago for 400.00 dollars, mine was a floor model and so was cheaper than that plus it came with power cords and all of the other stuff that people are complaing about it not having. Now, this machine shouldn't even be on the market without some upgrades to make it compatible with newer cards. My recomendation is save up for something better or go with something cheaper such as a tascam hand held recorder or something of that nature.

I've used my BR-600 for close to a year now. Paid $330 CAD new. I am actually very pleased with it overall. I purchased 1 gig Compact Flash Cards ($20 CAD each) for it right away. You get approx 40 full songs storage capacity when using the 1 gig card, however, 1 gig cards are discontinued at most computer suppliers now. I was disappointed to know the unit did not come with a DC adapter (Boss DC Adapter, approx $25 CAD extra). Manual is okay but a bit confusing. Wish it came with a DVD manual or better yet, an online instructional video/manual. Still figuring out all of in's & out's of bouncing & mastering tracks.

I am exceptionally pleased at the sound quality. No hiss, no pops, nothing, near CD quality. Finished songs sound amazing when bounced & exported to an iPod. Haven't played with the Mastering Tools & EQ so I'm sure with a little more experimenting, final cuts could even be better. I run cables out from the BR-600 to a 200w Ampeg bass amp combo & it sounds amazing during playback, lots of low, mid & high ends. The built in drums have a great low kick & snare. Wish there were more drum sounds (sticks, rim shot, more cymbols, etc...). The built-in condenser mics work very well for vocal tracks but a high quality mic works even better. Lots of built-in vocal effects to choose from.

Portability (fits in a guitar case) & reliability are what I'm most impressed with. I have had a couple of instances where the unit displays a message "Disk Error" (or something to that effect). Turn the unit off then on seems to reset it without losing tracks. I like that it takes 6 AA batteries, so when you want to play back a tune after a practice or gig, you don't HAVE to connect the DC adapter. That's cool.

Haven't had the need to deal with Roland/Boss customer service, thus I don't have an opinion.

I've been playing guitar & bass for over 20 years. I've owned a low-end Tascam analog 4 track in the past (remember cassettes?, lol). The BOSS BR-600 digital recorded blows it away, especially for the same cost. My, how technology has changed... for the better.

Instruments/gear: 4 string ESP LTD Bass guitar thru an Ampeg BA210SP Bass Amp (210W) Combo, Ibanez electric guitar w/ 2 double humbucker pick-ups thru a 65W Marshall amp. 6 string Ovation electric/acoustic guitar. 4 string Wasburn fretless bass.

PA gear: an 8 channel Peavey Powered Mixer/Amp XR(R) 8600, a pair of Peavey PV(R)215 Loudspeakers (700W @ 8 ohms/1400W @ 4 ohms). Shure mics.

If my BR-600 were ever lost or stolen, I'd probably upgraded to BR-1200 or BR-1600 simply because they have an 80 gig hard drive built-in, that's even cooler.

I really wish BOSS/ROLAND would have thought through the whole max 1 gig Flash Card thing. It should be able to accept 16 or 32 gig Compact Flash Cards from day one. Kinda limiting that way. It should also come with a DC adapter, that was a little sneaky, but for $330 CAD I consider it one of the best musical equipment purchases I've ever made.

Laying down & editing tracks has been easy from day one. Play back sound is killer, especially through an iPod.

If someone out there knows of any instructional videos or tip/tricks for the BOSS BR-600, please post them on YouTube. Thanks for reading my review, now get back to playing music, you slacker!

This unit is incredible for the price. I am using it live as a combination guitar processor/drum machine. Editing patches is a breeze, once you read the manual once and play with it for a couple of minutes. (This is not rocket science, people)

Sound quality is excellent; no noise at all. I am using a nylon string Takamine TH-5C with the CoolTube preamp, into an FRFR amp...
The effects are excellent; I only wish there were a spring reverb...
(but I have one in my LR Baggs amp)... I usually use from clean through blues/light crunch sounds, but the metals compare favorably with other units I've tried...

But a MAJOR feature for me is the Toneload, which allows me to import my own .wav percussion samples, and edit drum tracks on the computer using the downloadable editor. AFAIK the Zoom HD series is the only other Multi-track that allows this, and it is 'way bigger....:-)

I can get the BR-600 into the outside pocket of my guitar case, sling it over my shoulder, put a Roland Mobile Cube in the sportpack of my motorcycle, and I have a complete portable solution that can be battery powered and sounds great for small venues.

It is small, but if you take care of it, it seems substantial enough...

I've always have excellent response from Roland/Boss technical support via email or telephone.

I think the complaints about the old-style flash cards not being available are somewhat justified, but you can find them pretty easily on Amazon, EBay. Ritz camera also carries them...

The lack of storage may be a problem (its bigger brother, the BR-900CD lets you record to computer via the s/pdif). I would like to see an upgrade to version 2 of the BR-900, but I am very, very happy with the sounds and amp models as they are....

I can't buy the flashcards that are compatible with this machine. It renders this thing useless, because you can barely fit one song on it. Terrible planning from Roland, terrible.

Great, but storage capacity ruins the usefulness of the machine. When you run out of storage space, you cannot record anymore! Talk about Roland dangling a carrot! Upgrade the machine to use 4 and 8 gig compactflash cards!!!!

Rating reliability is moot if it is incapable of doing its job in the first place. The BR-600 is a waste of time and money.

Roland are terrible for customer service. What's worse is that Long and McQuade in Canada, where I bought this thing, doesn't even carry flashcards!...how stupid is that?

Lame...I was excited about this product until I tried to record one bloody song. Looking for these stupid flashcards should not be what I'm doing...I should be recording!!!!

No previous experience of recording but wanted something that I could use to record live gigs, a bit backing work and to help with a sound FX drama class.

Despite nearly going for Fostex due to other critiques, I found it very easy to use (decent recording to tracks within half an hour of reading the manual).

The manual is very helpful for those first time queries and once you understand the menu abbreviations you are away and running.

Easy and intuitive editing of effects fields such as reverb, chorus etc.

REALLY impressed with the two built-in mics. Used it on batteries to record a live gig and was really impressed by the sound quality. With no effects it really recreated the atmosphere and picked up fine detail that was lost on the night.

The built-in FX are very effective. I only really use the vocal effects although the guitar and line in effects are expansive. Vocal FX in real-time are amongst the best I've heard and are all editable.

I wouldn't recommend throwing it about but it comes with a bag to stop scratches etc. I carry it in an aluminium case so have no worries about that. I have no experience of the value wheel failing and hope that it doesn't turn out to have been "value quality"

No experience

Glad I didn't buy the Fostex. I went for this as it came wit hdrums on board and decent effects. Despite the view that the menu system is complex I think you'll find it intuitive and easy to understand first time as long as you have the manual to hand.

My 5 year old now knows how to record to a track - what more can I say.

Headphone output is good quality and volume - I also use this as a line out for a PA when listening back...

Really useful bit of kit for recording live or in the home studio - really helps with creativity.

Shame it doesn't ship with a PSU. Upgrade to a 1GB card was easy - stocked at Maplin - Type 1 CF Card - easy.

This is not the easiest thing for beginners however the guide is pretty good and you can be familiar with the thing after a week or so.
Would be much better if just more buttons installed, just to make easy to go through menus or adjust EQ or effects. Installed "value" rotary switch is not bad but if works, mine actually gave up after a month or so :-(
LED also could be twice bigger to display levels and time at the same time.

I thing record quality is very good , some effects are also cool and there are lot of them. Including voice effects and lo fi. Guitars various lead effects , acoustics simulation and few bass , with my favorite tube simulation. for sure in comparison to real amp sound rather can't compare but rel. to $that's OK.
Drum souds very good and there some good options too , what is very practical is software for patterns editing where you can much easily do the job. Also you can make you special drum sound if you want.

Here unfortunately I must complain, so after a month or so "value" rotary swittch gave up. Or actually it doesn;t fuction well so skip values down, this makes me really mad , I din't send it back casue I need it all the time , but here is big shame for "boss" to sell such a crap

I don't have much experience with recording both on PC and HW mixer, however I've been looking for simple&small thing in one piece to record demo's or ideas. The thing is very small so I used to program drum in a bed.
There are plenty of effects for GT or bass, mic are also nice maybe except when you want play at the same time GT and mic, than choices are very limited. B
Built in mic. are good enough to sing and record nice sound, however not for lound or live performance.
I wonder why it is not supply with AC/DC power (40$ plus) Don;t think you can survive on batteries it eats up in a 2 hours.
Memory cards are still avaliable and inexpencive I didn't have issue with that (remember to do a backup to PC)
Overall it is cool thing, especially for guy like me who play with a friend without drummer and want to record ideas or pre paths to jam along with it.