Boss BR-8

Very Easy to use, but requires reading some in the manual, has great tuner and easy rhythm trainer. Only complicated thing was when using v tracks, didn't understand and couldn't find it in the manual, rather found it online, that when you record to a different v track using the bounce function, and then you go back to the input function, you have to go and assign all of the v tracks over again, because they have been moved (kinda of), so once you finish bouncing, and you switch to input, you'll here nothing, making you think you've lost all of what was previously recorded, however, it's still there, you have to hit the v track but and then with the cursor buttons, move the v track to the appropriate track for it to play. Anyway this might save some time, but once you get it down it's very simple. Only other pain is, whenever you select an input, you are assigned an effects patch, and if you don't want an effects patch on it you have to hit the by pass button, This can get kind of frustrating as you end up having to hit the bypass switch all the time in this situation.

I switched from a tascam portastudio 4 track, which recorded to regular audio cassettes, to the br8 about 1 & 1/2 years ago. At first, I was really distraught by the recording quality. It sounded very different from the quality of the Tascam. Something was wrong with it, it sounded very low volume and not at all in you face, it was hard to hear any nuances of the guitar I was playing through a miked amplifier. The Tascam captured the live sound much better on a miked amp than the br8, however, the br8 has nice effects, reverb etc, enough to make it sound much more professional than the tascam ever could. Over a period of a year and a half, I began liking it a lot and made maybe 30 songs on it that I really liked. I never miked an amp with this thing, it just never sounded good, I was always using the direct line in for guitar or bass, and selected an effects patch to work with. This meant I never recored live with anyone really, and was always listening and recording through headphones. Well I'm working on a project now, and half way through I discover both the Korg d1600 and Akai dsp 16 digital recorders which advertise as non compressed recorders, and unlike the boss br8. So I think my problem was this br8 is recording in basically a compressed manner, making miked amps sound very little and unrealistic. I now have a great desire to move on to an uncompressed recorder, and I'll definetely not buy another roland recorder. Sorry boys at Roland but your compression really sucks. I mean how can I create music if what I play and hear is different from what is recorded. Thanks for the year and a half, but I believe I would have been better off with an uncompressed recorder.

PS, I read a response by some Roland official about the compression debate, saying that she loves to here when people complain about roland compression, because Roland doesn't use compression. However she said right after this, that what they do is convert the signal to a smaller package and then open that package latter. I was like, how can you tell me this, either way, the sound I hear after recording is almost 90 percent of the time extremely dissapointing unless I use one of their patches.

Very good reliability.

Never tried it. Assume it to be good

I got this eight track for Christmas and i was so happy. I just talked to a guy at guitar center and skimmed through the manual, and I can record tons of stuff. It's weird, this thing is almost exactly what i needed. I needed to record qulaity work, but with no bassist, it would suck to make songs without bass, but guitar can be changed into bass with the COSM effects. Everywhere from JClean to bubbles? I dunno, anyways...... really easy. It looks like it has less knobs than the four track boss makes.

I don't have studio moinitors or any good mics, just a live one, and it still sounds great. With the voice you can have chip munks to reguluar and beyond. This thing is limitless, you just have to be creative. There might be a little hum with some effects, but i prefer to mic through an amp and no effects. I love this. You have to set some knobs and stuff to your liking.

Uhh, this wouldn't really go in a gig. Unless u were recording live. Anyways, don't throw the zip disks around and ull be ok.

Boss/Roland is friendly, but u won't need to call them

I play all kinds of music, but this helps me make professional recordings. I can make something up and test it with a bassline in like two minutes, great machine. Someone said you can't record a band, but that is wrong. True, you can only record two tracks at a time, but for good recordings, u should do everything seperate.

This is about as multi tracking can get. The only difficulty is the 'effects' switch being 'on' all the time unless you manually bypass it. They should have had a effects on/off and edit switch...then it would be perfect!!!

Editing operations are very easy to use as well as the basic record/mix functions.

I sold a Tascam 414 MKII on eBay to raise funds to buy this unit and am well, well, pleased with the sound. If you plug a guitar directly into the box the effects are good (but not great, therefore I can only give it an 9), but if you plug a processor into the box it records the results very faithfully. I have not messed much with the effects at this point though...I have a VG-88 and do the effect thing there.
I did have a ground loop issue, but the mess of power supplies that the BR-8 is plugged into is tremendous (two computers, printers, phones, and even a fan for Pete's sake)...so it didn't surprise me. I eliminated the ground loop though by eliminating any metal hookups to the box (except the VG88)...instead I run fiber from the BR-8 to my JVC XL-R5000 CD burner.....that setup works great for the min bucks!!!

The rhythm guide: The sound here is tolerable, but I am in the process of finding a synth to do the final drum work. I don't think I could use the drums for the final mix as I prefer more live sounding drums.

I bought this unit used from an eBay vendor and it is running perfectly. It is built like a tank. Boss products have never given me problems.

Never dealt with them on the BR-8. But there is a BR-8 group on Yahoo groups who could also be a resource, as well as point to other resources.

I am using this box for composition and practice. I mainly work on Praise / Worship / COntemporary Christian music...which means I pull many genre's in...rock, pop, folk, etc. The BR-8 works great and it is truely a joy for me to have 8 tracks available.

This is a followup for the review regarding the changeout of the 100MB zip drive to a 250MB zip Drive.

I changed out the 100MB Drive to a 250MB zip drive and it works absolutely fine. I followed the directions on the Fender Forum site under Home Reocrding - Breaking BR8 News. The conversion is so easy to do it took about 10 minutes. The site you are referred to from the Fender Forum actually has step by step instructions with pictures. Couldn't be easier. The Zip drive is available at Tiger Direct for $79 or you can get a Iomega for about $120, whichever you trust. I picked the Iomega, but both will work as long as it is an ATAPI interface. GREAT JUST GOT BETTER!!!

This unit is so easy to use, you can start as soon as you take it out of the box without reading the manual. Well thought out product.

Ihave been extremely pleased with the ease of operation and the quality of the recorded product. The preset effects for guitar and bass are okay, but if you go to the user bank, you can tweak them and engineer your own sounds very easily.

I've had no problems with the unit and it came out of a pawn shop for $400. It is a sturdy unit and due to the fact that there's no knobs to break, it is great.

Have not dealt with customer support, but other comments regarding the Roland help line do not indicate that they are very helpful.

I'm just getting into recording and play guitar and do vocals. I really like the ease of setting down tracks and mixing. The short coming is the 100MB zip, although if you check out VS Planet and the Fender Forum, as well as the Yahoo BR 8 groups, you can change the 100MB zip to a 250MB ATAPI internal drive by just replacing the zip drive. There is no special commands or programming, it just comes up as 2 hours and 5 minutes of recording time. (See the VS Planet site for particulars and step by step repalcement) I am going to do this as soon as I can get to Best Buy as they have the 250MB drives for $129. Not bad for getting a whole bunch of recording time!

Extremely easy to use. Plug and play, basically. I don't care for the fact that the default setting is to add effects, but that can be bypassed easily enough.

I record a Taylor 414 both through a mic and sometimes though a saddle pickup, (Fishman active.) I read people mentioning hiss... huh? If you have a loud enough signal from your mic or amp and set your recording levels, this sucker is dead quiet- just a hint of old dbx-style pumping on some of the guitar effects. I keep fairly simple patches- acoustic guitars, a little reverb, a little "broadening" of the sound. I'm really only using it for songwriting demos, so I'm not trying to emulate other artist's sounds, but I think the effects overall sound cool and are fun to play with. For the price- sound quality is excellent, especially if you mix down via an optical cable to CD.

Never tried it live, but it seems to be sturdy enough, I used a printer cover from radio shack on clearance for two bucks as a dust cover when not in use. it has performed flawlessly for me, no problems with discs or anything.

Called to find out if I was missing parts when I got my (demo model); I was; they identified them and shipped them the next day. Maybe I just lucked out!

I don't like the effects coming on as default; i would prefer to record dry... I know it's easy enough to do this though. I would possibly buy another one BUT would really wish the option of saving to a hard drive was available; even using optimize the discs fill up quickly and are pricey. I think it's a very good price, and the value factor is most outstanding. I am a songwriter who plays guitar, not a guitar player, and find my highest compliment for the BR-8 is I seldom notice it's there...

This is just to update my earlier review and in particular my critism regarding recording time when doing several "takes".
As pointed out by Craig Squires' review (thank you very much Craig), if you use the SONG OPTIMIZE feature you get back all your over recorded time. I missed this in the manual (doh!) originally.
Thanks again Craig, but hey that's why we do these reviews - to get answers to problems - and it works!

as previous review - but I now have it midi/sync with a Yamaha QY70+Proteus 2000 which works really well.
I do find the reverb a little limited though.

as previous review

not used

Because of the above, I've revised my opinion and therefore upped my mark

I bought the BR-8 when it just came out in 2000. It was my first digital recorder. And I have to say that at the time it was a great purchase. The whole machine is pretty straightforward, there is anything here that would be mind boggling. The presets on the BR-8 sound all around good some better than others, depending on what you're recording the machine supplies you with quite a few specific patches geared towards that particular instrument. The machine carries Roland's famous COSM modelling system for guitar, but what really surprised me was the effects patches you can get on the "line in" RCA connection. You pretty much have everything except a proper vocoder at your finger tips(you can even change sample rates like on a sampler!). Editing a patch is very easy and you will have no problem making your own sounds in any of the patch channels. The manual as well isn't complicated at all, and I've barely touched it because the machine is extremely easy to use.

The machine is digital so therefore you would be making very crisp very close to professional recordings. Some of the guitar patches can sometimes sound very hot and overloaded though, and the compressor I find doesn't do very much in how much it affects your sound. I often keep the levels slightly hot because the compressor fails to make the sounds punchy, instead they sound loud and irritating with compression. I find that some of the factory presets would require some tweaking to make them useful.

As I said before the machine carries COSM amp modelling which helps out guitarists alot. The preset patches make it so that if your not familiar or don't even want to be bothered with the more advanced types of recording on this machine, it's no problem. It has eight individual tracks of recording which can be selected to record in stereo if you want. It has MIDI out, as well as optical out so it can be used as a stand alone, or alongside your computer.

This machine is extremely reliable. It's never froze on me or done anything to make me shake my faith in it. The ZIP disks that it runs on load up almost immeadiately, and I have never had a problem with loading up a song at all.

I couldn't tell how good customer support is because I've never had to contact them about anything regarding this machine.

Overall the BR-8 is a good machine to start out on because it gives you a basic sense of digital recording. I would recommend this for people who have never owned a digital machine before. However if you are looking to go pro, this machine will never satisfy your needs. Another thing is this machine can only record up to two tracks at a time, so if you think your going to set this up to record a band, your going to waste alot of time finding out that this machine is for solo artists only. I have however recorded a band on this machine, but it gave me alot of grief because the BR-8 is simply not designed for this type of recording. The machine runs off of 100mb ZIP disks only, so basically you are given 49 minutes and 49 seconds to record and how much time you spend recording on each tracks is subtracted from your 49 minutes. I usually after finishing a song would be left with 10 to 20 minutes left of recording time. Be prepared to spend as well on ZIP disks cause you will use one per song, and ZIP disks are 12 to 18 dollars each which makes for expensive recording. The BR-8 will give you good footing in recording, but for a thousand dollars don't expect this machine to solve your growing professional needs, cause it won't past the test.

Couldn't be easier, really. It's possible to do sophisticated things with it that would take more time to figure out, but the weekend warrior will have no trouble at all.

Not bad. Clear but thin. Get yourself a good mic and a tube preamp, and don't use the cheesier guitar presets. Definitely EQ before mixing, and try using the DOUBLING feature as well, which is a very short digital delay. Gives the sounds a bit of depth, esp. vocals. Use the digital output to burn songs onto CDs, if you have a recorder. You can plug guitars in directly, but I've had better luck with a preamp or miked amp. The presets I like are Jazz Guitar (crunchy-clean) and Overdrive. These are boss effects you're using, so they're good, but make your own combinations, if you're gonna use them.

Good except for the zip drive. I've lost two songs due to the disk getting all snarled up with itself from repeated punch-ins. Very bad, that. By the way, many here have complained that they can't get their disk time back when they make mistakes. They can. Use the OPTIMIZE feature. It gives you all your lost time back.

Never called 'em.

My 10 here indicates that I've seen nothing else so easy and good-sounding for the money. You can't record a whole band, but whaddya want for seven hundred bucks? Future generations of this thing should can the zip drive and use a hard disk, but that's a lot to ask.

This is almost too easy to use. Everything is very accessable with the turn of the dial . Actual knobs for eq'ing would be nice , but not a major deal . The manual is an easy read and almost unneeded anyway .

So far ( i've had the unit for about a month ) the sound has been good . I've tweaked a few things , especially the vocal sounds , which really is a necessity. The factory settings are very dry . And I'm not using a great mic either.. Just an old shure 57.
The guitar sounds are pretty good . If you double them up and record them in stereo , possibly even combining two different sounds panned far left and far right , you can get some good tones. And the Bass simulator comes in handy too. Its quite adeqaute for song demos .

well , for the month I've owned it its been reliable. Time will tell with this catagory though .

N/a

Very Good tool. I play mostly guitar rock stuff , and its seems to be made with guitar players in mind . I haven't had any problem with noise with the unit , and I sit right in front of it . Sometimes the overdubs are a little clunky ( causing drop-offs) , but if you plan good places to punch in , this can be remedied . The auto punch in feature is great... no more punching in with toes !! I wish it had a bigger storage capacity , as realistically , you can only get one song on a disk . But ,if you own numerous disks , and or mix your tunes right away to another format ( mini-disk is highly recommended ) , this isn't really a problem . I love that it has a digital output !!!!
Clean mixing signal , no noise !!! I don;t miss that old tape hiss thats for sure . If you're a singer/songwriter.. Buy this unit !!