Korg PXR-4 Pandora

This little 4track is fairly easy to use, keep your manual handy though as its not that intuitive.

After an afternoon of fiddling about with it I was reasonably confident that I knew how it worked. It does take a lot of fiddling though as there are a lack of buttons on this thing. I'm using this as a straight 4 track, not mixing down at all. It copes well.

I've got the 32mb card with the 2 demo tracks on it and an extra 128mb card. I'm not sure if this orignally came with a usb cable. I have never plugged it into my computer.

Some of the dials look a bit delicate.

I was pleasently surprised with the effects in this little box. Its got some Pink Floyd type ambience to a couple of the presets. The distortions aren't too bad either. Only thing I want to do is Mic up my amp and get some nice feedback recorded. The onboard mic isn't that great, although its not the worst.

I'm running my Les Paul Special through it and its fairly quiet. My Guitar always generates a bit of fuzz and there is some on here too. Saying that you can't hear it at all if you get creative with the volume.

I'm running it through a pair of speakers with a subwoofer for playing back tracks to others. It sounds very good, a nice warm tone comes out of it. It does need a little bit of help with the low ends hence the subwoofer.

I used to write drum and bass, so I find the onboard rhythms laughable. That said as a practice tool its a usefull feature. There is a healthy array of drum beats.

I bought this second hand. The batteries had leaked in there. Cleaned it up and hey presto good as new. I've not encountered any errors. Looks a little bit fragile, but the leather case should afford a certain amount of protection.

8 for now, will update if it has a catastrophic malfunction.

Never dealt with them.

I play an eclectic mix of music. Mostly R&B, Funk, Folk, Rock, soul, jazz, so a little more bass response would of been nice. I can go without distortion 90% of the time so this 4track is a good match for me.

Electric guitar is the easiest to use with this box, As I have said the onboard mic isn't the best so until I get a decent mic I'm not using it to record steelstrung/spanish/mandolin.

I have been playing fifteen years since I was 12. I own a myriad of stringed instruments and midi equipment, but the only thing that I have used with this 4track is my 97 Gibson Les Paul Special. It has become very useful to me and I often grab it and plug in when I come up with a nice lick. I have a paitent friend who has a home studio so I often get him to record mastertracks for me in cubase. This 4track is invaluable though in prepping songs beforehand.

This was a real bargain. I picked it up in a pawn shop and the guy in there barely knew what it was. I haggled him down to 50 GBP.

I'm going to give this a high overall rating as it is a jack of all trades master of none kind of thing.

The ease of use is alright, there very little buttons with very much functions. I can get a really good sound out of the Korg PXR 4. Not as good as professional recording, but still. The effects build in the recording device are not really good. I read the manual first but it's quite hard to understand all functions.
For live recording this device is real good to used, we used it a couple of times, and the quality is very nice.

I can get a good sound out of the Korg PXR 4. Not by using the standard effects, but just the ones I normally use (7 track equalizer+metaldistortion) used on the build-in mic. As well drums are real good to record with it. It's not to noisy, just don't put the input volume to high!

I can depent on it, sometimes it gives an error. But then nothing seems to be wrong?! Real strange, but evrythin is still on after I restored it. We once used the pitchshifter on a gig, but we won't use it again for a gig. We would use it for recording live.

We play a good mix of goregrind and grindcore. The Korg PXR 4 is a good recording unit for this type of music. If it was stolen, I would buy it again or not, depents on whatelse is on the market.
The Korg PXR 4 is just a very good device to record some rehearsel sessions and live stuff.

COMPARING THE Korg Pandora PXR-4 against the Boss Micro BR


Don't trade or throw away your PXR4 yet--- there are things about the Korg you will definitely miss or would like. The PXR4 has a charm all its own, that I have thus far not been able to duplicate on the Micro BR, although the Boss recorder has its good points too.

Okay, first the Micro BR points:
Oh god--- NOT EASY TO USE AT FIRST-- jeez.
I am usually great at figuring out stuff without the manual, going by
intuition and common sense. Not this thing. Must use the manual to get
around on it, then after a while you get it. But you will scratch your head a lot at the start.

The menu layout is just bizarre, not like anything else I've used. No dials or knobs, except for input level and headphones.

The manual is FAIR, not great. You will read something and then go "what??".
Eventually you'll get it after a couple hours. Micro BR 4 out of 10

The Pandora also presents challenges, but in many ways is more easy to get around, even though it seems quite a bit deeper in terms of what it offers. The Pandora has MANY buttons an knobs-- this is definitely good, and allows more rapid non-menu scrolling to do jobs. 6 out of 10

Micro BR sound is quite good, the guitar effects are quite good, although not like a full fledged multi-effects pedal. Good for generic
modern sounds with Chorus/flange,phaser/tremelo/pan/delay. You can add reverb to anything, but the quality of the reverb is nothing great at all, and not particularly good except at low levels of ambience. It has a higher 44.1 sampling rate, so, very nice recording in general. I've heard people bitch about external mic noise, yeah, I can see this. Cheap mic preamps.

The Pandora has a lower sampling rate of 32K, but we have done some KILLER recordings with it, that sound wonderful. We also did a comparison with a CD recording, and blindfolded tried to tell if we were listening to the CD wav file, or the Pandora card--- we could never tell. Plugging in a guitar and running the effects-- yes, the Micro is more pristine, more high tech--- but the Pandora has a charm all its own, its own personality. I like it, and I would not say the Micro BR is "better". Its different.

The drum kit on the Micro is definitely a much higher quality, no doubt about it. But the drum patters DO NOT inspire me at all. They just leave me flat despite the wonderful quality. Its like great sounding generic drums. Bleech. On the other hand, the Pandora has these really cheap sounding somewhat dated drums, that kick ass. The Korg programers made some wonderfully interesting patterns that work immediately. The Micro BR, I haven't gotten anything to work yet. Perhaps I will.

The Korg has more effects, more tweakabiltiy, more flexibility.
The Micro BR has less effects, harder to navigate, but higher quality sound.
I can't say one is better than the other, sorry.

Both probably good, no problems, except for one glitch on the Micro BR where I couldn't get the guitar effects to kick in-- maybe I just hit a button-- don't know. No problems ever with the Korg.

no need

Well, currently, the Pandora offers MUCH more bang for the buck. You can get them on ebay for roughly 1/2 to 2/3 the price of a Micro BR. It has lots of buttons, knobs, slides, friendlier LCD, more effects, better battery life. It is thicker than the Micro BR, and will not slide into your shirt pocket. It has a real retro 90's early 2000 look to it. Cool. But the Smart media cards are a more money at about $60 for 128MB. Record bunch of songs, then export into your computer.

The Micro BR offers pristine sound quality, but less effects, a confusing operating system at first, a more compact size, short battery life (get some new Nickle Hydride batteries 2700 hour or an 9Vold AC with a NEGATIVE center pole.)and it looks thoroughly cool and modern. It uses the more economical and sturdier SD cards (1GB limit).

There you go. Each has advantages-- neither is a substitute for a real recorder or PC workstation software, no way. The best way to use these things is to lay down basic tracks and use the drum machine for reference or inspiration and FORGET ABOUT EDITING and MIXING ON THESE THINGS. That is just stupid and insane. Come on, get real.

Export into your computer, and process and edit there.


Hope this helps-- have fun
Neil Slade
www.BrainRadar.com
The AMAZING Brain Adventure

Once you spend about an hour figuring out how to get to the effects..etc..it's like setting a wrist watch..most of us can figure it out...eventually. :)

This is where I was surprised. It sounds extremely warm and is a tremendous song writing tool. That's why I got it. I sold My PX3 and Px4 Pandora's box units and my Zoom 4 track digital so I could have 1 unit to both write and record with...no cables..no extras...mainly for vacations etc..This unit does it well.
The distortions are not great, but decent. The delays and chorus are very nice. Flange etc is decent as well. You can ping-pong tracks easy enough. It will use up to a 128meg card so you can get a good amount of recording done without running out of memory...and have an extra card if you need to record more.
I am rating this 10 because it does everything that Korg says it does and does it well. Nice job Korg!!
And..another thing..the delays in this are truly wonderful sounding..imagine that...korg making an awesome delay...U2..the EDGE..Korg SDD series delays...anywayz...that's how I feel about it.

Korg stuff usually lasts for a very long time.

Never had to use them.

I would only drop it to 9 because of the learning curve for the unit.
I figured it out after reading the manual and finding which buttons to hit...mainly just to get to the effects, but no problem once I figured it out.
I've been playing a lot of years and own a lot of great gear and have a pro end studio, so believe me when I say this is a great unit..and it will fit in your coat pocked...Awesome for practicing in your room with headphones.
This would definately be an aid in making music.

Picked it up very quickly.... got recording in no time

Ok- i was very skeptical of how this would sound, but it was amazing! No digitalization to be found anywhere... excelent

Never broke yet

Never used

Really portable little device... take it everywhere with me.. i'd recomend it to anyone

This product is very useful, the manual has a quick start section which is so simple a monkey could probably figure it out. If you know some rudimentary techniques of recording, it pays off with this product, therefore I'm giving it an 8- It seems like this product presupposes some knowledge of the recording process. Ergo, this product is not for the blind novice- I would suggest starting on a tape four-track before you get into digital stuff.

My setup is simple. I'm using a Chet Atkins direct into the PXR4. Sometimes to change it up I'll mic a pignose 7100, and run that direct into the PXR4. I also play harmonica, for that I'm using a Bottle O' Blues Mic (you can get it on ebay, rockin mic by the way) with the pignose, I mic that with a Shure and there you have it.
The effects are not bad. Seriously. I'm stoked that there are even effects on this thing! The point is that effects do not a musician make. Recording is brutal in that it shows weak-points in people's playing and makes them standout like a sore thumb. Just be happy this thing has a click track on it as well.
For Bluesy stuff, I forego the "blues" effect and use "straycat" for both harp and guitar.

Absolutely. Just don't lose that AC Adapter!
I wouldn't gig with this thing, I would take it on the road with me though. Its a great tool.

Haven't needed it.

I play alt-country and the blues. I've been playing for 14 years now, and my gear is minimal.
I would definitely replace this thing if it were stolen or lost.
I love the size, ease of use, and the availabilty of more than four tracks. I'm not an effects guy, so I can live without them, but if I was rockin some Dream Theatre stuff I may want to use outside effects rather than the built in stuff. I'm loving the USB thing as well, that's cool. Just remember to convert your song to an MP2 and there you go.
I did a lot of research into this thing. 150 bucks isn't much, but its enough for me to be wary when I buy something (I'm a miser with cash). I considered other brands but I have owned Korg samplers and some of the electribe series and I'm pleased with the overall worth of the company's products.
Again, if you keep it pretty bare bones this thing will work well for you. It's definitely not on par with a pro-tools setup, but for those low on funds its a definite must.

Easy to get started with this unit. It get's more complicated when you dig in, but that's mainly due to it's compact setup (hidden functions, small knobs and faders etc).
I bought this machine just around the time it came out. The idea was to make some recordings with it of a new band I was starting at the time. It's two years later now, and, since we are in the lucky position of having a record deal (which is a hard-to-get position here in the Netherlands), we are mostly working in well equiped studio's. Still, this 'toybox' is used on a daily (!) basis. It allows us to capture ideas very fast and easy and I still get amazed by the recording-quality of it.

I use the PXR4 in a very straight forward way. Pick up an instrument, create a good sound with it (I'm always using a tube recording station for guitar and some good quality mics for drums, keys and vocals) and plug it in. The PXR4 records it very honest. Low on hiss and hum, and when you use the 'high quality' setting, you can easily create tracks that are usefull for high-end recording.
In fact, a great deal of our PXR4 recordings are re-used in the studio. The build-in mic is amazing. You can have great fun recording all kinds of stuff with it.
I never use the build-in effects or drums. To cheesy. No stretching, looping, bouncing either since a studio is a more friendly environment for fiddling with tracks in my opinion.

It looks like a fragile piece of plastic. Yet, it has never let me down. All the keys, faders and in/outputs still work flawless. Considering the fact that it is used on a daily basis for almost 3 years now, one can say this Pandora is very reliable. As long as you don't drop it, it will work.

Never had to deal with them. I heard Korg is very keen on having a healthy customer relation, but that counts for most German musical brands.

I can recommend this unit highly for those whith serious ambitions. For those with ambitions less serious, I can highly recommend this unit too. It's easy and fun working with it. You can achieve very usefull recordings with it in no time.
I do hope it doesn't get stolen or damaged.
For the next generation of PXR4's some do's: XLR-input is more than welcome. Larger faders would be nice too. Skip the batteries, they are gone in 20 minutes anyway.
Dont's: making this device more compact than it is now (or my fingers larger).

When composing or arranging a new song I use the PXR-4 to record live drums, guitars, bass and vocals. I am not a recording buff and I hate twiddling with parameters. Still it did not take me long to record my first song (and what's more: getting to know and working with it did not get on my nerves...!). It's basic functions are easy to learn, the rest is not to complicated either. Only the lack of space (and thus:knobs) makes for a few important functions hidden in the menu. One reason I bought the PXR-4 is the fact that you can connect it to the computer and easily transfer your files to your harddisk, and then burn them to an audio CD or mail them to your fellow musicians. Here's a drawback though: The PXRs output files are MP2s, and my burning software (Roxios Win on CD) was not able to convert the stereo master-MP2s into an Audio CD format. Neither could wavelab convert them, and CDex failed as well. After some research and a trial and error procedure the lame-codec did the job of converting the MP2s, but this whole MP2 issue is a bitch - which brings the ease of use down considerably - at least for me.

Let's face it: However great your portable home recording studio might be, there is a reason for microphones, compressors or SSL-consoles only a good professional studio can afford. So what I'd expect of a gadget like this is for it not to produce too much hiss and noise, for the internal effects not to be too annoying and for the built in "amp"- or drumsounds to remind me faintly of what they are modelt after. After all I use this thing to capture ideas, not more - and for this purpose the PXR-4 sounds great! The guitar sounds are plasticky of course, but with some tweaking I could get at least some decent sounds that work well in the mix (I got a good all purpose-rock sound by turning up the mids and presence, lowering the bass and even more so the highs, and turning off the "air"- and noise reduction-functions - sounds very midsy by itself but pretty real in the mix). Our bass players old Jazz Bass sounds fine with just a little compression, but the best is the built in microphone: Not only does it work well with vocals, even live drums are no problem - which absolutely amazes me, still. The effects are fine, nothing special but all and more than what's needed for demo purposes. The built in drums are an advanced metronome - if you need more, get an external drum machine or record real drums with the built in microphone.

Nothing much I could say here: I've only had the PXR-4 for a month (and so far it never failed me).

Had some questions concerning the MP2-issue (see above) and got great and immediate support from Korgs german devision (which is where I bought my "Pandora".

This is one of my all time "Best Buys"! It supports my creativity and I absolutely love it. If it was stolen I'd get another one the same day! The greatest feature is the built in microphone - to compose and capture ideas I don't need anything but the PXR-4 and my voice (in the worst case scenario...). It's one of the very few gadgets that truely help making music instead of getting in the way. If there was something I would change it's the output file format (which should be changed to MP3 as opposed to MP2) and the use of outdated smart media cards with a memory limit of 256 MB. But even with these drawbacks my overall rating comes up to a full ten - thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Korg!

Gettting a good sound took a short time to achieve, but for me that came down to getting used to the unit itself... With so many choices for effects, you can really get picky when it comes to getting certain sounds... Some were easier to get than others, but with a little patience, it's worth the effort.

The manual can be pretty intimidating at first, so I just made sure I knew what I wanted to do and then followed the book, whether it was editing a patch, recording a track or transfering files over to my Mac...

My setup consists of just my Fender Strat straight into the unit... It hasn't been a problem working with tweaking patches and laying down tracks, mainly just trial and error, with a little bit of consulting with the manual...

I've found the effects to be quite powerful and I've managed to surprise a few of my musician friends with the demos I've sent to them... The biggest thing is the quality of the sounds for the size of the unit... Just about any and every style is at your fingertips (and imagination)...

Very dependable... Any errors or fudge-ups have been my own... Wouldn't use this for a gig though, way too special...

Haven't had to deal with anyone yet, but the staff where I bought it from were helpful...

I've been recording some Swedish-style metal tracks along with some moodier, clean-type songs, and they all come out sounding great... For what I've paid and for what I'm using it for, it's been a solid investment... It's the perfect thing for someone who can't afford to get a computer loading with Cakewalk or any other program like that, but it doesn't replace them either... The PXR-4 is a great notepad / springboard for any ideas brewing in your head!

When I bought it a year and a half ago, I was new to home recording, but not to digital stuff (I work in software engineering and as a hobby musician I owned a digital bass multi-FX before). I got to basic recording and editing effects pretty fast, but getting acquainted with the whole concept took me longer. So this really depends on your previous experience. If you did some home recording before, it shouldn't take too long to figure out how the modes and menus work. Yes, the buttons and faders are small and have multiple functions, but that's the consequence of the whole design (very portable, low power consumption, low price). Backing up and retrieving songs and effect settings via the USB connector is neat. It has no MIDI interface, but I don't need one.

The track editing capabilities are great, especially the track expand/compress function is extremely useful to create grooves. What also really helps is that you can locate your edit point markers not only in seconds and milliseconds, but also in 4th or 8th notes with a resolution of 1/96 4th note.

Selecting the right effect at the right moment (record, bounce or mix-down) took more readings of the manual. It has basicly 8 effect chains, you can't select a chain right away, but only by selecting an effect type that is in that chain. Editing effects is easy though.

For a practice/composing/demo tool, the sound is great. Period. No problems with MP2 format at 32 kHz recording frequency. I've been through three recording sessions all in different studios, so I know what I can NOT expect of this little box, no full fledged Mackie mixing console and no top Line6 FX processor. The built-in mic is OK for fast demos. Picks up background noise easily though, wish it had an XLR input for an external mic. I think most preset effects are way over the top, but after some tweaking I can get them to sound nice.
When you're recording, you can't add reverb to a guitar, you have to add that later as a FINAL or MASTER effect when you're bouncing tracks or doing your final mix. It's not possible to add guitar effects to a clean recorded guitar part. Equalisation for each of the four tracks when playing back is not always there, you have to add it like an effect when bouncing tracks.

There are three sound quality modes: Economy, Standard and High (bit rates 64, 128 and 192 kbps resp.). I'd recommend to use High all the time, especially when you're bouncing tracks. When you keep your levels to about 80% of the maximum, there should be no distortion in the individual tracks or crackles in the stereo MP2 output file mix.

The drum machine is very oriented to 4/4 patterns: when you select 2/4, all you have is two metronomes to choose from... But it's basicly meant as a metronome, no full drum machine.
The tuner works accurate, but it's fixed to 440 Hz, you can't calibrate it.

So, I have a few gripes, mostly about applying effects, but the fantastic track editing capabilities more than make it up for it.

About mechanical reliability: same as the previous reviewers: treat it like a baby... About functional reliability: No serious problems. I got those CardErr#203 messages too sometimes when recording too loud or with batteries dying, but Card Recovery solved it. Remember that you also depend on the memory card's reliability.

Warranty doesn't apply for me. No troubles so far. There's good support from Korg's site www.korg.com, and there's a user group on Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pxr4-users/. Lots to learn from... Here, the "MPeeTwo" program can be downloaded that converts WAV files into MP2 formatted tracks so they can be imported on your PXR4 like they were recorded on it. Neat!

It still fits my recording needs, with my band or on my own with my basses and guitars. But I'm not sure if I would buy it again if it were lost or broken. Korg released it four years ago, and there's no functional update yet. In the meantime, other memory cards have become the standard, like Compact Flash or SD, that go further than 128 Mb, and 8 tracks are no exception anymore. Right now, the Zoom MRS-8 seems interesting too. My wishes may change, equipment changes, we'll see...