Roland CDX-1

As a degreed electrical and computer engineer and someone who's done
multitrack recording in both digital and analog domains
previously, I did not find the manual or the product particularly
intuitive. Even with the benefit of the manual, it was difficult
to determine how this piece needed to be used.

Working to the CD-RW is slow for one. In addition, there is no way
to estimate how much recording time is left on a CD-RW when you
begin a take. In my recent experience with this, if you do several
takes and seek to redo them, keep in mind that the previous saved
take stays on the CD-RW until you go into utilities and tell it to
clean up the CD-RW and release used space. This is annoying in
two ways--one, the reclaiming of unused space takes about 10 minutes if your CD-RW is nearly full. Second, when you begin your next take, the unit gives you no way to predict if you have enough space left on the CD-RW for the next take. Until this became clear to me, we would invariably have a take where the CD-RW filled half way through it, and I had to stop the band, apologize, and indicate that the CD-RW had filled and that we'd have to start again.

Here's how we had to record their demo as a result of this arcane setup: Record a take onto CD-RW. Play back the CD-RW to see if it was good. Play back the CD-RW again to create the "master track" in internal memory. Then, play back the master track to burn to a CD-R at 1x.

Only then could we endeavor on to the next take because we needed to free up the space on the CD-RW for the next take lest we run out of space due to the unknown recording time factor. True we could've optimized the CD-RW each time...but that takes as long as recording the song to CD-R after mastering.

As such, I do NOT recommend this unit if a) you plan on using it with a full band, or b) you want to record multiple songs in a session. This unit's setup really pushes you into a "do one song at a time" mode of operation.

If you already have one of these, you may be able to make your recording session sane if you have one blank CD-RW for every song you plan to do. If you have that, then you can do the mixing and CD-R burning later without wasting the whole band's time.

The internal effects and inserts are interesting...however, I would not recommend using htis unit if you are trying to create a demo tape for a band. This unit works much better for a one man show arrangement.

The lack of a hard disk makes it a complete pain in the ass.

That the unit only has 2 A/D converters makes it very limiting for use with a multipiece band. Do not buy this
thinking you can do separate tracking for bass, drums, guitar and voice simultaneously. You can lay down one track, or at most two tracks at a time then overdub the rest.


The pad features seem to be the neatest thing in this product, but for our use we did not leverage them at all. This may be a decent box for a one man show sort of operation, but if you have a band that you want to record, keep shopping.

n/a this is a digital recorder. The sound quality was good.

Beware that the mic metering is not necessarily accurate. When we first tried using the mic inputs off the board (due to the inexperience of those involved), there was a great deal of distortion despite the level meters being well below clipping and no clipping lights on the input channels flashing. If you're recording from a mixing board be certain to use the line inputs.

I was recording a full band demo tape for a 4-piece rock band hoping to go direct to 2-track with the mix for a live feel.

Despite my better instincts, the bass player wanted to use this
unit to improve the quality of the recording. It was a big mistake
and slowed us down tremendously.

So far, so good. Got the box first and waited 2 weeks for the video maunals...so I am just now "Getting" it on a few topics. Wish the "Special" CD RW highspeed 4-10x digital audio" Discs were easier to find.

Loaded. Drums, sampler, looping, the whole thing. Probably would have cost you 10 grand or more 5 years ago to have this much control.

Drum sounds really lack realism. The rest of the effects are excellent.

New, no use record as yet.

Had a couple of questions. They answered no probs.

Learning to love it. Seeing some limitations.

Been pickin 25 years, own many guitars, this is my first digital recorder.

They should make this baby come stock with the 128 Dimm in the future, offer SUPER cheap upgrades to all the folks who got the smaller version and get real with the recording time. 10 minutes sounds like a lot, because, hey who's writing songs over 10 mins? Souza??? If you are working something up, take after take on a long jam, its just not enough memory. A larger Dimm would allow for live recordings of concerts etc. Right now, you'd have to have many initialized RW discs ready to go if you needed to record an hour or so.

Never having a recording machine I purchased because son has been recordinng studios in NYC and Two songs cost as much as the machine

I thing the Manual is good but for someone who never tried one before a Video could help to expalin the basics more. IN General Very easy to use. I can't get the machine to record. I wil call Roland On monday

I would recommend a larger monitor screen

Guitar effects are well done

My First Roland Product, machine seems well made

The manual is written in very simple and clear procedural language and with a nice road map that helps you decide what path you want to start down on when using this very multi-purpose machine.

All 3 things I wnated it to do well are very easy to do: Recording tracks, mixing them down and then burning my mix to audio CDs I cna take and listen to on other systems is really easy. The burn process is 1x (real-time) but considering how many playbacks one typically does in composing/recording a finished song, what another one? I have yet to use the onboard sampler but I plan to. I suspect once I have loaded a few choice public domain drum samples in WAV format files that I have downloaded burned to a CD I can load in the CDX-1 to assing drum kit sounds to the 8 pads I will be able to make it replace the old Alesis SR-16 analog drum machine I was thinking of using in the past more but never had the track s to lay out a well built stereo drum track.

I have to admit, I'm not a big Roland customer. Most of my songwriting and recording is guitar-bass-drums type of stuff. I've used Fostex 260 4-track cassette multi-tracker in the past. That said, I am VERY impressed with the onboard effects. The insert effects are all well-crafted and reminiscent of Boss effects and Roland amps I have used or played around with in the past (even with the default patches, no editing, just select one and go) and how well they are tailored to what I do. The loop effects include the few well-chosen essentials (reverb/delay/chorus/doubling). The doubling is really cool. I have used it to free up my recording time and open tracks by doubling vocal and guitar tracks I used to try to double manually. Some of the patches are cheesy and silly (whoever uses Seagulls) and the Bass modulator was not bullet-proof enough in its pitch tracking for me to want to decide to leave my Fender P-Bass in the case. However, the majority are simple, tasteful and well designed to be very functional and easy to use without a lot of fussing or wasting my time.

I've only had it out of the box and really actively in use the last 2-3 days, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work well. The CD-drive is the only heavy-use fragile/mechanical part to it and that looks built like a tank. I don't really play out and can't forsee any reason why I would take this if I did. I wouldn't mind having a nice suitcase to store it in but I'll have to come up with that myself.

Thankfully, I haven't had to use it.

This is the kind of features for home recording I used to only pipe dream about. I feel like I now have the goods. I'm glad I bought it.

Manual is self explanatory

Multitrack recorder, phrase sampler, cd burner recorder

I'm still experimenting with this unit. However, writing to cd is very slow. It takes forever. Other than that, is excellent. If it were lost or stolen, I'd propably check for the Roland SP-808ex instead, because it has an isolator and more sample pads.

This machine is very easy to use. I didn't had any experience with multitrackrecording and sampling, but after half an hour it felt like I own this machine for quite a while. The manual is very good. It's easy reading and a good reference. Creating your own effect patches is also very easy.

The sampler has a 4 sample polyphony, and a 4 track sequencer, both realtime and step. The sample capacity is expandable with a 128 MB dimm. The sampler is also euasy to use. Yous plug in a mic or put in an audio CD or CD-rom with WAV files and sample.
The insertion effects are good and you edit your own insertion effect patches.
The CDX-1 has a 8 track harddiscrecorder. It records directly to a CD-RW. This is a very strong point of the CDX-1 because it gives you unlimited and cheap record memory. Each disk can contain about 15 minutes and for less than $3 you have a new "harddisk". You can also backup your samples and samplesequences and even your own effectpatches on cd. It must be said that working with CD-rw is kind of slow. When you undo a record, format the disk or search for a specific point in your recordings, it takes a while before proceeding is finished. I hardly find this a disadvantage. The best of al is that after your record is completed you can mix it down to the internal memory and burn it to an CD and creste your own audio CD. You can even burn directly from an external input (CD, Vinyl, PC, whatever) to a CD.

The effects sounds good and there is a lot you can change. The samples are also easy to edit. You can timestretch them with a good result. The phrasesampler makes the CDX-1 an excellent machine for dance and techno. I try to make synthesizermusic inspired by styles represnted by Jarre, Vangelis etc. and even then the sampler is a very handy tool wich I won't miss

I ownit for a month now and never had any problems with it yet. I made some editing mistakes but with a factory reset that wasn't a problem either

I never made use of it yet, although they will send me the manual in my own language (Dutch).

Reading the manual is all you have to do. Everything is explained in order to burn cdr or cdrw or load smaples or sequence.

Tons of features..like I said this machine is a dream for live stage because you can load samples..tracks...etc...all from cd and live mix and sample live over that...

comes with a 32mb dimm PC100 ram chip...you can upgrade to a 128...I ask why it wasn't put in in the first place....pc100 128mb is cheap...oh well..you still get plenty of sample time

this machine is awesome. all I can say it is a combo between the VS series and some of those grooveboxes....the best part is that you can burn cd's ...load samples from them...and go crazy

A lot of my equipment is Roland. They have been great to me, and their products never have failed on me. I update my VS-880ex still from the internet via SMF or midi...I believe that the cdx-1 will also use this to keep the OS fresh

Right now I am a kid in a candy store..this machine does millions of things that help my stage show as a dj/mixer and I have put some of my other equipment aside..this is a truly well made machine for the electronic musician