RE: More Roland VS info

["Doug Lawrence" <douglas-lawrence@home.com>]

>> It's confusing because it mentions that if you want
>> to do 24-bit 44.1 khz compressionless recording, you're
>> limited to 8/4 tracks.  The other option is 16-bit (which
>> allows 16/8 tracks) but it doesn't say whether or not
>> 16-bit mode is compressionless or what the sample rate is.
There's a couple of issues with this. First, the Roland VS has (4) modes it
can record in; LIV, MT2, MT1, and MAS, from lowest quality to highest. In
all modes, some sort of compression algorithm is used by the VS to get the
data on the hard drive called MDAC, which is a proprietary algorithm
developed by Roland. I don't know the specifics and there is much confusion
as to how MDAC really works and how it integrates with the on-board 20-bit
AD converters, and how "lossy" this algorithm really is. Since most of what
I record is bound for CD, which is a 16-bit format, I use the MT1 format
which is suppose to be a 20-bit format for editing to compromise between
sound quality and hard drive savings. To me, I've never like ADAT and I
could always hear a loss of quality. Plus, why should I have to wait for 
the
tape to cue up all the time ... hard drives are the way to go in my book.


>> Plus I didn't find anything about a tuner or a drum machine
>> built in, and the only built-in effect seems to be basically
>> preamp modeling.
On the Harmony Central press ad, they specifically mention a integrated 
drum
machine and chromatic tuner.


>> Doug, how is the sound quality?
I'm not going to run the whole digital vs. analog argument. That's what
rec.pro.audio is for, but for my purposes, it works great. The portability
factor was the decisionary factor for me. I also found that the input
preamps don't offer much headroom, so it's better to use a better outboard
preamp and possibly compression to help control signal spikes. I use a
Mackie board and a Presonus or Mindprint compressor which do a great job 
for
the $$$$


>> Does anyone have any experience with other 16-track portable HD
recorders?
I don't know if any really exist other than the Roland. Maybe the Akai
DPS12?


>> Does anyone use their computer as a multitrack recorder and if so, how
many
>> tracks, and what do you think the minimum specs for the computer would
have to
>> be?
The biggest issue with computer based recording is disk I/O. I would
recommend getting a Ultra2 SCSI drive subsystem with a quality hard drive
such as the IBM Ultrastar or Seagate Cheetah drives. As always, put your OS
on a separate partition from the drive you are actually recording on. If 
you
are running Windows NT, split the memory page file across the drives as
well. I use this type of setup with Cakewalk 8.0, but I'm switching over
Logic Audio 4.0 since it integrates with the VS-1680.

Also, if you are buying a new PC (please don't flame me on the MAC vs. PC
issue), wait until after September 5th when Intel is announcing their new
i820 chipset which will introduce 133Mhz back plane for PCs and AGP 4x for
video. It will either lower the price of the machine you want today, or 
give
you a new hardware standard to but into.