I thought I would share a little about my recent experiences with the BR-800 and the Rythm Editor. I recently purchased a new SD card. I went ahead and copied all the files off my old card to my computer's hard-drive using my SD card reader. I next put my new card into the BR-800 and formated it there. Next I put the new card in my SD card reader and restored the files from my computer to the new card. Then the problems started. When I put the new card back into the BR-800, everything seemed just fine. I could load my songs, make new songs, Master and all the stuff I ordinarily could. Next I hooked up the BR-800 to the computer to do a little Rythm editing ... no go! No matter what I did, I couldn't get the Rythm editor to connect with the BR-800. I reloaded all the drivers, started over with backing up my files from the SD card and reformating, and on and on, with no joy. I then had a look at the files on the SD card using the Windows Explorer. It turns out that somehow, the song folders on the SD card were all marked "read only" and they had also been converted to all lower case! Not only that, but not matter what I tried, I couldn't reset the attributes back to normal. The files within the folders were all OK, it was just the folders that were marked "read only". I formated the card AGAIN, created all the folders on the card from scratch using the Windows Explorer, then copied my files back into them manually. THAT FIXED THE PROBLEMS! So if you ever experience this, at least you might be able to recover your work.
The other thing I found out is that the Rythm Editor will not allow you to save your patterns to your hard-drive (I think this SUCKS!). In other words if you have a library of drum machine patterns, you first have to create MIDI files using a sequencer, then import them, one at a time, into whichever song you are working on. Here is what I did instead. I created an empty song named "template" on the BR, then I import my drum patterns to that song. Then instead of creating a new song every time, I just copy my template, rename the copy and go from there. It saves me some extra time from having to hook up to the computer every time and I also have 100 extra patterns of my own making to use in my new projects.
I hope this all makes sense and can be of some help to someone in the future. I wonder who the water-head was that created the Rythm Editor for these things, but it is as useful as a screen door in a submarine! We need either a re-write of that turd, or we need a revision in the firmware of the BR-800 itself that allows you to create new patterns autonomously without the need for a computer in the first place. Having a stand-alone unit that I could use to record my ideas was the reason I bought this recorder in the first place. I suppose, I am complaining a bit. After all the on-board drum machine is a bit of icing on an already outstanding unit. However, I just think it could have been better implemented. Take care all.
If you unzip the following archive to the root directory of any drive (internal or external hard drive, USB Flash drive, etc.), you can save your patterns and arrangements to it.
https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/software/Fake_BR-900.zip (https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/software/Fake_BR-900.zip)
It recreates the minimum files and folder structure of the BR's memory card which are needed by the BR Rhythm Editor. You can use this drive to build a library of patterns, arrangements, and drum kits. After saving your arrangement on the hard drive or USB Flash drive, you can copy ARRANGE2.BR0, PATTERN.BR0, and (if you changed the drum kit) DRUMKIT.BR0 from the /ROLAND/BR0/SONG0000.BR0 folder on your computer to the appropriate song folder on your BR to use that arrangement.
If you're not happy with the BR Rhythm Editor, you might prefer Hydrogen. It's a free drum machine that's more powerful than the BR Rhythm Editor. It's written for GNU/Linux but there are versions for Windows and MacOS X.
http://www.hydrogen-music.org/ (http://www.hydrogen-music.org/)
Once you've created your drum arrangement in Hydrogen, there are two ways you can use it on the BR-800:
1) You can export the arrangement as a MIDI file and import it into the BR-800's drum machine as a single pattern of up to 999 measures in length.
2) You can export the Hydrogen drum arrangement as a stereo WAV file and import it to a pair of tracks on the BR-800 using the BR Wave Converter software.
There are pros and cons to both methods. With method 1, you don't have to use any of the BR-800's audio tracks so you have more tracks available for your music. And you can adjust the tempo of the arrangement on the BR. However, you have to use the BR's limited (by comparison) drum kits which will sound different than the ones you used in Hydrogen. With method 2, you can use the many different drum and percussion sounds available in Hydrogen. But you have to use a pair of audio tracks for them on the BR and you can't change the tempo in the BR; you have to change it in Hydrogen instead and re-export to WAV. I prefer method 2 because I normally do all of my mixing on the computer, so losing a pair of tracks isn't a problem.
Yes, I am quite familiar with Hydrogen. I have been running Linux almost exclusively since 1995! (Current preference is for SuSE Linux. Ubuntu is too kiddy city for me at this point :) ) Anyway I originally suspected that there might be some sort of a file attribute problem due to linux and the way it handles FAT file systems. So I run Virtualbox with a copy of XP installed for most of my external hardware access (this includes my printers, 35mm slide scanners, mpeg video capture equipment etc. ) My one complaint about this set up at this point is that sound drivers and music software is SO timing sensitive that virtualization generally doesn't work very well if at all in most situations. I understand your suggestions about setting up a "dummy" BR file system on another device as well, but I guess my point was that I wish the BR-800 was more of a stand-alone ... PC independent device. I have been making my living in the IT world for more than 30 years, and when I sit down to make some Musak, ;) I guess I'm looking for more like the experience I used to have with the old Teac/Tascam Portaone days. Like I said, I am NOT displeased with the BR, I just wish the rythm section on the unit were a little more autonomous. Thanks for you response! Take care.
I've never needed to install VirtualBox to run Windows because all of my Windows software for the BR runs just fine under Wine (BR Rhythm Editor, BR Wave Converter, BR Explorer, BR Song Librarian, etc.)
I understand your point that you'd like the BR-800 to be better as a standalone recorder. A lot of BR-800 users would agree with you. But I can see why Roland omitted some features, like pattern editing, from the BR-800. The BR-800 was the first BR to include audio interface and control surface capabilities, and to come bundled with a software DAW (SONAR LE). They probably reasoned that most people would want to use the BR-800 for recording their raw tracks, then load them into SONAR for editing and further processing. And since they would be using their computer for much of the production, they'd probably want to use it for drum editing too. I'm not saying I agree with them. I'm just saying that I can understand how they made that mistake. All of the BRs before the BR-800 had built-in pattern editing capabilities. But with the limited display and controls, it isn't easy to use and many BR users complained. So Roland eventually wrote the BR Rhythm Editor to make pattern editing easier and many BR users were thrilled to have this new software as it really is a lot easier for pattern editing than trying to do it on the BR. I think Roland figured that, since most people preferred to make their patterns in BR Rhythm Editor anyway, there was no need to include pattern editing capabilities in the BR-800.
As you probably know, early versions of the BR-800 had very limited track editing capabilities. Again, I can understand Roland's reasoning. They assumed that people would want to do their editing in SONAR because it's so much easier. But the uproar from BR-800 users proved this decision to be a mistake and they were forced to offer an update that improved the BR-800's editing capabilities. Early pre-release reports of this update suggested that it would also include pattern editing capabilities, but that proved to be false.
Anyway, perhaps Roland has learned from their mistakes and realized that BR users want a full-featured standalone recorder that also has good computer connectivity. They don't want the computer to replace any features of the BR as a standalone recorder. They just want computer capabilities as an additional way of producing their music.