boss launch the micro br80 to replace the micro br

[AverGo]

Thanks, 64. I guess they'll try anything to hold on to your money. I re-phoned the company that I ordered from and they say that Roland Europe do have them in stock. I'll probably get an excuse next week as to why I don't have it. If so a refund is in order and a long wait. Another company is going to give me a call tommorrow after they've spoken to Roland in Swansea UK.

[des0free]

If I get this, and have all those extra tracks, does that mean I have to learn how to play instruments other than guitar?  And how to sing backing vocals?

[SdC]

If I get this, and have all those extra tracks, does that mean I have to learn how to play instruments other than guitar?  And how to sing backing vocals?

What's wrong with 8 guitars?  
Or, including V-tracks: 64Guitars?

[64Guitars]

I found a few more screenshots of the BR-80 display:

      

I like how the virtual faders and knobs allow you to see the relative settings for all 8 tracks simultaneously.

[cuthbert]

That's a neat feature - especially the ability to see the rhythm level as well as the level for each track. And the EQ page is a really nice touch. Even the rhythm editor looks more usable!

[Geir]

I'm getting GAS !!

[Oldrottenhead]

i gotta get gas

in the car

otley here i come!!!!!

yeah baby.

[Geir]

We do have the MbrMbr in otley tho


8 tracks, two mics, polyrhythmic functionallity


we even have the MbrMbrMbrMbrMbr

20 tracks, 5 mics, insane polyrhythmic functionallity

[64Guitars]

More screenshots. Picture quality isn't great but they show some interesting features of the BR-80.

Here's the Track Edit screen. The icons suggest that the BR-80 has full editing capabilities and can copy/move/erase portions of tracks (unlike the current version of the BR-800).



It's interesting that there's an Undo/Redo icon on the Track Edit menu. This suggests that it saves the restore state of each track individually. If I'm right, this would mean that instead of only being able to undo your last operation (as in all previous BRs), you can undo the last operation on each track at any time. For example, suppose that you recorded something to track 1, then recorded tracks 2 through 8, then did a bounce. If you now decide that you don't like track 1, you can undo just that track without affecting the others. At least, I'm assuming that's the reason that Undo/Redo is on the Track Edit menu. If it only affects the last operation like the other BRs, then I would think that they'd put it on a more global menu such as Song Edit. But I guess we won't know for sure until the manual is available for download.


For years, I've been saying that it's wrong to make the user specify a starting measure for each step in an arrangement. This creates a big problem when you want to insert a step because you have to manually adjust the starting measures of all of the subsequent steps. Instead, the user should only specify the length of each step in measures. Then there would be no need to specify a starting measure. And it's much more natural to think of so many measures of this pattern, followed by so many measures of that pattern, etc. rather than trying to figure out which measure a pattern should start at.

Well it seems that Roland has finally figured that out. The BR-80 step editor now has a LENGTH parameter instead of starting measure. Notice that it also shows in brackets the length of the pattern. This is very useful. For example, if you have an ending pattern that's 2 measures long, you'll want to set the step length to 2 so you'll get the whole ending. If you only set the length to 1, you'll only get half of the ending. This has always been a common mistake for beginners in drum arrangement programming. By showing the pattern length in brackets, the BR-80 makes it much easier to avoid that mistake. In this screenshot, the selected pattern has a length of 2 measures and is set to play for 6 measures (so the pattern is played 3 times).




At the top of the arrangement editing screen is a horizontally-scrolling timeline of the arrangement in measures. Each step is shown with a letter indicating the type of pattern (start, verse, fill, etc.) and a line indicating the length of the step. In the following screenshot, the arrangement plays a verse pattern (V) for 6 measures, followed by an ending pattern (E) for 4 measures.



I haven't seen any screens that suggest the BR-80 supports custom pattern editing, so I suspect that it does not. However, it does support importing of standard midi files. Other BRs that support SMF import do it by loading the SMF into a custom pattern. You can create as many custom patterns as you like from SMFs and chain them together into an arrangement. But since the BR-80 doesn't appear to support custom patterns, I suspect that it can only load one SMF per song. So you can't chain several SMFs together in an arrangement. Instead, you'd use computer software to create one long SMF for the whole song. Of course, the SMF can be as complex as the editing software allows. So it can contain multiple rhythms, fills, crashes, etc. But these would all have to be done in the editing software rather than in the BR-80.

[Bluesberry]

This little beast is going to be amazing........