Micro BR-80 review

[Gnasty]

Damn you guys are getting me thinking i`m doing everything wrong now. I have lots to learn and i`ll never
be a studio quality producer unless i school it, but i tend to think i have great ears. Like 64, i have a shite
comp with no soundcard either and i mixed my 3 last songs in Audacity and i think they are the best i have ever done.I mix and render and export to wav. I then master in the br-80. The only master modes i like in the br are the
P1 Mixdown, and P13 Acoustic really. Is this an apples,oranges thing?

[64Guitars]

2nd- Mixing/Mastering- Since I got the ps-02 & 004 everything I've recorded with them has been mixed on audacity, prior to that I had done my mixing on my br900. I have to say that I'm in the br camp. I like to pull a fader down when I'm too loud and push it up when I need more.

I definitely agree that having real faders is much better than trying to manipulate an on-screen slider with the mouse. But that's a trade-off I'm willing to make for the benefit of being able to mix all of my tracks at once, plus the superior visual feedback you get from a DAW (high-resolution meters for each track, identification of track contents, etc). Ideally, I'd like to have one of the newer recorders like the BR-800 or Zoom R16/24 which can be used as a control surface for the DAW. Then I'd have the best of both worlds - a great recorder for creating my individual tracks, and real faders and controls for mixing in the DAW.

I like being able to add reverb and chorus to individual tracks easily, which I can't figure out on audacity yet.

Yes, that's a limitation with Audacity. You can only apply effects by writing them to the track. Then, if you decide you don't like it, you have to undo and try again. Very inconvenient and time-consuming. Real-time effects are the most-requested feature for a future version of Audacity, so maybe we'll see it before long.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Feature_Requests#Highest-rated

[AndyR]

Gnasty - yes, it's apples and oranges . I'm assuming that everyone's pronouncements are "personal preference" (mine certainly are!). I look at it like this - the way I do it now is my personal preference, seems to get me best results. There are things I'd like to be able to do, or do better, but I can't with my current preferences. Sometimes, conversations like this throw up some stuff that questions my preferences...

I was "quite happy" with what PC recording was doing for me (I was using Cakewalk, think it was Home Studio 2004 - kind of Sonar pre-SONAR). I had some slight niggles with what I was creating, but assumed that was me. Then the missus got me an MBR for Christmas one year. I was expecting it to be a songwriting/arranging tool only. But I found the same thing as others - there's some sort of "magic" inside it that seems to make all my efforts sound good. I've never used the DAW since.

I do however only use the MBR as a songwriting/arranging tool now (after I got the BR1600). And since we've moved, and I have a dedicated music room, the BR1600 even gets used for that as well... But with the decorating/rugs/etc in the large reception rooms almost finished, there's a nice vibe for making music (writing it) downstairs as well - so the MBR might come back into it's own again.

Because of this I had been wondering whether the BR80 might be a nice little "upgrade" as a "pat-on-the-back" for myself . Not so convinced now, for songwriting and doodling alone, that I really need to improve on the 4 tracks and sound of the MBR.

64G - I have used an earlier version of Audacity, but only for digitising vinyl (it came with a USB turntable). I looked at it's ability to multi-track, and it was well behind (at the time) what I'd been used to with Cakewalk. But it looks like maybe I should have a look at the current version...

I'm also thinking I ought to re-try the Cakewalk installation again - maybe I've just got better at recording than when I was originally using it. It's all there ready to go, and I'm set up so that I'm quite happy recording tracks into the PC. All I have to do is unpack the EDIROL MIDI/Audio In/Out box and re-route a few wires from the mixing desk.

Something else has crossed my mind about "sound". I've always got away without using mic preamps, but others swear by them. Perhaps it's not the mixing/soundcard/etc area in the BRs where the "magic" is? Maybe it's the circuitry/processing on the BR inputs? Maybe that's what we guys are liking and calling the "magic"?

If that was the case - then BR for tracking, DAW for mixing would suddenly become a rather more attractive work flow method...

There's still a fair bit of decorating commitments (and then family/friend visitors to see it all!) before I can put much time into investigating this stuff though. And then when I do get the time, I am a bit like orh (ignoring how long it takes me to track/arrange), I don't really want to fiddle around with the technology to see what sounds best - I want the tool to do its job and let me do mine. When I found the little box and it's "magic" (the BR1600 has it too), that was it for me - I was making music rather than fiddling.

[baterpruf]

Great review and great comments, I'm learning a couple of things here.

Overall I love this box, it's WAY better than my old mbr in almost everything, buuuuuuut...

--I dont like the wheel, its slower, and more fragile than the +/- buttons.
--The buttons around the wheel are not very easy to press either
--You cant set the "position" of the effects
--I dont seem to find drum patterns that fit my songs, and i did with mbr!! I miss a simple rock pattern. I usually have to import a Hydrogen made pattern.
--You cant export a single track (unless you solo it and then master). Now I use the wave converter.
--importing is a strange process. Go to eband mode, select your file, return to mtr mode, then import (or am I doing it wrong?)

I cant remember now but there are some more little flaws