A friend of mine just purchased a Fostex VS160 for $800. It was a factory refubished unit with full warrenty. He asked me to check it out and I thought it was pretty neat. It sounds fairly good and as you pointed out it has lots of features..

That's the problem with a lot of the multi-trackers, though. They have all those features. I don't want any of the fluff. I'm looking for something simple. I'm looking for last year's model (or earlier) for around $200. Oh help me, Gear Gods.

Are you absolutely convinced, you want to go digital?

And you want a standalone box with, only gain pots, volume fader and a rec-arming button.

Is there such a digital box??

I don't know if such a device exists. That's why I'm asking. And yes, I want digital. I know analog is the way to go, but I like the precision of digital.

The fostex D160 sure sounds good. I've been considering it as I am loking for something to do location recording (and not have to take my mac and monitors out!) Another option, though, is to get an apple laptop, load DP in it and take out a couple of racs with my preamps and converters... then I could get back and load the tracks in my other mac for mixing and editing via firewire. I don't know, still thinking about it.

I don't think such an animal exsists ... Maybe an old ADAT recorder with a simple line mixer would do the trick ...

I would go for the Fostex or something like that (btw, I do think that is last years model..)

Xavier,

I would be a bit scared to take any of these small multi trackers out on a remote. My friend has 2 KORG D1600 and they are very buggy. They crash all the time and once when a power failure hit while he was recording, the whole thing died and had to be sent back to KORG in LA to be repaired. It was gone for over a month and cost $180. I think these things should be able to withstand an interuption of the power without "lunching" the power supply ... and I thought it was real sh*tty of KORG to charge for the repair even though it was a couple weeks out of warrenty ..

What about a Yamaha MD4 or MD8? You can pick them up on EBay for around $225 I think.

Cedar Flat Fats wrote: Xavier,

I would be a bit scared to take any of these small multi trackers out on a remote. My friend has 2 KORG D1600 and they are very buggy. They crash all the time and once when a power failure hit while he was recording, the whole thing died and had to be sent back to KORG in LA to be repaired. It was gone for over a month and cost $180. I think these things should be able to withstand an interuption of the power without "lunching" the power supply ... and I thought it was real sh*tty of KORG to charge for the repair even though it was a couple weeks out of warrenty ..

Thanks Kurt.

My problem right now is that I don't have a place where I can track acoustic drums- I have a set of yamaha electronic drums at the home studio that is great for rehearsals and setting ideas down but not good enough for serious recording. Last time we recorded acoustic drums I had to take my mac and monitors out, as well as pres, etc and it was quite a lot to cart and set up. Perhaps I should look into an alesis, mackie or tascam hard disk recorder. I don't want to get the porta studio type though. I used to have a roland vs880and I though the sound was terrible- squahed and non dimentional. It would also be cool to be able to record gigs. We are playing this weekend and it would be so nice to have a decent recording.

zoom ps-04. seriously. this pda sized thing is bad ass! i have roland vs setup but i use this thing to scratch things out, record my voice lessons, record band pratices, record scratch vocal for lyrical ideas while i'm driving - you name it! the effects in it a a joke but if you had this and a good preamp/compressor combo you could get some good things out of it. besides, you can record two tracks at once and get it on ebay for like $150-180 new. this thing will do just as well as those crap boss like digital 8 tracks which can only record two tracks at a time aswell. plus this thing uses compact flash cards and there is a application out there you can download for free off of zoom sites to turn the files off of it into wav file directly to your comptuer via the card. its good. you'll dig it if all you want is to record jam sessions. could pull of a good demo if you are dumping to computer anyways!

Xavier,
Yeah the data compression on the Rolands is a drag. I will say that the sound of both the Korg and the Fostex is pretty good although these are pretty much 16 bit recorders..

If it is for your own projects, the volatility is not such an issue.. I would hate to have to explain to a paying client why his once in a lifetime live performance / gig didn't get recorded.

If you are considering a Fostex D160 you will still need some form of mixer with pre's etc. Also they only have built in AD/DA converters on the first 8 channels and you would need the VC-8 converter if you are doing more than 8 channels at once.

8)