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Yamaha, Sony, Tascam, and a couple of other
companies have recently brought out 4-track MiniDisc Recorders.
These cost under $1000, making them an inexpensive way to get
started recording your own music. There are also some 8-track MD
recorders out for under $1500. MD recorders offer much better
sound quality and editing capabilities than cassette multitracks,
but their sound quality is definitely not up to true "CD
quality" (16-bit word length, 44.1 kHz sampling rate, with no
data compression). You could record on location with four
microphones and the MiniDisc recorder (the mic inputs are built
in), mix down your four channels on the MiniDisc recorder's
built in mixer, record the mix into your computer, master it in
your favorite digital audio editor, and finally burn a CD of the
completed project. The result will be waaay better than what you
can get out of a 4-track cassette recorder! Unfortunately,
MiniDisc recorders use data compression to fit more audio into
less storage space, which results in "insignificant" data being
dropped from the recording. Similar to the newly popular MP3
format, MiniDisc recordings will often sound like something is
missing, like maybe the reverb is less discernable or a
"subliminal" background vocal has disappeared from the mix. MD's
might be good enough for homemade demos, but it's probably not
the way to make your CD master.
There are also several stand-alone hard disk recorders available
for $2000 or less. The new Korg D-8 sells for about $1000. The
Roland VS-880EX (c. $1700) is an all-in-one, eight track hard
disk recording system that has become quite popular. The
VS-880EX gets very good sound quality from its 20-bit
Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog converters, but
recording time is limited by how much hard drive space is
installed. The new 'EX' version of the VS-880 features the
ability to record simultaneously from its six balanced 1/4" mic/line
inputs and two S/PDIF digital inputs. Roland also makes a
24-bit, sixteen track hard disk recorder called the VS-1680 (c.
$2500) which can record eight analog inputs at once (two
balanced XLR and six balanced 1/4" jacks). These hard disk
recorders do come with fairly extensive Digital Signal
Processing (DSP) capabilities built in. One such processor can
even mimic the sound of a Neumann U87 mic using the input from a
garden variety Shure SM-57! If you like hard disk recorders,
make sure you get one that has an external SCSI port for adding
extra SCSI hard drives or an Iomega Jaz or SyQuest SyJet
removeable drive. Storing 8 tracks of 24-bit audio will use up
64 MB per minute of music...
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