Boss Micro BR

BeepBeep · Post by **BeepBeep** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:57 pm

Hey,

Do any of you use the Boss Micro BR: http://www.rolandus.com/products/produc ... jectId=818

I'm thinking about picking one up for recording song ideas while traveling and at work. Any opinions?

BeepBeep · Post by **BeepBeep** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:22 am

Okay, no one replied, but I took the leap last night and purchased the Micro BR. Although I only had around an hour to play around with it, I had a lot of fun. It's not going to replace my DAW, but it's a great little scratch pad. Reminds me of the old days of sitting in my living room recording into a cassette 4-track. Can't wait to play with it later (later being in about an hour or so as it fits into my coat pocket so I took it to work with me).

clean_and_humble · Post by **clean_and_humble** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:06 pm

hey there
I bought a micro br for the same reason
except i still have my cassette 4 track
if you see my other post on here you will
see my situation with that
its near and dear to me
however me and the micro br are just starting our relationship
and I have to say its starting slow
the first thing i did on it was record a rehearsal
that went longer than the card could hold
Im very confused as to how to now dump this off the machine
I suppose I could just play the audio into a track of pro tools
but one of the reasons I got the br was to save room on my hard drive
and not record little scratch ideas and rehearsals into pro tools
I was able to back up the br file to my drive but
was not able to make an mp3 inside the br to listen to on an ipod
Does any of this make sense to you?
Have you had this problem?

I was recently reading the tape op book
and was really inspired by the east river guy
article and what he had to say about 4 track recording
That is exactly what ive been doing for years
and now even though I have a big studio that
is pretty professional in its construction
I want to get back to my og ideas which were very lo fi
with new knowledge of recording

It makes me wonder how many other people are
recording with the micro br
is it as many people that used to record with 4 track?
some one should do a tape op article about this
Id do it mr crane call me lol

anyway
saw your post and figured id be the first to reply
and say im part of the micro br posse

xx3479327 · Post by **xx3479327** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 12:30 am

A friend of mine owns one, I used it for a couple weeks for demoing/scratchpad purposes. The built-in mic is pretty crap (kind of expected that though) and the interface is a tad clunky. It works fine enough, but for the cost I'd probably look into a Zoom H4/H2 instead, or maybe just an old Portastudio, or hell, even one of those el cheapo digital recorders at Walmart.

JefffM · Post by **JefffM** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:12 am

What I am looking for is something portable I can use to transfer a rough mix of a track I am working on to, go to somewhere that has a nice acoustic piano or whatever and record an overdub on to tracks 3 qnd 4 and then import these tracks back into my main mix on the computer.

Is the BR what I am looking for? How is it on importing/exporting .wav files and keeping everything in synch?

BeepBeep · Post by **BeepBeep** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:02 pm

Jeff - No, the BR is not what you are looking for. The sound quality will not cut it for acoustic piano. Might as well be a synth if you are recording with a BR. And I like mine.

JefffM wrote:What I am looking for is something portable I can use to transfer a rough mix of a track I am working on to, go to somewhere that has a nice acoustic piano or whatever and record an overdub on to tracks 3 qnd 4 and then import these tracks back into my main mix on the computer.

Is the BR what I am looking for? How is it on importing/exporting .wav files and keeping everything in synch?

JefffM · Post by **JefffM** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:17 pm

BeepBeep wrote:Jeff - No, the BR is not what you are looking for. The sound quality will not cut it for acoustic piano. Might as well be a synth if you are recording with a BR. And I like mine.

Even if I use halfway decent mics and external pre's?

BeepBeep · Post by **BeepBeep** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:26 pm

I have not tried it with external pres. I mostly use it when I don't have time to fire up the computer and I just want to get an idea down. I use it like an old cassette four track. I'll try to record with it using an RNP and at4040 over the weekend.

@?,*???&? · Post by **@?,*???&?** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:47 pm

I want to make a record with one of these.

Should I charge the band less if I do so?

percussion boy · Post by **percussion boy** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 1:57 am

@?,*???&? wrote:I want to make a record with one of these.

Should I charge the band less if I do so?

Not as long as you also have pro tools up during tracking, on a very shiny computer, with nothing plugged into it.

virtualsamana · Post by **virtualsamana** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:01 am

I have the Korg PXR4 which is not much bigger than the micro BR (fits in the palm of your hand) but actually has sliders and nobs instead of the annoying buttons that the BR2 forces you to use. I love the PXR4 as a sketch pad. I have also used it with great success to do remote recording with an external pre and mic. It uses MP2 compression which is its only draw back but it really isn't a noticable sound difference and I can drag and drop files from it straight into my DAW (Vegas/Reaper).

metanoiastudios · Post by **metanoiastudios** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 10:12 am

JefffM wrote:What I am looking for is something portable I can use to transfer a rough mix of a track I am working on to, go to somewhere that has a nice acoustic piano or whatever and record an overdub on to tracks 3 qnd 4 and then import these tracks back into my main mix on the computer.

Is the BR what I am looking for? How is it on importing/exporting .wav files and keeping everything in synch?

I don't think this has been answered yet. Is there such a similar animal that would allow you to record, say, guitar parts, or background vocal parts, etc. into it WITH ENOUGH QUALITY for the tracks to be dumped into a DAW back at someone's home studio, without the use of external pre's? Something that's almost as portable as the Boss BR?

That would just be so mother effin' sweet

Wolfman Sack · Post by **Wolfman Sack** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:09 pm

I like it a lot. I just bought it so I still have to put in my time on it. There are a *ton* of options crammed into this thing. I went through the manual and wrote a list of functions I wanted to use (metronome, etc) and just made a flowchart of which buttons to push for each one like:

METRONOME: UTILITY > BLAH > BLAH

and so on so I don't have to dig through the manual every time.

The preset guitar sounds as they come out of the box are kind of whooshy and unusable, but you can edit them, and once I did I found plenty of usable electric sounds on there.

I have a really old battered standup piano that sounds great, I experimented with using the built in mic and just recording noodling at different places on the piano (on top, on the shelf above the keyboard, opening the lid and putting it on the edge of the open lid). I thought it sounded great.

What's cool to me about it is it forces you to focus on the writing and performance rather than messing around with all the pretty sounding plugins and crap that eat time on a DAW.

I fully intend on doing an EP of five songs on this, using nothing but the built in mic, just for fun. I think it'll be fun and creative.

clean_and_humble · Post by **clean_and_humble** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:01 pm

so how do i get the things i record on this thing
off this thing and onto my computer as an mp3?

and what does saving the whole card to my computer do?
like backing up the entire card as a br file?

does this mean i can put it back on an empty cf card
and everything i had recorded on the full card
will be right back?

clean_and_humble · Post by **clean_and_humble** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:24 am

ok nevermind
i figured it out
at least the direct mp3 record part
recording really long performances are kinda harder to do
you need a big card
but just quick recordings are perfect

here check it out
i recorded this with the br last night
http://blackrhombus.com/music/TIZZYY_.WAV

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