Dinosaur BR 8 recorder

[David Zornes]

Yes friends, I have that type of unit. I acquired it a few months ago, My question is, “How easy is it to record with?” I am very 101 at this. I do have the manual downloaded. I simply want to record along with some rhythm tracks and possibly do a little mixing-that’s it. Any suggestions of help would be appreciated.

[Rick Campbell]

David,

You can do what you want with that machine. Watch the YouTube videos to show you how to get it setup and get you going. You'll need some cables, adapters, etc... to get everything connected together. Amazon and Radio Shack are good sources. Have fun with it. Hope you will post some of your work here for us to listen to.

RC

[David Zornes]

Well thank you Rick. I am going to try to.

[Jim Fogle]

I have a comparable vintage Zoom MRS-8 digital recorder I still use.

I prefer using a digital recorder to record tracks over a DAW. A recorder is designed to do one thing, record tracks well. It powers up quickly, has a drum machine to use as a metronome, accepts mono or stereo inputs and has a direct input for electric instruments. There are many recording presets to choose from. The list can go on and on.

Love to hear some of your songs! Have fun.

[David Zornes]

Thank you Jim. I am going to try to do something with it. I have the manual downloaded so I will go by that to record.

[Tony Prior]

Very easy and straight forward, I recently sold mine. Remember though it uses the OLD SCHOOL ZIP disks for media. If I recall I updated mine to use the larger storage ZIP disks.

You can get 2 songs per disk

Records MAX 2 tracks at a time but it is a true 8 track playback with added effects. Reverb, delay EQ...

If you are monitoring thru the headphones, it may be distorted, its not the recording, its the headphone out circuit.

The recordings are extremely clean. The primary drawback to Boss products at the time, was they recorded in their own proprietary format.

As far as I know, there is no way to transfer recorded files directly from the ZIP disk to another unit so REAL TIME transfer is what I did to create MP3's etc. I have also transferred a few songs, 2 tracks at a time , to the DAW . IN real time.

The operation and functionality is exactly the same as any other recorder, its the recording medium (ZIP Disks) that is different. Its an excellent recorder for its time. Maybe even ground breaking. Its sure beats cassette tapes as you can re-record and delete your tracks as much as needed, unlike tape.

I personally think that the engineers at ZOOM looked at this BR 8 and said, "thats the future man " then they designed a very similar unit which recorded tracks in WAVE files and used an SD card as the medium. Hello R16 , several years later.

BR8 is a fine unit "in its era" , quite frankly it led many of us away from TAPE to the digital world, we never looked back to tape. I keep mine around as I have probably 20 or 30 songs tracked on the ZIP Disks still. every now and then I go back in time. I just hope I don't get stuck there !