Roland 2480 to Pro Tools?????

Scott Henderson · Post by **Scott Henderson** » 5 Feb 2011 12:44 pm

I have a bunch of stuff on my Roland 2480 and want to real time transfer it to PT. Is their any way this can happen...OR can I use the Roland as a multi channel unit for the Pro tool. I can archive the wave files on CD and transfer but just curious if this is possible...The Roland doesn't have fire wire...It's not a big deal and I seeing the Rolands departure in my future unless their is something Im not seeing.
Appreciate your thoughts...

David Winfrey · Post by **David Winfrey** » 5 Feb 2011 6:36 pm

Scotty,
After looking at the information on the Roland website, it appears that transferring via CD is probably your only option. The only other possibility I see is not worth the trouble and may not work.
-----
An except from Roland Q&A:
Q: Can the SCSI devices such as MO(230MB/640MB/1.3GB), 250MB Zip,and HD be used for the backup? What about DVD-RAM?
A: If they accommodate with SCSI-2, they may work, but Roland does not officially support them. DVD-RAM is not supported at this moment.
-----
In short, that DAW was made to be a stand-alone and not interfaced with other non-proprietary devices. I'd say transfer wav files via CD and be done with it. If you run into problems with the wav files aligning in the proper place I might be able to help.
Regards,
David

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 6 Feb 2011 4:48 am

Scotty, I believe you can do exactly what I did with my Yamaha AW2816 when I transferred songs to Sonar..

This is all dependent on how many wav files can you grab from each Roland project.The yamaha allowed making one stereo wav file per CD burn, so the most I could do was burn two tracks( panned full left and right ) at one time. That's a lot of CD's , plus my Yamaha had a very slow burn process.

so...

If your Roland has midi sync you are in business..you will of course need a midi card with your PC as well. I made the Yamaha the master and set the the PC ( Sonar) as the slave. Built a multitrack session in Sonar..plugged the Yamaha out into the Sonar IN...Set record on Sonar for the appropriate tracks ( two ) , hit play on the Yamaha and the tracks recorded in real time...the I repeated the process until the song was done. Sonar now had the full song with individual tracks. I only recorded two tracks at a time and in the scheme of things it went pretty fast, maybe 15 or 20 min per song... Pro Tools can do the exact same thing, the card I have is a MAudio 2496 PCI card, 2 in 2 out, full midi...no issues with the setup.

Quality ? not bad...I set the Sonar record for the highest quality. Pro Tools can do 24 bit at 48KHZ.

I believe forum member Jack Stoner did the same kind of transfer without midi, then just lined up the files in Sonar which is also easy to do in PT.

Welcome to 2011 !

t

Scott Henderson · Post by **Scott Henderson** » 6 Feb 2011 9:24 pm

Tony I thought I might be able to do that after I read your post about the yamaha.
I can most usually get wave files for an entire session on one CD so yeah that is probably the way to go. I want to get rid of the Roland but have had some concerns of multi tracking drums. BUT I now use EZ Drummer and will mostly likely make a set of electronic drums my next major purchase. I am a looper mostly and don't really want to record any bands so that is not a pressing purchase either..I'm pretty happy with my sound now because I can seperate my drum tracks and am really happy with the pro level sound I'm getting. So may be saying by by to the Roland after I get everything archived off of it..Thanks for the input.

Chris Schlotzhauer · Post by **Chris Schlotzhauer** » 8 Feb 2011 10:55 am

So may be saying by by to the Roland after I get everything archived off of it..Thanks for the input.

Then you need to transfer them with CD's using track export. Or, there is a free WavExport App here:
http://www.vsplanet.com/ubbthreads/ubbt ... Post434799

For less than $300 you can get the VirDIS (virtual disk) which emulates on a PC certain obsolete or hard-to-find SCSI storage device-types (like Hard Disk, CD-R, etc.)
http://www.virtualscsi.com/virdis.htm

I love my 2480. The VirDIS is probably the way I'm going to go

Scott Henderson · Post by **Scott Henderson** » 9 Feb 2011 5:00 pm

ooooooo that's got me to thinking..I'll check it out.
Thanks Chris

Ed Phipps · Post by **Ed Phipps** » 21 Feb 2011 2:19 pm

Hi Scotty, you might want to take a look at this 24 channel digital recording unit. It uses (2) IDE type hard drives which can be hot swapped. It's a little pricey at 1650.00 but would make a dynamite heart of a upgraded system. The first customer write up on the web site states it's Pro Tools and other compatible, has it's own internal word clock or can use the clock output as Tony was talking about or can be synchronized with any external clock. I was just reading this last night, so it was fresh in my memory when I saw your post.

http://www.zzounds.com/item--ALEADATHD24

I might add from reading here, Tony Prior and Jack Stoner seem really knowledgeable on this stuff, You are in good hands for help.
Good luck
Ed

Scott Henderson · Post by **Scott Henderson** » 21 Feb 2011 10:27 pm

Thanks Ed for your input. My upgrade is to pro tools because I work with so many other studios that use it, I like it's editing capabilities, and it just sounds so good.
With all the latest technology in MIDI it has become a staple in my recording inviroment. I like Alesis stuff and have used it quite often but have realized how helpful the editing capabilities in pc recording are.
My problem is that every now and then i need to record drums but I can solve that pretty easy because I have access to larger studios. I do so much internet recording that the PT is just the way to go for me. Thinking I'll clean up the hard drive on the Roland and stick a for sale sign on it.