Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder 

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

Recorder has many more options than they can be determined. Without persistent reading instruction is difficult to do anything, but when you overcome these obstacles, you'll be in musical heaven.

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

I'll give it a solid 7 for the work I do on it. Which is mostly laying down guitar tracks (AWESOME guitar presets) and vocals (serviceable vocal presets) then taking the tracks into my computer and playing with them there, then often taking 'em back to the Boss for mastering. You can adjust all the presets like you would your chain of stomp boxes . . . much of it's capabilities I never use (pitch correction, phrase tracks, bass thing, i dunno). I like it a bunch and use it all the time. That said, there's one annoying peculiarity: I need to initialize the HD after each session. The reason? A session starts and Boss tells you you have, like 330 hours, 28 minutes of free space. You lay down a couple of tracks and when you look again it's suddenly down to 7 hours remaining. Do a little more and it's down to 15 minutes. Any more and its HDD FULL!!!! Which is irritating beyond belief. If you don't mind doing most of the work in your puter this Boss will provide clean clear wonderful raw tracks for your Cubase sessions lol SEVEN STARS

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

Ive been using this unit for years and recorded hundreds of songs with it.I can record all the music i want without the studio cost and never have to leave the house or worry about the other band members because with the br 1600 all i need is myself.I get great sound quality and its pretty easy to figure this thing out.Ive spent an endless amount of hours on the br1600 and have not had a bit if trouble.I would recommend this machine over any other home studio.

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

I've owned a few of Boss' Digital recorder. Before I purchased the Br1600, I had and still have the Boss Br1180 CD which is close to ten years now.While looking for a new Hard disk recorder, I searched for multitrack recorders that accepted SD/CF memory cards. I was told by a computer tech that hard drives last longer than SD/CF cards.Since I was happy with the 1180 being easy to operate, I purchased the BR1600 for my small basement studio. The buttons have an easier and a more direct approach. For example the EQ, reverb and pan are not embedded under menus like my BR1180CD but are individual buttons.

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

I've owned many different types of recording equipment and I absolutely love the ease of use with this machine! I find it so convenient to record on and import or export .wav or .aiff files on the fly, plus I can take it with me anywhere as an all in one solution. I just put it in a case and I'm out the door...voila! In live situations I love the auto-calibration. It saves me time and I've made some awesome recordings. If you're thinking about buying one of these yourself. Do it. You can't go wrong with this unit!

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

I agree with a previous poster that the number of tracks is misleading. There are truly only 11 tracks once you figure the stereo tracks and 9/10 the final mix track. That is the only thing I can find fault with on this unit. On the positive side, and there are many positives, the quality of the recordings is excellent. Ease of use, well, you'd better read the manual, and once you have, a whole world of recording pleasure is open to you. I bought the David Wills BR1600 CD instructional DVD and voila, it opened me up to the ability to do things I only dreamed were possible. For the sound quality, and some great recordings, this is the unit to buy. I have owned mine for 5+ years and if it were lost or stolen, I WOULD go right out and purchase another.

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

I have owned this recorder for almost 5 years now and have recorded hundreds of hours of audio on it. Mine is Version 2.0 with a 40 GB hard drive, which still holds a lot of data. I have upgraded my studio and use this mainly to import unprocessed guitar and bass into Cubase 4.0, as well as record live drums (for this, it can't be beat-no pun intended!).Simply connecting a USB cable allows you to import and export audio to a computer. This process is a little slow and time consuming, but there is a program you can buy to speed the data transfer. I have not used it, but reviews seem good.One thing I have ran into is when the hard drive begins to reach capacity, it will not transfer files, and will sometimes not burn them to a CD either. I am sure to have my data transferred and "initialize" the unit to a clean state often.This unit can be used as an audio interface with Cubase using the digital coaxial output to your PC (I am using an M-Audio 192) so you can record guitar direct as well as vocals. The BR1600 even gives you the option of recording dry, while monitoring wet, which gives great flexibility for changing sounds in the mix. I really hate to commit to a sound now, as adding real drums sometimes changes the way the guitars fit into the song, making them useless.This unit is a songwriters dream, as you can simply program a drum track using the drum templates built in and start going within 5 minutes. The unit will allow you to produce very good quality songs, that if you spend some time will sound far better than a "demo". In fact, some of the songs I've recorded with this unit, I haven't been able to reproduce with higher end gear. It does not give you the high level of precision and options that Cubase 4 does, but it is very capable. For live drum recording it should be considered for sound quality, ease of use, and portability.This truly is a recording studio that covers all the bases very well.

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

This is definitly an easy recorder to use. Read the manual once and you can do a great recording within minute. All the functions are labled and easy to use. I record in my living room and this machine does a great job. 16 virtual tracks gives the user alot of tracks to play with. Bouncing and mastering is easy as pressing a buttonand with lots of flexiblity. Burning a cd is a simple procedure. You can burn a cd and finalize in a "disk.once". You can record a whole concert and then burn individual songs after marking them.I strongly recommend this recorder. I am buying another BR1600 version 2 because it has a 80GB hard drive with 240 hours of recording.

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

This is a really good recorder. However it is NOT for someone just getting started with home recording. I would recommend the BR-900 for someone starting out, as it's much more user friendly. This machine is great for recording large groups, or even a 4 or 5 peice band. For larger groups you will need an external mixer to get more mic's in, but if you want to record a band, you can do so easily without needing to run the drum mic's through a mixer to fit them all in one track. It is a really great machine!!

Comments about Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder:

Since I feel the title of this product is misleading, I felt compelled to submit this review. I want to warn those that would like to have the flexibility of many tracks, which this product may not offer. As such, the focus of this review will be on the tracks.First, tracks 1 - 8 are "single" tracks. You can pan, left or right, whatever is recorded here. You can also select two tracks, such as "1 & 2" to create a stereo track where you can still pan EACH track.This is where I was a bit frustrated...Tracks 9 -16 are "stereo" tracks, meaning you MUST select tracks 9/10, 11/12, etc. You CANNOT separate the tracks for separate recording, which, to me, means that these stereo tracks do NOT have TWO tracks...this should be consider ONE "stereo track." This means that you cannot individually pan "track" 9, 10, etc. And, it gets worse...if you are interested in using the programs mastering software, you can't have anything on tracks 9/10, because that is the track that is bounced to for mastering. This means there are actually only 11 TRACKS (i.e., tracks 1-8, 11/12/, 13/14 & 15/16). The above being said, the effects are great and the quality of the sound recordings are great, which you can read about in the product information and/or other product reviews. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll be purchasing another unit when I can that actually has more "true" tracks.