Had this machine for 4 years. Its been a nightmare. I felt i was pushing buttons for tasks which could be done on the desk.i.e bass and treble adjusments.So time consuming.Not the easiest manual to understand and mixdown was difficult. Spent my savings on this studio, clever though it may be, its not user friendly. Its now bit the dust and wont burn the disks. Time consuming ,frustrating and im now saving for another studio. It wont be a Roland.

For three years I haved used a VS-1880. Now I just got a VS1824. Sure the learning curve is evident, but if your a bit patient once you learn it's all downhill and quite simple. The pre's can be better, but most of us have good outboard pre's (if the outboard pre has Digital Outs even better). I think the people getting bad sounds are doing somethings wrong. I get very good recordings from my setup. But then again, I've been with these machines for over 3 years now. Durring the first year recordings were not very cool. Now they are great. Hope this helps.

I am a computer expert and I feel that the VS digital recorders are fairly intuitive to use. It is when you start to dig deeper is when the unit can become complex. I think it is mostly because this unit has SO much to offer. Like any sophisticated piece of equipment it has a learning curve. Personally I found the manuals extremely intuitive and very easy to find answers to my questions. I think the sound quality is absolutely awesome. For those that do not feel the sound is as good as Korg, I would say that it is possible that something is set that shouldn't be, or something should be set! Example; if you record to a track and route the FX returns to the input as well as the track, you are going to get a convoluted mess of effects. This is not because the unit is faulty to allow this, it is because of the versatility. As a computer expert I feel that there is a fairly significant learning curve, but there really isn't a way around it when it comes to the power pack of features. I do feel that there are some questions that I have and can't find an answer to. Like; can you change the sampling rate after you record? I HOPE SO!!

I`ve had this 1824-CD for 3 years now. I bought all the bells & whistles for it, such as AKG 3000b, VS8F-2, Peavey Mic Tube Pre Amp. read the manual over & over but I learned a lot more by trial and error.

I had this Image in my head once I got the digital recorder, this was all I would need to make great CD recordings, but I found out it don`t work that way. I spent a whole lot of money for the 1824-CD and ACC, only to find out that it records 24 bit/44.1k/48k. in real world of recording, you need 24 bit/96k to get that real Pro sound, it`s like night and day. my 1824-CD is now a dust collector:(

This is the first digital recorder that I have owned alone although I jointly owned a Korg D8 (which gave a slightly better sound) with a musician buddy of mine.

This baby is very much worth its price, but the fact that you have to spend more time learning its perameters than actually jamming can be annoying!!! As an owner of several Roland products, I am aware that ALL ROLAND instruction manuals NEED a LOT of work.

This is a great asset to any studio, as long as you don't mind spending hours on the phone with ROLAND TECH SUPPORT. I have to say it's very good with electronic instrumental transmission, but getting good live performance and vocals, you've got to go all out with MICs because the pre-amp is not all that good. It comes with a lot of great features.

Also, it's too hard to get the quality to match that of what's already out in the industry. I've heard a Korg 8 track that sounded better than some professional recordings already out in the industry.

The 999 levels of undo has saved my life and the amount of virtual tracks are priceless. Getting a mixdown and burning to C-D is SO EASY it's scary, but this thing could have at least had MOTORIZED FADERS!!! for those of us who use atleast 15 tracks on every recording.

It's a pain when every time you want to pull up an old song that you're still working on because it's not yet mastered, you have to listen to it over and over to get the levels you had before you changed songs because without motorized faders, you can't save you setting unless you master the song. That's frustrating if I've ever known it.

Overall it's a great recorder, but If I could do it all over agian, I'd get a Korg D32XD or D16XD.

Besides lets all face it, if we were totally satisfied with this machine, we wouldn't be back on the web searching for a replacement. This has discouraged me with Rolands. In the future I'll put my investments in better names!!!