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Vintage threads from the first ten years

fostex fd-4

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5/23/2000 6:14 PM
peter	fostex fd-4 thinking about buying one of these, digital 4-track recorder. Anyone have any opinions on them? Price (new) is reduced to CDN$400 (=US$250) because it has been in the store for a while.

5/24/2000 12:43 AM
Carlo	just curious peter - what recording medium does it use? hard drive, mini disk...etc. Carlo

5/24/2000 2:19 PM

good question--- it can have a hard drive installed,
or you can use a scsi-connected external medium
such as a Zip Drive. Unfortunately the
hard drive has to be SOLDERED in (WHY?)
and is a 'factory' installation.

What puts me off this stuff a bit is that
(a) I know nothing about computers
(b) I don't like playing with computer stuff
(c) it seems like if there is a problem
there's not much to do to diagnose it,
it's not like you can hook up your oscilloscope!

So for example I have this thing on loan to try out
and spent quite a bit of time getting it working
because I had the wrong type of zip drive
(parallel not scsi), but I didn;t even know
those were two different things-- they both
use the same 25-pin plug!!

5/25/2000 11:50 AM

Hello, Peter. That's a pretty good price, your SCSI drive may be more expensive than the recorder! Two things:

1. I find it very hard to believe that the drive has to be soldered in, if only because of the sheer number of pins on the drive. It is far easier and cheaper for a manufacturer to use a standard drive size and connector, they can then plug in any number of drives and have future compatibility. So, there is a good chance it uses a standard internal drive of some type that just plugs in. FYI, there are two IDE standards- the 0.1" pin spacing connector (for desktop PC's) and a 1mm pin spacing (for laptops). The pin numbers and signals are almost identical, but the connectors and drives are of a different size.

2. One thing to keep in mind with a digital recorder with a hard drive- archiving. Digital recordings take insane amounts of memory and you can quickly fill up a hard drive. You need to keep this in mind. If you use a Zip drive, you have to pay ($19?) for the Zip disk, and it has a limited capacity. If you can only have a SCSI external drive on this unit, you may have to purchase a SCSI archiving hardware solution such as a CDR, which adds more cost. CDR seems to be the best archiving solution to me, as a 650meg capacity blank CD costs under $1, and you can master your songs to CD on the same unit. CDR is slow, however.

I hope this helps and isn't too depressing!

5/25/2000 3:36 PM
enorton	You could add a SCSI hard drive. They are a little more expensive than IDE but being external it would be portable as well. You can have at least 6 devices in a SCSI chain so you could add CD-R and/ or a tape device as well as additional hard drives. You could then upgrade the recorder and keep your add-ons.

5/25/2000 6:34 PM

I like the idea of an external scsi hard drive...
I'm not too impressed with the zip drive, and
while I agree that the 'soldered in' hard drive
story sounds unlikely, it's not easy for me
to check since I don;t own the thing (yet?)
and so don't want to take it apart.

A question I'm curious about is whether
when you ping-pong tracks on this thing,
that is done in the digital domain, or
whether the signals are converted to analogue
and mixed and then re-digitized. I suspect
it is the latter since that is the easiest
implementation.

5/28/2000 2:35 AM

I also feel that zip disks are not the best solution cost-wise, especially when compared to CD.
When you are bouncing tracks is it pre EQ and pre fader or can you set levels and eq? If you can set levels and EQ, then i would agree that the signals are converted to analog and mixed and then re-digitized. I'm assuming that the mixer is analog.

So what does the price go up to with a SCSI drive?

Does anyone have any experience with the newest Boss digital recorder? I think it sells for about $500.

Carlo

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