BOSS BR-800 Portable Digital Recorder

• 4-track simultaneous recording, 8-track simultaneous playback plus dedicated stereo rhythm track playback. EZ Recording interactively guides through the recording process. Powerful guitar, bass, and vocal effects derived from BOSS's flagship processors
• Song Sketch recording for quick stereo capture in WAV format. Built-in advanced drum machine with editor software. Functions as a USB audio interface and DAW control surface
• Functions as a USB audio interface and DAW control surface. Cakewalk SONAR 8.5 LE software with full audio loops and backing tracks included. Built-in stereo condenser microphone for instant recording Sleek new interface based on touch sensors

I got "volunteered" to write and record a song for the YMCA, on a very short time schedule. I had the BR-800 Fed-Exed to me I received the unit at 11 AM and by that evening I'd pretty much figured out the basics (thanks to some helpful YouTube videos). That afternoon I recorded the music tracks and the next day I recorded the soloist. The day after that I recorded the backup singers. The project was a roaring success and I would consider the sound to be CD quality. There's something I learned very early in my music/engineering career: an amateur will make complete garbage on a 64-track recording station, and an experienced engineer can make an album on an 8-track home studio. I would consider the sound quality of the BR-800 nothing short of phenomenal. It has 64 virtual tracks and excellent guitar and vocal effects. Yes, it takes some planning (I use an Excel spreadsheet to plan out the project), but you can "master" as many sub-mixes as you want out of the virtual tracks, keep backups of the raw audio, and put together just about any kind of end product you want. I'll take a hardware solution like the BR-800 any day over the DAW (although the drum editor and WAV converter software that comes with the BR-800 is vital). I have had absolutely no problems at all with the USB-based utilities, so I would suspect "pilot error". You know that old saying about the craftsman blaming his tools...

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The BR-800 is a solid little recording device.

Pros:

Great built in effects for guitar and vocals, which can be recorded with bouncing type stereo delays and shifting Chorus and more, for stereo 2 tracks. Or you can easily just go one track. The amp emulator's (so to speak) are solid. And you can get hair metal dirty if you want, but it has tuns of vary cool clean stuff you can mess with. You dont have to have a setup with you to throw down some ideas anywhere. Just plug in and start trying some stuff. (It has a decent on-board drum/rhythm editor also for percussion's.)

The good effects goes for the vocals as well. Theirs two built in mics that do a surprisingly well job of garbing vocals if you dont want to carry your mic with you. With most mini mufti-tracks vocals are usually a pain. With this machine if you can sing you can do 3 part harmony shifts and even a (somewhat) auto tune feature, and much much more. Most small recorders just dont give you mush to do vocals with, this does. It also records Acoustics well too. And the Bass emulator works well if you want to use your guitar to lay over a bass part.

Cool pre set mixdown setting you can tweak to how you want, or not use at all if you dont like.

Cons: At first it wont seem like you can do what you'll latter find out you can, takes a bit of learning. But its not as big of a learning step as some of the higher end machines. In fact compared to some higher end machines its rather easy. But still the manual is your friend with this machine.

You can step write the rhythm patterns, and via PC you can write your own. BUT! A lot of people wont want to do the PC USB thing to much. So Theirs no real time quick drum recording. And their is no on board drum machine. Their is on board patterns (and a bunch for just about anything with rolls, intros, ends, and variations for breaks and stuff.) And you can lay them out in the order you want via step recording.

It is a 8 Track in a sense. But to mix down you need track 7/8. And if you count the rhythm track for 2 it is still a 8 track.

All panning a EQ setting are not done via knobs. You have to go into the LCD and see them and mess with that stuff their. Although when you pick to record in stereo it auto pans each of the two tracks. You can re adjust this if you like.

The Touch sensitive buttons are odd at first. You do get used to them but I much rather have just normal buttons.

Mixing down to a PC (Wave conversion) via a USB is fairly easy, but It would of been cool if the mix-down would of just saved strait into the machine (Which it does but not as a wave file.) You can plug in a SD card but still it will have to be turned into wave format on the computer via a program you get with the unit. Its not that much of a pain, it just seems like they could of found a way to have your final mixes sitting in your machine to pull out whenever you wanted via a SD car or whatever.

All in all its a good little unit. And really you can do some dang pretty good demos with just it on its own. A few times I was surprised myself to see how much you could pull off. Another cool feature is making just loops if you want. So if you have a editor of any type on your computer you can create your own loops and throw them into some loop program. It was when messing with things like that that I realized how much I could use it for.

Read Best Reviews of BOSS BR-800 Portable Digital Recorder Here

With the latest firmware the BR-800 is a fantastic MTR for guitarists and bassists. Has a large library of great effects and the recording functions work well. The user interface is a little clunky and hard to get used to.

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Basically what it looks and feels like. Bought this unit thinking i can use it in my studio instead of

much older, more expensive and bigger BR-1200CD or BR-1600CD but I was disappointed with build

quality and changes to the control design. E.g. flat touch-buttons which are actually very unreliable.

You never know if you pressed then or not. The whole unit feels very light and "plasticky", the faders

are wobbling etc. BR-800 has some nice sound effects good mostly for guitarists or vocals, ability

to record 4 channels at a time is good too but overall build quality, the 6 faders instead of 8,

limited editing options make this recorder basically a recording toy.

A little bit of a learning curve with it in learning how to operate. When online a purchased a training course for $29.00 to supplement the very confusing manual. The guitar effects while numerous did not work well with my acoustic ovation, but have no idea if it was the Boss unit or my guitar.