Product Description

The MR8HD Digital Multitrack offers more than 15 hours of 8-track recording with CD quality (16 bit/44.1kHz) It comes with an internal 40GB 3.5" Hard Drive. Built-in digital effects including Reverb and Delay as well as Guitar Amp and Microphone simulations make it convenient to sweeten your tracks without turning to outboard gear. S/P DIF Digital Out allows you to mix down your music to an external DAT, Mini Disc or CD Recorder in digital quality. The USB port can be used for stereo WAV file transfer to and from PC allowing full access to the whole HD. ? Recording to 40GB internal 3.5" HD offering more than 15 hours 8-track recording with CD quality (16bit / 44.1kHz) ? 4-track simultaneous recording ? Phantom power on all the four XLR inputs ? Simple and intuitive operational environment inherited from MR-8 with the new push-dial button for easier menu operation ? Full-track (8-track) bouncing to a New Song (track 7/8) ? 128 x 64 dot LCD with comprehensive indication ? Industry-first FAT32 disk format and WAV file recording in the HD multitrack recorder of this class; PC-friendly advantage ? USB port for stereo WAV file transfer to and from PC allowing the full access to the whole HD from PC ? Free "WAV Manager" software available for multiple mono files transfer to and from PC ? S/P DIF Digital Out for digital mastering on an external MD, CD recorder, etc. ? Built-in digital effects including Reverb, Delay as well as Guitar Amp and Microphone simulations ?...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4672 in Musical Instruments
• Brand: Fostex
• Model: MR8HD SILVER
• Dimensions: 3.46" h x 12.28" w x 10.39" l, 10.10 pounds

Features

• Internal, 40GB, 3.5" hard drive provides more than 15 hours of 8-track recording at 16-bit/44.1kHz
• Intuitive, simple control environment
• 128 x 64-dot LCD
• Full-track (8-track) bouncing to a new song
• Push-dial button for easy menu operation

Customer Reviews

Fostex MR8-HD Digital Multitrack (close but no cigar!)
The specifications of this product make the mouth water:

* 40Gb internal 3.5" hard drive giving endless space.
* USB in and out allowing connection of CD Writer for burning your tracks and output to a computer.
* 4 inputs at once with both balanced and unbalanced inputs per channel.
* Optical output (no optical in!)
* Some built in effects (mild distortion for guitar, reverb, hall/room effects etc)
* No battery option!

The problems are all silly little things which ruin a device which should be superb. First and the big one - The balanced inputs are rubbish! Bit of a huge statement but connect a SM58 or BETA57a mic to either and you have to turn the trim all the way round which makes that input VERY noisy. {The noise is a background electrical hum/computer noise which coincides with things happening on the device e.g. hard drive spinning, button being pressed etc) So noisy in fact that I sent my mic back thinking it was faulty. You can actually hear the hard disk drive on the recordings when they are made using the XLR inputs (with a 20 foot long cable so its not because the mic is picking it up). If, however, you connect the same mic to an unbalanced input order is restored and the mic behaves itself correctly! This is absurd; the balanced input should be quieter than the unbalanced one. Fostex's response - "IF you connect a studio mic costing hundreds all will be fine" OR "try connecting a cheapy mic" - HELLO HELLO this is about the level of mic you would expect on a device of this cost. People are not likely to spend 1-2% of the cost of the device on a mic nor are they going to spend 3-4 times the cost!

My other minor annoyance is that you cannot use channel 2 to record unless channel 1 is in use and the same with channel 3 i.e. channels 2&1 must be in use! So you cannot leave the 4 input channels going to 4 devices and then record them individually to 4 tracks (or you can't using the version of software on my MR8-HD).

There are a few things which need sorting on this device before in is perfect! The mic inputs need sorting urgently; there needs to be a way to easily transfer a backing track from a CD to the device in the digital domain (you can convert the track to mono and transfer it by USB then physically modify the info file in the son's directory!).

It is though a pretty good device if you forget that it has XLR inputs and use it without. I would recommend it on that basis. I have actually returned mine to Fostex for them to check but it is behaving as the technical service people expect so it will most likely return without anything having been done.

Sound specs review
I bought my unit to do live 4 track recording using condensor microphones.

I actually measured the harmonic distortion because I could hear it in headphones and on the stereo outs to a backup recorder. Basically the main L/R output level peaks must be kept below -12dB and channel levels below -6dB.

The noise floor is below -100dB until the channel trims are past 3/4 of a turn then rapidly degrades. Higher output condenser mics can be directly connected (the unit has phatom power), dymanic mics should be run through an external mixer.

The unit has a quirk in that you must reactivate phantom power on power on even though the menu says phatom power is on!

First blush on Fostex MR-8HD Digital Mutlitrack Recorder
I just bought the Fostex MR-8HD Digital Multitrack Recorder and have had it for just 1 day. Before you buy this unit, please consider the following.

Pros

(1) Good value. Lots of features for the $$$.

(2) Fairly easy to use (read the manual first). I spent about 3 hours reading through the manual and following their examples. I created a simple song and tried all the features out (i.e., bouncing tracks, effects, punch-in/punch-out, etc.). Everything worked as expected.

(3) Overall - I like it.

Negatives

(1) If you use the XLR inputs (and why would you not use these?), you have to turn the trim pots all the way to max to get Shure SM58 and SM57 mic levels to an acceptable level (I used these mics for my recording - nothing special or pricey, but they do a nice job). Unfortunately, this causes the recording to be more noisy than it should be. A previous posting said that using the unbalanced inputs doesn't have this problem, but gee, what a drag to have to get XLR-to-1/4" adapters just to make it work right. This is a serious issue for me.

(2) The hard drive and fan noise coming from the unit is loud enough to be picked up by mics within 6 to 10 feet. Again, this is a bummer because I like to have my multi track recorder next to me when I am recording so I can control it while recording. Other postings mentioned the same issue.

Other feedback.

Fostex has the same unit with a built in CDR burner. You can purchase an external CD burner from Memorex (Memorex ultra-fast CD burner) for about $70 or $80 (and I tried this and it worked fine), but having a built-in CD burner would be a lot more convenient. So before you buy this, consider the unit with the built-in CD burner.

If Fostex would have instead used a Compact Flash card (to get rid of the hard drive noise) and made it so that the XLR inputs didn't have to be turned to MAX for industry standard mics like the SM58 and SM57, then this unit would be perfect.