Thanks Chris Fitzgerald / Edirol R-09 !

[MT Spaces]

From a previous thread about small recorders:

Small Affordable Recorder

Originally Posted by Chris Fitzgerald

I don't usually gush about recording gear, but the Edirol R-09 is probably the single most amazing piece of gear I've ever seen. I bought one a few weeks ago, and it's completely amazing ..... I don't know if you'd call it "affordable" or not, but it's mind bogglingly good.

I just could not resist the urge ...... got one last Wednesday, loaded in the batteries and 2 gig SD card, spent 1/2 hour figuring out how to use it and then later that night set the little black box on a sawhorse and recorded about 2 hours of WAV-quality files of our bluegrass garage jam with 7 players. Yesterday I downloaded the freebie music editor software Audacity and MP3 export module onto my Mac i-Book and went to work ...... massaged the WAV files a bit, deleted the bangs of dropped chairs and doors slamming, got rid of chatter and dead air, did a few fade-ins and outs, normalized the volumes, exported as MP3 files into i-Tunes and burned some great-sounding CD's with 18 songs (although some of the playin' kinda sucked). How majorly sweet is that ?

This is gonna make everyone a lot more serious about their playing ..... the CDs don't lie . Previous attempts to record my bass with cassette recorders etc. just didn't cut it. I am really pleased that the bass sound seems to be faithfully reproduced. Next time I don't think I will even worry about hitting "stop-record-record" to create individual tracks since I can use Audacity to split into tracks at the same time as I massage, get rid of dead air, and normalize. Then I can just turn the Edirol on and forget about it .... concentrate on playing the music. Now I can record our live session that's coming up for my nephew's wedding party. The CDs will make a nice wedding present ..... just like a wedding photo album, only different.

We live in an era of people who care about the sound of our beloved Double Basses and who invent electronic gizmos (amps, speakers, pick-ups, digital recorders, etc.) that can really enhance our playing experiences. The Edirol R-09 is my new favorite black box, right in there with my Coda III amp and Rev Solo II pick-up. Thanks go to Chris for making me spend my IRS refund on something useful !

[Marcus Johnson]

What's an IRS refund?

Seriously, I think I'm going to treat myself to one of these. I saw one in action this past week. Frickin' amazing.

[MT Spaces]

Originally Posted by Marcus Johnson

What's an IRS refund?

It's a rare planetary event ... right up there with a total solar eclipse !

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Glad to be of service. Outside of my bass, that's definitely the best gear purchase I've made in years, and with virtually no downside...Unless you count being able to hear what your intonation was really like on that gig you just played.