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Edirol R-09 Recorder: initial impressions

#23
Good reviews. I have been looking into getting the R-1 for recording practices. Has anybody tried using the R-09 or the R-1 with the tape out from a mixer?

I don't want to use the mics since I don't want to have the bass in the mix. I want the recordings mainly to learn the chord progression for some of the songs.

And how hard is it to fast forward through the recordings? If I just hit record for 3 1/2 hours, am I going to have problems finding a specific song? Or do I need the unit close enough to hit the record/stop buttons?
 
#25
my 2 cents.... I've been interested in a cheaper all in one rehearsal/practice recorder. I bought an Olympus Ws320 $180 1gb, built in mics, built in speaker and USB. Here are my latest conclusions. The olympus is O.K. for moderate volume, low echoing room rehersal recordings. I mean about 100 dBc or less. above that you get the auto compression which can seem better than outright overloading of the mics, but the tone can change a bit too! echos are a big dissappointment. recently I started playing in a wooden ceiling church and its echo city!!! the recording is harder to understand than in person. another dissappointment of the ws320 is the connection between the battery and the main unit (you can separate the battery to reveal the USB connector) when I press the buttons, sometimes the power disconnects and the unit reinitializes (like power on) and I have to wait and sometimes screws up a recording.

a plus over some of the other recorders is you can add index markers to a continuous file and mark songs etc, not so with the r-09

However I do plan on trying a r-09 in my church/echoey setting...
 
#26
well, I finally bought an Edirol R-09 and a 2GB SD flashcard. so far its been very nice even if I have to use headphones to monitor playback at a gig or whatever. good think is its easy to set levels WITHOUT headphones because the metering and peak indicator are quick and work well together. The cool thing about setting levels is there are 30 increments of "high" or "low" mic sensitivity. so I can set input gain so low that it probably won't distort even at some of the loudest sounds.

I'll finish this post later, gotta go to work!!!:hmm:

well, I'm home from work and I don't know much else to say right now. I'm going downstairs to record my roomates acoustic drum set to see how it handles high volume...
 
#27
I'm digging the crap out of the R-09, and I take it with me most places I go to play music. In the music school setting, it's incredibly valuable for recording lessons and concerts of student performances, especially since it's so easy to burn CDs for the students just 5-10 minutes after the fact. Together with iTunes, it makes an incredibly powerful tool. I don't even know if I'll need the better mic option or not, but would be interested to hear if anyone else notices much of a difference using one.

My only complaint so far is with the internal headphone amp, which doesn't have enough juice to really amplify the input signal much; when you can't get enough signal in the phones, it's hard to tell what kind of mix you have because you're always hearing the canned sound mixed with the acoustic sound happening at the moment.
 
#28
Has anybody used both the R-09 and the R-1? With the R-09 out, I can now get a new R-1 for slightly less than the R-09. I like the size of the R-09, but the R-1 seems to have more features.

I don't need the effects and I was planning on recording from the mixer but we just picked up a drummer so I might want to use the mics. I didn't want the bass so I could use them as "play along" type tapes.
 
#30
uglybassplayer said:
Hey Chris,

The built-in mics are pretty decent. I went a bit kooky a few weeks ago and built this for my R-09...

...

...

- Frank.
Click to expand...

Hey, I saw this on KVRaudio forums way back. So you're the guy who put that together? Great job, I'm sure you get excellent results out of that portable audio recording solution.

mactac said:
with the new zoom unit, you wouldn't need any of that. xlr's, 1/4", real phantom power....
anyone seen one yet?
Click to expand...

Yup, I preordered the Zoom, after not being satisfied with the R-09 or the MicroTrack. It's everything I wanted and more! Excellent, excellent quality.
 
#32
geoffkhan said:
Hey, I saw this on KVRaudio forums way back. So you're the guy who put that together? Great job, I'm sure you get excellent results out of that portable audio recording solution.
Click to expand...
Yeah, my son (also named Frank) posted the pic on that forum a while back. He runs an internet company http://www.pro-sounds.net, where he develops patches and soundsets for a variety of music synthesizers... He spends a lot of time over on the KVR forums.

- Frank.
 
#33
uglybassplayer said:
Yeah, my son (also named Frank) posted the pic on that forum a while back. He runs an internet company http://www.pro-sounds.net, where he develops patches and soundsets for a variety of music synthesizers... He spends a lot of time over on the KVR forums.

- Frank.
Click to expand...

Yup, he's done quite a lot of patches for my products. Wow, what a small world!

Seanm, the R-09 doesn't have XLR inputs, which makes things a little more complicated. I wanted something that would work out-of-the-box with my setup with a minimal amount of equipment to lug around. Also it only goes up to 48 khz quality (zoom can go up to 96 khz). I've also heard that the screen scratches up really easy, as well as having problems with MP3 playback and variable bitrate playback. Not to mention that its noise levels aren't great, which is a bit turn-off for me since I work in the sample industry and thus am crazy about noise levels.

Of course, I'm basing my opinion on a lot of rumors in addition to the technical specs of the recorder, but I didn't want to risk it and hope that I don't encounter the same problems with it as other people.

And the M-Audio MicroTrack... well let's not go there, I've heard way too many terrible horror stories about firmware problems, etc.

I'm sure the Zoom H4 has its own set of problems, but so far I'm really getting my money's worth. I've recorded a lot of sound effects with it as well as used it as a mobile jamming tool (its multitracking ability is GREAT for that), as well as a tool to record tracks for tunes (I'll put a song from my computer onto it, as simple as copying files to an external harddrive, then take it somewhere and record some takes over that). Three of my friends are buying their own after I showed it to them.

Oh, and you don't have to install any software in order to connect it to your computer and copy files off of it, since it acts as a removable storage unit. That's a big plus, IMO.
 
#34
geoffkhan said:
Yup, he's done quite a lot of patches for my products. Wow, what a small world!

Seanm, the R-09 doesn't have XLR inputs, which makes things a little more complicated. I wanted something that would work out-of-the-box with my setup with a minimal amount of equipment to lug around. Also it only goes up to 48 khz quality (zoom can go up to 96 khz). I've also heard that the screen scratches up really easy, as well as having problems with MP3 playback and variable bitrate playback. Not to mention that its noise levels aren't great, which is a bit turn-off for me since I work in the sample industry and thus am crazy about noise levels.

Of course, I'm basing my opinion on a lot of rumors in addition to the technical specs of the recorder, but I didn't want to risk it and hope that I don't encounter the same problems with it as other people.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply. It looks like we are looking for different things from a recorder. I am happy with the R-09 but I use it mainly to record live jams. I record 160kbps mp3s since I need *at least* three hours of recording time. And I almost never use the playback feature.

Record -> plug into computer at home -> download files -> delete files.

I want it very simple, so I don't care about inputs, I just use the built in mics.
 
#35
seanm said:
Thanks for the reply. It looks like we are looking for different things from a recorder. I am happy with the R-09 but I use it mainly to record live jams. I record 160kbps mp3s since I need *at least* three hours of recording time. And I almost never use the playback feature.

Record -> plug into computer at home -> download files -> delete files.

I want it very simple, so I don't care about inputs, I just use the built in mics.
Click to expand...

Ah, well that's cool! As long as it suits your purposes, that's what counts.
 
#39
Thanks for the review! The R-09 was attached to a boom stand, placed directly in front of the bass. The piano was to the right and drums on the left. Everything was really close. The important thing was getting the unit above the rim of the piano and close enough to the front of the bass to balance the sound against the drums, which usually dominate. It took a lot of experimenting to find the right spot, but I think we finally found it.
 

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