November 4 2002

Comics and Announcements

Over The E Page 11

HEY, MATT... HAVE You SEEN
MINDY AROUND?
SHE JUST

Sue ff tee HALLOWE
COSTUME.

You'ge GONNA £01
ueR Cosrumes REA
CooL. /

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ow, MINDY! AWESOME CosTUM
Yu Look sust LIKE MY MOMZ.
HAH WAH! How DID You Ever MAKE
AYouARSELE ‘THAT UGLYZ THIS 15
THE SCARIEST COSTUME EVERZ,

By Destrudo

Welcome one, welcome all
to this issues review of gear.
How would you like a four
track recorder for a low price?
How would you like a digital
four track recorder with built in
effects for a low price? Well,
the Boss BR-532 may be what
you want if this is what you're
looking for.

This machine offers four
tracks of digital recording, of
course, you can only record a
maximum of two tracks at a
time, but this is more than
enough to thumbnail ideas for
songs or studio preproduction.
Although, the BR-532 offers
four tracks of audio and eight
virtual tracks to each audio
track, | found its digital effects
processing to be _ lacking.
However, there are other sell-
ing points with respect to this
machine.

This machine is completely
portable, and by portable | do
not mean that it is merely
small enough to carry; this
machine can operate on four
AA batteries. To have a digital
recorder with four tracks,
stereo effects capabilities, and
the need for an AC plug-in
removed is pretty damn sweet.

With respect to the effects
there is a definite lack in high
speed processing. For exam-
ple, sometimes the pitch shift-
ing effect would take a
moment to catch up to pro-
cessing notes in quick succes-
sion or two notes played in
tandem. This was disappoint-
ing, but the machine has more
to offer than lame effects that
you may, or may not use.

One other feature is the
smart media card this
machine uses as memory
storage. These cards are
quite small in size and they
range in storage capacity from
16 MB to 128 MB.
Unfortunately, for
me, | could not take
advantage of the 32
MB smart card that
came with the |
machine because it | —
had a demo song | #*
on it that | was not
going to erase
because | did not }
purchase the |
machine. So, | [|
could only play [
around with what
the unit could do in

Here’s Some Gear

theory and this consisted of
fooling around with its effects.
Unfortunately, as | said, the
effects were a little lacking but
| feel that the BR-532’s merit is
its portability, multi-tracking,
and computer applications.
This unit has a stereo line out
which would allow you to play
tracks into your sound card if
you have RCA inputs on your
sound card. However, this unit
goes one better by coming
with a smart media card drive
that connects to a computer by
a USB cable, and includes
software to allow the computer
to handle the proprietary Boss
audio form. Form there is
another set of software that
allows you to convert the Boss
audio form into waves so that
you can use them in a wave-
editing lab on your computer.

Overall, | can only speak of
what this unit has to offer in
theory because | could not use
the recording application. | do
believe that this unit would be
very useful for making clean
recordings for small but pro-
fessional projects. If one were
not interested in using the
effects, but wanted to make
recordings of one acoustic and
a vocal mike, this would work
wonderfully. The portability
makes this most useful to the
serious musician who is
focused on small, intimate per-
formances. Also, this device
could be useful for recording
small live performances.

Although | can only com-
ment on possibilities, the BR-
532 is quite affordable consid-
ering what it can offer. This
unit runs only $600 at Electron
Sound & Percussion 3658
Massey Drive. Keep in mind
that four track recorders used
to cost that much while being
cassette based, so check it
out.

The BA-532 is a digital four track recorder
that’s flexible, portable and affordable.