List Price: $819.00
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Today's Bonus:
- Two combo XLR/TRS inputs with premium mic preamps (VS Preamps), two TRS outputs, coaxial I/O, headphone out, and MIDI I/O.Graphical Control Panel software provides fast, intuitive control of the VS Preamps
- Phantom power, ground lift, and Hi-Z switches. One-click AUTO-SENS function intelligently sets optimal input levels for the preamps.
- Extreme low-latency VS Streaming driver. Low-noise, wide-range power supply. Compact with durable aluminum body and Direct Box functionality. Bundled with Cakewalk SONAR X1 LE
- Eight Premium Mic Preamps premium-grade digitally controlled mic preamps with independent phantom power, low-cut filter, phase invert, and digital compression for each channel.
- Extreme Low-Latency Driver OCTA-CAPTURE offers incredible stability and industry-leading low-latency USB performance via Roland's proprietary VS STREAMING technology. You can use multiple deviceson the same USB bus without compromising.
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I have two of these units strapped together to provide for a total of 16 ports. I am absolutely thrilled with the performance. I had a single MOTU 828 MKII which was working fine but I really wanted more ports and you cannot use ASIO drivers for multiple devices. I was particularly impressed with the documentation of this product which is significantly better than what you get used to for music products that you end up buying. Someone actually tried to write a manual which made the product useable quickly. Greatly appreciated! I will alert you to a few things NOT in the manual or not obvious that will help a lot and avoid problems:Do NOT use the Octa-Capture on a USB 3.0 port. Despite the spec saying they are backward compatible you will get nothing but horrid garbage if you try to record. The interface can be seen and configured without a problem from the Octa-Capture control program but that is deceptive. Put it on a USB 2.0 port or be sorry. I spent a LOT of time wondering what was wrong before I figured this simple thing out.
If you put two Octa-Captures together you set the clock master to have VS100 Expansion mode OFF and the slave to have it on. Then you connect the S/PDIF out of the master to the S/PDIF in of the slave unit. You HAVE to leave the master S/PDIF in and the slave S/PDIF out ports unused. Don't try to be clever and find a new IO path because that will make the system NOT work. Again, not documented but something to think about. Take your main outs from the slave not the master. Make sure the digital audio port is set to auto on both units.
Be aware that you can only use 4 ports if you are running 192Khz sampling rates and that you cannot strap two Octa-Captures together if you do that also. Serves you right since why would you run that high a rate anyway? Just not necessary. This unit performs like a charm in 24 bit/96 Khz sampling mode. Very very fast drivers also.
By default, the first analog input has high Z input enabled and the eighth one has compression enabled. You may wish to change this immediately. They assume a guitar is going direct into 1 and a bass drum mic is going into 8. They make it obvious when you look on the front panel. Another thing I like about the interface.
I absolutely LOVE that I can put a noise gate on per channel with these units. Wonderful for hooking up noisy old analog drum machines, bass line synths, and keyboards that I have. Also having the pre-amp per interface is great for things like my Waldorf Blofeld that has notoriously low output levels and needs a bit of juicing up before getting into the D/A converters.
The per channel compression is wonderful because I set it up to act as a limiter so I don't blow my speakers or brain up when dealing with very hot inputs.
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This unit works great with an HP Pavilion Dv7 laptop Win7 64. My DAW is Reaper. I am using separate HD 7200 for audio recording and have 8 gigs of ram. This replaced my defective MBOX3 which I returned to Avid after hours of trying to get it to work.For the same price, I was able to get the Octa-Capture which does much more than the MBOX ever did. You can record up to 10 tracks at a time. WOW! Also, there are 10 outputs, and each pair of outs has it's own mixer. The practical application is different monitor mixes for each band member. (time to upgrade to in-ear monitors) There is a screen on the unit which doubles the information provided via the Win7 driver control panel. So that means you can use the unit as a mixer without the computer.
Also included is MIDI in/out. This was a must for our Roland V-drum kit which triggers our Superior Drummer software. A word about latency: This goes down to 48spls. This is the fastest turn around I have ever used, and it is certainly the fastest I have seen for a USB 2.0. It works if your just triggering a software synth very nicely. However, when my band tried triggering the synth and recording 8 tracks of 24bit audio, we experienced occasional dropouts in playback and recording (once ever 10-20min) This is more the fault of the computer than the OCTA-CAPTURE, as I'm sure on a more powerful system you could probably avoid dropouts. For example, I bet an i7 MacBook Pro would probably be perfect for this unit. Or, probably a powerful desktop. The most stable compromise we found for out computer was setting the buffer to 128, which allowed for flawless recording and decent low latency midi triggering and monitoring. (My drummer suggest we get a second computer for recording so we could just use one computer for triggering via the Octa-Capture)
Final word: This thing is built sturdy, worked out of the box, and does everything it's supposed to do, just like ever Roland product I have ever owned. Emphasis on "it works." You will not regret this purchase.
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I need to record classical chamber groups and piano, and wanted something portable with a good clean sound. One thing I needed was at least 4 phantom powered mic inputs. I didn't want outdated firewire (and don't have a port on my machine anyway), and I didn't want to spend more than 500.SO
I bought a zoom R24 a few weeks ago, spent the first week being excited about all the goodies (its a sampler! Its a drum machine! It's a piece of crap!!), then let down as more and more...noisy inputs, squealing when phantom power was engaged, timing drift, driver problems and audio cutting out...it was basically unusable for my purposes.
Today I got the octa-capture in the mail, set it up. First impression was how sturdy and solid it felt, the knobs all rubberized (unlike the cheap plastic ones on the R24). Drivers were immediately installed and recognized accurately, all inputs were detected. First thing when I played music from my computer through this device, I was shocked at how clear and crisp every sound was. The R24 seemed to actually degrade the quality of sound! This was like night and day, I couln't believe how drastic the comparison was. The sound on the preamps for the mics are great as well, recorded singing and solo mbira playing this afternoon and was stunned at the quality. And the auto sense button really works, great for a quick setup.
So glad I got this device, glad I shelled out the extra bucks for the quality. The integration of software and hardware is where this thing shines, and that is where music recording has been moving in the last 20 years. Buy it, you won't regret it.
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+1 on the Roland Octa-Capture, despite the price I started out in the $400 budget range and was beaten into reasonableness by purchasing and returning other products.I'm a windows 7 x64 user, a happy owner of a fastrack pro but wanted more tracks. I just went through an extensive search, and one thing I kept seeing come up was the relatively new Roland Quad-Capture and Octa-Capture. However because of budget constraints and the fact that I use Studio One V2, I decided to to the FW route and try the FireStudio Project big mistake I wrote a separate review for that product, which is ultimately a one-star as would be any review I'd give to a FireWire product at this point.
In the end after a lot of painful purchase/return trial-and-error, I paid up considerably from my original ~$400 budget for an Octa-Capture and boy was I amazed it turned out to be totally worth it. This thing worked perfectly out of the box, the driver / mixer software is awesome, it has a lot of nice features which I thought I didn't need such as a good interface on the front panel, quick and handy load/save of mixer pre-sets, and even some decent preamps and compressors. Also great software metering which is something I didn't realize I was missing on my old FastTrack. I bought this thing very reluctantly because it was "the only game in town" that had more or less universally good reviews. Now I am totally glad I did, and I do not hesitate to recommend that you do the same.
The unit took me less than 2 minutes to get up and running. And what can I say? It just plain works! This unit records 8 simultaneous channels at low-latencies with no trouble. I am convinced that the drivers are the key to achieving this. I have yet to hear a pop or click; the audio is pristine.
Physically, the unit is solid and quite small actually; it is a nice travel size. The software mixing interface is very simply designed and is clearly intended to be mastered in no time. The auto-sense level feature is amazing!
In terms of functionality and portability, the Octa-capture works perfectly for the musician who is attempting to be a sound engineer at the same time he/she is playing with the band. I love this thing!
Bottom line: if you want 8 XLR inputs on USB (PC users take note), this is the way to go.
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