Have over half a dozen of these units and have recorded many albums with them over the past 16 years or so-magnifcent little studios-cheers for the upload!
Excellent video... congratulations on your purchase... I love BRs, and recording with these devices (Multitrack Cassette, Minidisc or CD Recorder) makes you more creative in your production skills with the tracks you have available and not with the eternal tracks of a DAW. I have a BR1200 and it is an excellent machine. I think there is a universe of musicians who prefer these workstations instead of a computer. It takes a different flavor to work on these devices. I will be waiting for your future videos and I have subscribed to your channel... greetings from Chile
Thanks very much Alex. I totally agree. The BR series have more than enough capabilities to produce outstanding professional sounding results. I see its limitations as a positive and a way to push it's capabilities and get the most out of it as well as allowing you to concentrate on the music rather than the technology. I love the BR series too and have a BR80, BR600, BR800, BR900, BR1180, BR1200 and a couple of BR1600's! I also have a DR5, DR880, a GT10 and RC300 - I guess I'm a bit of a Boss fan! I'm currently working on the next video which should be out soon hopefully. Thanks for subscribing! Cheers from Australia
@@masteringtoolkit Down the road, you think you may cover benefits of integrating your other Boss gear to achieve results or recording solutions? Like what? Spit balling, but capturing output from BR1600CD final Mix Down to the BR600, BR800 or BR900 for fast and easier transfer to PC? Really enjoying your series. So well done and the "chucks" of information are perfect.
@@Fezzler61 Sure. Once I've covered the basics, I'd be happy to take a look at any other related subjects that anyone is interested in learning about. Thanks! I think just covering a particular topic per video is a good way to keep folks attention and will make it easier to find videos on a particular aspect of the recorder in the future.
I was incredibly luck to find this one. I've seen them for sale that were "like new", but this one has never been used (ex display stock from a (drum!) music store). I started on 4 track tape Tascam Porta Two (HS). I still have it and it's still going strong! It was a great way to get into home recording. Thanks for the comment Albert!
I really really needed to see this and the fact it’s so recent. I just saw an BR1600 for sale on Facebook marketplace for less than 250 and I am seriously contemplating it. Miss these digital recording studios in a box. I want to get back into mobile recording using one of these.
The BR1180 is a great machine. The basic funcionality is very similar so you should have little trouble transitioning if you do switch. Have a look at some of my other videos to see more of what the BR1600 offers and see if it is worth the upgrade for you.
Cool, I buy a BR-1200 on EBay nearly new, without the last update was not installed! But this CD was not included…mmh, little bit sad. This Maschine is mostly the same, …like the 1600! It is possible to upgrade with a SSD Harddisk with a IDE Adapter, then the BR loads faster! Nice piece of Hardware, super sound and quick working with great results. But I think I sell my 1200 and buy a BR-800 …I believe this is the best BR Recorder, I have also a BR-864 …allways a good Maschine too. But I believe the BR-800 is the best of all BR Recorders, when you don’t need 8 inputs.
Thanks for the comment Alfredo! All the Boss BR series recorders are great IMO - and I have most of them including the 1200 and 800, but I always seem to gravitate back to the 1600.
@@masteringtoolkit Thx for Reply, what is in your opinion bad with the 800? I don*t want them because of that sensor buttons...i don*t know, i like that button "Click" ...and a sensor is like a touch screen, right? But i think the 800 have the best interaction with a PC, for further edit options etc. What is your expirience with the 800? I never hold that thing in my hands! And how the 800 works as a soundcard? I have a GT-001 the GT-100 Tabletop, and its great for me to Record in a DAW or Mix with that Soundcard, Projects with 28 Tracks and Inserts FX in the DAW are no Problems...! Have you test the 800 as soundcard? Can you tell me some expirience?
@@AlfredoZauberer I don't think the 800 is bad at all. On the contrary, I think they are *all* very capable machines. I do tend to prefer the more tactile feel of the analogue faders and dials over the touch controls though, but that's purely personal preference and nothing against the capabilities of the BR800. I've never used the BR800 as a "sound card" either, and TBH, if you want to use it purely as an interface for a DAW, you are probably better off just using your GT's as you describe. To me the whole appeal of the BR series of recorders to me is that they are "stand alone" and don't require a PC. As far as the BR1600 goes, I connect to a PC using an interface via the SPDIF digital connectors to transfer audio without any loss of quality to and from a DAW. This works great if I want to add a virtual instrument or use a plugin on a song. I think its just a matter of finding out what workflow works best for you. If you pick up a 2nd hand BR800 to try it out, you can always sell it on without much of a problem if it doesn't end up suiting you. Best of luck!
Hi I'd like to take advantage of your knowledge tyo make 2 other questions: 1) about importing wave files from USB. I want to mix on recorder stuff from my pc, so I'm importing through USB from my pc to the BR 1600. I expected that if I try to import a stereo .wav file into a mono track (1 - 8) a message would prevent me. But the file is imported anyway, but I don't understand if it is in some way "converted" to mono, summing L+R (which would mean saving time for me, not having to do this on my pc) or instead if first (=left) channel is taken ... which are 2 completely different things. Thanks
No problem - happy to help where I can. If you are importing a mono file, choose track 1 - 8 as the destination. For a stereo file choose either track pairs 1/2 - 7/8 or track 9/10 - 15/16. If you import a stereo file to a mono track, the two channels will be summed to mono. If you import a mono file to a stereo track, it will be duplicated to both the L & R channels.
2) Second question is: track levels are not saved within songs?!? I expected that the would. But they're not.. If I mix a song, then I load another one and of course I change tacks levels, switching back to the 1st song... Levels of the 2nd are applied. Is there any way to prevent this? Otherwise every time I have to set levels back again.. I think it would be possible by saving scenes and restoring track levels from scenes, setting the senes every while all along the song, using markers. But it is too much time consuming... Any ideas? thanks!
You are correct, by default the track levels are not stored along with a Song Save. As you suggest though, the "Scene function" is the solution. For every song I mix on the BR1600, I always assign Scene 001 as the current state of the mix. This is very simple to use and is not time consuming. You do not need to use Markers for this. When your song mix is done, go to Utility/Scene. Choose a preset from 001 to 100 and press the Save/F3 button. All the track fader levels in your song are now saved! When you come back to a song after working on others, simply load the song, go the Utility/Scene and select the scene that you saved the mix to (in my case this is always 001 for the default mix) and press Call/F4 to restore all the track levels. Even if all the faders have changed or are even at zero, the playback will still reflect the levels of the mix from when it was saved. To be able to actually SEE what the track levels are, go to Utility/Fader. The "line" on the display represents the current location of the fader, while the "box" is the saved location. You can use this display to reset the fader locations of your mix if you need to, so that you can continue mixing the song. As soon as you move a fader, the saved location will be replaced with the current location, but you can recall the scene again if you need to get the faders back to their original saved locations. You can use Scenes to try out multiple different mixes of your song, which you can switch between with just one button push - it's a very handy feature!
@@masteringtoolkit thanks a lot. So is there some "latch" behaviour which involves a fader and its "scene-stored" value? If I move the fader after recalling a scene, will the fader physical position be ignored until it reaches the "stored" value? Thanks!
@@manucontrovento No. As soon as you touch a physical fader, it will use the physical location over the stored value. So if you need to move the physical faders to the stored values, look at the Utility/Fader screen to see where it should be, before you move the physical fader. Move each one in turn, and then reload the scene again to confirm and/or fine tune. It sounds long winded when written down, but really quite quick and easy to do in practice.
Hi, I have a question about exporting the final mix, i.e. the 'master' track... Compared to other recorders I use I can't figure out how I should do it, even by reading the manual several times. When the mix is finished I simply want to get a stereo wav file with the sum of the tracks (those that are not muted) and their effects, eq, reverb, etc, as we would do in any multitrack recorder. But I don't understand how to do this. Maybe I've guessed that the only way (but it seems really inconvenient) is to bounce everything to one of the free stereo tracks, and if there aren't any, use a v-track of one of the already occupied stereo tracks. And then export the relevant wav file via usb connection to the computer. Is this the only way? And in the event that indeed all the stereo tracks are already occupied, on the same channel on which I want to do the bouncing (e.g. track 9-10) is both the track of my track played to include it in the bounce, including effects, and the v-track written with the master? Thank you very much.
Until you bounce the tracks down, they will remain as multiple individual audio tracks - similar to how you need to render audio down to a single file in a DAW. The BR1600 has been designed with the assumption that you will want to "master" your song once you have finished mixing it. To this end, the procedure is as you suggest - by bouncing the mix down to a stereo track. This is typically track 9/10 as this is where a mix needs to reside in order to use the Mastering Toolkit. The V-tracks give you additional recording options, but for each track, you can only choose *one* of the v-tracks to play at any one time and you can't record to a track and play it at the same time - you need to leave at least one track free if you want to bounce the mix down. You do not need to use track 9/10 though if you don't plan on mastering on the BR1600, and you can select any stereo track or even an adjacent pair of mono tracks. Using the edit functions, you can move any tracks around as needed. It's hard to give advise without knowing how you have arranged the tracks in your song, but there are some options to free up space. If you have muted tracks, you can utilize those for your bounce track. If you are using the built in Bass, this uses a stereo track. You can bounce this down to a mono audio track if you have one to free up the stereo track. If you are using both the built in drums and bass, you can bounce them together to a single stereo track and free one up. You can mix *everything* in your song EXCEPT for one stereo track and use a spare set of v-tracks on that track for the bounce. If you *can* create the space to do a mix bounce, there are a couple of ways to export it. As you mentioned, you can connect via USB and export, but I find it is almost always quicker to just use a CD-R/W and export it that way. Once done, you erase it, ready for the next time you want to use it. Lastly, you can export the mix as is *without* doing a bounce if you connect the Digital Out to a PC via an audio interface that accepts a digital signal. This will give you a lossless copy of your mix direct to PC.
@@masteringtoolkit thanks a lot. This just confirms what I was thinking.. for now I really love this machine and as you guess I'm starting using it properly just now, but I have a long experience with more recent recording devices. I think that for my purpose the best option is connecting the BR 1600 to a soundboard through the main out and record my final mix straight into my Pc, even if I started working dawless just because I was tired of daws 😅
They pop up on Ebay from time to time, usually not cheap though. There are plenty of other samples available on the web that you can use and will work just fine.
The BR1600 was designed to be used as a stand alone recorder and does not need to connect to a PC. The onboard USB allows you to a connect purely for backing up and restoring data and import/export of files (which can also be done with the onboard CD drive too). Windows sees the BR1600 as a standard "removable drive", so should you have no problems on Win10 or 11.
Agreed! They are still a *very* capable way of recording your own music. Seems like people are starting to catch on though, as prices look like they are starting to go up.
Digital recording technology has regressed. Can't imagine needing a higher bit rate than these provided. The ability to record 8 inputs on their own channels with their own effects/eq/volume was amazing to me, especially when it's necessary to mix drums professionally. I need to pick up one of these or a... Roland 24 track with that sweet monitor output and mouse capability
Another helpful and well made video for us BR1600 owners.
Thank you for all the effort and work you do.
Beautiful !!
Have over half a dozen of these units and have recorded many albums with them over the past 16 years or so-magnifcent little studios-cheers for the upload!
I totally agree! They are very under appreciated.
Thanks for commenting.
Excellent video... congratulations on your purchase... I love BRs, and recording with these devices (Multitrack Cassette, Minidisc or CD Recorder) makes you more creative in your production skills with the tracks you have available and not with the eternal tracks of a DAW. I have a BR1200 and it is an excellent machine. I think there is a universe of musicians who prefer these workstations instead of a computer. It takes a different flavor to work on these devices. I will be waiting for your future videos and I have subscribed to your channel... greetings from Chile
Thanks very much Alex. I totally agree. The BR series have more than enough capabilities to produce outstanding professional sounding results. I see its limitations as a positive and a way to push it's capabilities and get the most out of it as well as allowing you to concentrate on the music rather than the technology.
I love the BR series too and have a BR80, BR600, BR800, BR900, BR1180, BR1200 and a couple of BR1600's! I also have a DR5, DR880, a GT10 and RC300 - I guess I'm a bit of a Boss fan!
I'm currently working on the next video which should be out soon hopefully.
Thanks for subscribing! Cheers from Australia
@@masteringtoolkit Down the road, you think you may cover benefits of integrating your other Boss gear to achieve results or recording solutions? Like what? Spit balling, but capturing output from BR1600CD final Mix Down to the BR600, BR800 or BR900 for fast and easier transfer to PC? Really enjoying your series. So well done and the "chucks" of information are perfect.
@@Fezzler61 Sure. Once I've covered the basics, I'd be happy to take a look at any other related subjects that anyone is interested in learning about.
Thanks! I think just covering a particular topic per video is a good way to keep folks attention and will make it easier to find videos on a particular aspect of the recorder in the future.
That looks sweet! I had a badic 4 track cassette recorder back in the day. That was a fun unit but this is on a whole other level,
I was incredibly luck to find this one. I've seen them for sale that were "like new", but this one has never been used (ex display stock from a (drum!) music store).
I started on 4 track tape Tascam Porta Two (HS). I still have it and it's still going strong! It was a great way to get into home recording.
Thanks for the comment Albert!
I have Boss Br1200cd I have recorded many songs in the past love this unit
Great to hear that you're still getting good use out of your BR 👍
I really really needed to see this and the fact it’s so recent. I just saw an BR1600 for sale on Facebook marketplace for less than 250 and I am seriously contemplating it. Miss these digital recording studios in a box. I want to get back into mobile recording using one of these.
Glad to help!
They really are great little machines - particularly for mobile recording. It's a shame Boss decided to discontinue them.
Been rolling with a 1180 for a long time. Thinking about upgrading to the 1600 and wanted to see how different it is from the 1180
The BR1180 is a great machine. The basic funcionality is very similar so you should have little trouble transitioning if you do switch.
Have a look at some of my other videos to see more of what the BR1600 offers and see if it is worth the upgrade for you.
GORGEOUS!
Cool,
I buy a BR-1200 on EBay nearly new, without the last update was not installed!
But this CD was not included…mmh, little bit sad.
This Maschine is mostly the same, …like the 1600!
It is possible to upgrade with a SSD Harddisk with a IDE Adapter, then the BR loads faster!
Nice piece of Hardware, super sound and quick working with great results.
But I think I sell my 1200 and buy a BR-800 …I believe this is the best BR Recorder, I have
also a BR-864 …allways a good Maschine too.
But I believe the BR-800 is the best of all BR Recorders, when you don’t need 8 inputs.
Thanks for the comment Alfredo!
All the Boss BR series recorders are great IMO - and I have most of them including the 1200 and 800, but I always seem to gravitate back to the 1600.
@@masteringtoolkit
Thx for Reply,
what is in your opinion bad with the 800?
I don*t want them because of that sensor buttons...i don*t know, i like that button "Click" ...and a sensor is like a touch screen, right?
But i think the 800 have the best interaction with a PC, for further edit options etc.
What is your expirience with the 800?
I never hold that thing in my hands!
And how the 800 works as a soundcard?
I have a GT-001 the GT-100 Tabletop, and its great for me to Record in a DAW or Mix with that Soundcard, Projects with 28 Tracks and Inserts FX in the DAW are no Problems...!
Have you test the 800 as soundcard?
Can you tell me some expirience?
@@AlfredoZauberer I don't think the 800 is bad at all. On the contrary, I think they are *all* very capable machines.
I do tend to prefer the more tactile feel of the analogue faders and dials over the touch controls though, but that's purely personal preference and nothing against the capabilities of the BR800.
I've never used the BR800 as a "sound card" either, and TBH, if you want to use it purely as an interface for a DAW, you are probably better off just using your GT's as you describe.
To me the whole appeal of the BR series of recorders to me is that they are "stand alone" and don't require a PC.
As far as the BR1600 goes, I connect to a PC using an interface via the SPDIF digital connectors to transfer audio without any loss of quality to and from a DAW.
This works great if I want to add a virtual instrument or use a plugin on a song.
I think its just a matter of finding out what workflow works best for you.
If you pick up a 2nd hand BR800 to try it out, you can always sell it on without much of a problem if it doesn't end up suiting you.
Best of luck!
Awesome video could you please do a demonstration of it in use.
Cheers Iain! More videos are in the works.
Thanks for watching
Hi I'd like to take advantage of your knowledge tyo make 2 other questions:
1) about importing wave files from USB. I want to mix on recorder stuff from my pc, so I'm importing through USB from my pc to the BR 1600. I expected that if I try to import a stereo .wav file into a mono track (1 - 8) a message would prevent me. But the file is imported anyway, but I don't understand if it is in some way "converted" to mono, summing L+R (which would mean saving time for me, not having to do this on my pc) or instead if first (=left) channel is taken ... which are 2 completely different things. Thanks
No problem - happy to help where I can.
If you are importing a mono file, choose track 1 - 8 as the destination. For a stereo file choose either track pairs 1/2 - 7/8 or track 9/10 - 15/16.
If you import a stereo file to a mono track, the two channels will be summed to mono. If you import a mono file to a stereo track, it will be duplicated to both the L & R channels.
Awesome🤩😍
2) Second question is: track levels are not saved within songs?!? I expected that the would. But they're not.. If I mix a song, then I load another one and of course I change tacks levels, switching back to the 1st song... Levels of the 2nd are applied. Is there any way to prevent this? Otherwise every time I have to set levels back again.. I think it would be possible by saving scenes and restoring track levels from scenes, setting the senes every while all along the song, using markers. But it is too much time consuming... Any ideas? thanks!
You are correct, by default the track levels are not stored along with a Song Save. As you suggest though, the "Scene function" is the solution.
For every song I mix on the BR1600, I always assign Scene 001 as the current state of the mix. This is very simple to use and is not time consuming. You do not need to use Markers for this.
When your song mix is done, go to Utility/Scene. Choose a preset from 001 to 100 and press the Save/F3 button. All the track fader levels in your song are now saved!
When you come back to a song after working on others, simply load the song, go the Utility/Scene and select the scene that you saved the mix to (in my case this is always 001 for the default mix) and press Call/F4 to restore all the track levels.
Even if all the faders have changed or are even at zero, the playback will still reflect the levels of the mix from when it was saved. To be able to actually SEE what the track levels are, go to Utility/Fader. The "line" on the display represents the current location of the fader, while the "box" is the saved location. You can use this display to reset the fader locations of your mix if you need to, so that you can continue mixing the song. As soon as you move a fader, the saved location will be replaced with the current location, but you can recall the scene again if you need to get the faders back to their original saved locations. You can use Scenes to try out multiple different mixes of your song, which you can switch between with just one button push - it's a very handy feature!
@@masteringtoolkit thanks a lot. So is there some "latch" behaviour which involves a fader and its "scene-stored" value? If I move the fader after recalling a scene, will the fader physical position be ignored until it reaches the "stored" value? Thanks!
@@manucontrovento No. As soon as you touch a physical fader, it will use the physical location over the stored value. So if you need to move the physical faders to the stored values, look at the Utility/Fader screen to see where it should be, before you move the physical fader. Move each one in turn, and then reload the scene again to confirm and/or fine tune. It sounds long winded when written down, but really quite quick and easy to do in practice.
Hi, I have a question about exporting the final mix, i.e. the 'master' track... Compared to other recorders I use I can't figure out how I should do it, even by reading the manual several times. When the mix is finished I simply want to get a stereo wav file with the sum of the tracks (those that are not muted) and their effects, eq, reverb, etc, as we would do in any multitrack recorder. But I don't understand how to do this. Maybe I've guessed that the only way (but it seems really inconvenient) is to bounce everything to one of the free stereo tracks, and if there aren't any, use a v-track of one of the already occupied stereo tracks. And then export the relevant wav file via usb connection to the computer. Is this the only way? And in the event that indeed all the stereo tracks are already occupied, on the same channel on which I want to do the bouncing (e.g. track 9-10) is both the track of my track played to include it in the bounce, including effects, and the v-track written with the master? Thank you very much.
Until you bounce the tracks down, they will remain as multiple individual audio tracks - similar to how you need to render audio down to a single file in a DAW.
The BR1600 has been designed with the assumption that you will want to "master" your song once you have finished mixing it. To this end, the procedure is as you suggest - by bouncing the mix down to a stereo track. This is typically track 9/10 as this is where a mix needs to reside in order to use the Mastering Toolkit.
The V-tracks give you additional recording options, but for each track, you can only choose *one* of the v-tracks to play at any one time and you can't record to a track and play it at the same time - you need to leave at least one track free if you want to bounce the mix down.
You do not need to use track 9/10 though if you don't plan on mastering on the BR1600, and you can select any stereo track or even an adjacent pair of mono tracks.
Using the edit functions, you can move any tracks around as needed.
It's hard to give advise without knowing how you have arranged the tracks in your song, but there are some options to free up space.
If you have muted tracks, you can utilize those for your bounce track.
If you are using the built in Bass, this uses a stereo track. You can bounce this down to a mono audio track if you have one to free up the stereo track.
If you are using both the built in drums and bass, you can bounce them together to a single stereo track and free one up.
You can mix *everything* in your song EXCEPT for one stereo track and use a spare set of v-tracks on that track for the bounce.
If you *can* create the space to do a mix bounce, there are a couple of ways to export it.
As you mentioned, you can connect via USB and export, but I find it is almost always quicker to just use a CD-R/W and export it that way.
Once done, you erase it, ready for the next time you want to use it.
Lastly, you can export the mix as is *without* doing a bounce if you connect the Digital Out to a PC via an audio interface that accepts a digital signal.
This will give you a lossless copy of your mix direct to PC.
@@masteringtoolkit thanks a lot. This just confirms what I was thinking.. for now I really love this machine and as you guess I'm starting using it properly just now, but I have a long experience with more recent recording devices. I think that for my purpose the best option is connecting the BR 1600 to a soundboard through the main out and record my final mix straight into my Pc, even if I started working dawless just because I was tired of daws 😅
Hello, my name is Paweł, I have such a model but I do not have a starter disc for this model.
Hey there, Do you still have those demo songs that were on the unit?
Where can you buy or download a starter disc for this model from the Internet?
They pop up on Ebay from time to time, usually not cheap though.
There are plenty of other samples available on the web that you can use and will work just fine.
Is this product compatible with windows 10 or 11?
The BR1600 was designed to be used as a stand alone recorder and does not need to connect to a PC.
The onboard USB allows you to a connect purely for backing up and restoring data and import/export of files (which can also be done with the onboard CD drive too).
Windows sees the BR1600 as a standard "removable drive", so should you have no problems on Win10 or 11.
Is there an easy way to lay drum with 3guitars and 3 vocals then burn like a live song
Yes, you can record up to 8 tracks at once, so you could use 2 for the drums, 3 for your guitars and 3 for vocals. You can then burn to CD no problem.
@@masteringtoolkit i cant figure this out. I need help
Por favor, haz los videos con subtitulos pues es la unica manera que tengo de entender el video. Gracias
He añadido subtítulos para el texto en pantalla.
Espero que eso ayude.
It stinks Boss doesn't make this anymore, It doesn't make sense. An amazing machine 😕
Agreed! They are still a *very* capable way of recording your own music.
Seems like people are starting to catch on though, as prices look like they are starting to go up.
Digital recording technology has regressed. Can't imagine needing a higher bit rate than these provided. The ability to record 8 inputs on their own channels with their own effects/eq/volume was amazing to me, especially when it's necessary to mix drums professionally. I need to pick up one of these or a... Roland 24 track with that sweet monitor output and mouse capability