BOSS Micro-BR :: Questions & Answers

Hey. I've just got this and when I was recording the drums of my band I was wondering.

When the "OVER" display appears, does it damage your in-built mic.

I really wanna know cause I don't wanna waste all our money.

Thanks.

Hi all --

Great Forum! I just called Boss (4/9/07) and asked if a 2GB SD card would work with the Micro BR. They told me no -- 1GB is the limit (and they also advised me to use a "regular" SD Card -- i.e. not one that is high-speed, or burst-mode, or anything like that).

I believe the need for the "vanilla-ness" of the card, but I'm not sure I believe the 1GB memory limitation. Does anyone here know, from personal experience, whether or not this is actually true? Will 2GB cards work? As I say, I got this from the Boss Tech Support people, but you never know how knowledgable the average "guy that answers the phone" is...

Thanks!

Hi guys

I stumbled across the Micro BR by accident when I grew frustrated with trying to get acoustic guitat and vocal demos down in any acceptable form. It looks like the answer to my prayers because it's A/ small and B/ relatively simple. But it also seems very oriented to electric guitar which is not my bag at all. What I want to be able to do is chuck down simple one or two track acoustic demos, recorded via a mic, then add one or two vocal lines on top. A drum/click track to keep me in time would be a useful bonus. Then ideally I'd like to be able to output those files to WAV so I can import them into ProTools in my playing partner's studio as a guide track for serious recordinf. I've got outboard reverb and compression if needed, and a good mic, but I'm wondering if the Micro BR is going to be suitable as a recorder - or is it totally geared to overdubbing electric guitar effects?

Any help would be very gratefully received!

All the best

Mark G

Hi everybody,

While looking for a portable MP3 phrase trainer I stumbled upon the Tascam MP GT1 and the Boss Micro BR. I read some very positive reviews on the Tascam (and on the Boss), but to me it seems like the Boss has all the functions of the Tascam and much more for almost the same price. Does anyone not agree on this, am I missing a good reason why the Tascam isn't much cheaper than the Boss

Thanx
Michiel

Hi Mark G --

The Micro BR can definitely do what you want, in terms of acoustic recording. True, it has lots of on-board effects geared toward electric guitar, but you don't have to use them if you don't want to. It has a built-in mic if you want to record acoustic tracks that way, or if you have an acoustic guitar with a piezo/pickup, you can plug your acoustic into the normal "Guitar IN" jack -- it has different input level settings to accommodate whatever strength of signal your guitar may put out. As far as recording vocals -- again, you can either sing right into the unit's built-in Mic, or you can plug a better mic into the input jack, and set it to be "mic" instead of "instrument". The whole input signal path is very configurable.

There's also a whole slew of drum patterns, including metronome-like "click" patterns. Here, you can either set one pattern playing and just leave it going, as you record over it, OR, you can pre-program an actual "drum track", that has a beginning and an end, with appropriate fills, changes of patterns as needed, etc -- your choice. You can make it simple (single pattern repeating over & over), or you can make it fancier (a programmed drum track, with all the fills). Hope this helps!

- MikeR

Hi Michiel --

I totally agree with you that the Boss unit does everything the Tascam unit does, PLUS a lot more. Basically, the Micro BR is a 4-Track recorder, with built-tin effects and drums, and ALSO imports MP3 files and plays them back (at slow tempos, if desired). The Tascam unit does the MP3 thing, and also has built-in effects, but it is NOT a 4-Track recorder, and I'm not sure if it has any drum patterns (you have to look that up). But the key thing is -- it's NOT a recorder - it's strictly intended for playing back MP3 files in real-time, so you can learn them. You can't record any of your own things.

The price difference is about $40 -- I think the Micro BR is more than worth that difference. Recommendation -- buy a 1GB SD card for it, and you'll never have to worry about memory space. Buy the card, install it, and forget it.

Hope this helps,

- MikeR

Hi I'm thinking of buying the BR MICRO.
I'v been to the Roland website, and checked out all of the specs...most of which went staright over my head...
I was wondering if anyone who'd actually bought one of these could tell me what effects it has on it, as i couldn't find this infromation.

Does it have stuff like chorus, delay, overdrive?

Thanks

I'v also been lookin at the Boss Br600, which is twice the price of the micro.

Does anyone know if its twice as good as the micro? As far as i can tell the only difference is that it is 8 track, but the last 4 are actually just two stereo tracks.

Thanks in advance

Hi, I'm looking to get one of these (the Boss Micro that is) but wanted to know if anybody had any experience with using it with a bass guitar.

Ideally I need it to:

a) act as a headphone amplifier (I live in a small flat and rarely play through an amp)
b) allow me to play and record over mp3s.
c) allow me to apply some effects - I know they'll be guitar oriented, but has anybody tried these with a bass and are they acceptable?

Many thanks for any help

Mike

I just bought a Boss Micro Br and I love it. I have recorded a 4-track song.
1.) Is there any way that the mixing can be done in a computer rather than in the Micro Br?
2.) Since you can only bounce 2 tracks at a time, does the unit put the pair of bounced tracks in the same file?
Thanks in advance for reading this.
Jack