TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Roland R-88 PORTABLE FIELD RECORDER Alistair McGhee takes a closer look at this eight-track recorder that comes in at a competitive price point.
THE ROLAND R-88 is one of life’s little surprises. A professional eight-track portable recorder for under two grand was not what I was expecting. The list of features was surprising too: eight XLR inputs all with mic amps and associated front panel controls; eight XLR outputs assignable between track outputs; onboard digital mixing; and a first for me on a portable recorder, touchscreen control of the menus and settings options. The screen also serves for monitoring input and output levels. Also included – time code in and out, AES in and out, recording to SD card, back-up to external USB storage and the option to attach the unit to your PC and use it as an eight-channel sound card. Oh, and up to 20ms delay on each channel for syncing your spot mics with the pair.
RECORDING
Delay was added in the latest firmware update, which also added polyphonic recording. External power input is via four-pin XLR, while internal powering is provided by an eight AA battery sledge easily accessible on top of the R-88. I filled the sledge with Sanyo Eneloops and fully charged the Roland ran in record
(eight tracks 48kHz, 24-bit, two phantom mics) for four hours. With a FAT32 two-gig file limit the R-88 splits your recordings on the two-gig boundary. With an external battery plugged in you can pull the sledge and refill it while still recording. Neat. Recording is to SD card (32Gb max) or computer, or both simultaneously. USB hard drives are not supported and neither are NTFS volumes. You can plug in an external USB flash memory device; however, this is for back up, not direct recording.
RATES AND GAIN Up to and including 96kHz the Roland is a ten-track recorder with eight inputs and the option of recording the stereo mix. At 192kHz this is bumped down to four record tracks with bit depth selectable between 16 and 24 bits. Each input offers concentric gain controls and a configurable and rather startling red LED peak indicator. The outer ring provides rough gain adjustment in six dB steps from +4dB round to 56dB of amplification and in the latest firmware you can add a 6dB sensitivity boost, taking you to 62dB of mic amp gain. There’s no separate line input switch to worry about as the inner
control is your fader. If I was fussy I’d beg for another 6dB of gain but there’s already enough oomph for a Beyer 201 or more likely an SM58, and the mic preamps are pretty quiet even at full gain. Beware though, you cannot adjust the rough gain while recording without a momentary drop out of the audio. There are limiters on every channel and they can be used individually or flexibly
“One of the things that bothers
location guys is RF spill, I had no problems with my channel 38 Micron kit, even with the receiver parked right on top of the R-88.”
Alistair McGhee
ganged in four user-selectable groups. This linking option including groups also extends to input sensitivities.
TAKING CONTROL One of the things that bothers location guys is RF spill, I had no problems with my channel 38 Micron kit, even with the receiver parked right on top of the R-88. There’s
comprehensive M and S functionality built into the recorder. On the record side you can decode M and S to any or all of the four input pairs to their record tracks, decode any or all of the pairs to the mix and in playback you can decode any or all of the four pairs of tracks. There’s also software control of the M-S level for each of the input pairs and also the M-S width. The R-88 makes extensive use of the touchscreen for control. Beyond the hardware transport buttons, mix master and monitor pots, and a menu button, settings are accessed through the touchscreen. Even with my terrible eyesight I managed to find my way round without too much difficulty. I would like a dialogue exit mapped to a (stop) key and one rotary would be nice rather than just the function nudge that is available on the hardware cue buttons, but I have certainly dealt with much trickier interfaces than here. I did like the fact that even while recording you can access the menus and adjust settings while running (not the record settings, obviously).
WHO WANTS AN R-88? So, who is the R-88 aimed at?’ The extensive M-S facilities and DSP delay options point to music while the inclusion of time code and the slate functionality favour a TV environment. I think it is clear
INFORMATION Feature set
∞ Eight XLR inputs with mic amps and associated front panel controls
∞ Eight XLR outputs assignable between track outputs ∞ Onboard digital mixing ∞ Touchscreen control of menus and settings options
www.rolandsystemsgroup.co.uk 40 August 2013
www.audiomedia.com
Roland is not taking aim at the Sound Devices 664 or Zaxcom Nomad market. I think the most telling hardware decisions here are the absence of any return monitoring and the absence of any camera multiway connectivity. The Roland is not really a mixer/recorder in that sense. It is a recorder first and foremost. However it does have an onboard mixer that can be midi controlled with the optional Roland
UM-ONE USB midi adapter, which sadly I didn’t get to try. But the mixer has simple EQ, mutes, pans and faders so you do have quite a flexible playback environment in the box. I think people who are taking steps in DSLR video production will be very interested. Anyone wanting ISO recordings of conferences and the like will find the R-88 attractive, and any music makers who want a walk-up- and-go multitrack and can fit their gig into eight channels will be knocking hard on Roland’s door. Yes I know you can plug your Ultrabook into a USB interface but I think the R-88 brings a different focus. I want to be ready to go in less than ten seconds, I want everything running off one battery and it has to last and last. I don’t want my entire gig hanging by a USB thread and most of all I want the option of one bag. However if you love laptops check out the R-88 as your sound card. Now that’s flexible working.
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