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Originally Posted by Russ (Al) Prat  Is anyone using the Roland M400? "They" used it for the Rio de Janeiro Carnaval last year, and we checked out the tutorial, seems simple and cheap. Any comments? RAP |
I used the 400 this past weekend along with the 1608 snake-head. What was really cool was that the Saturday event (a panel discussion with slides featuring graffiti artists) was 180 degrees 'off' from the orientation of the Sunday event (a pair of klezmer bands). I had run a CAT-5e cable in the ceiling earlier in the week, so changing the set-up was simply a matter of unplugging the M400 and the 1608 and swapping their respective positions.
The live sound was fine. Roland's built-in effects sounded smooth and natural - so natural that a couple of times Sunday I forgot that the reverberator was on the vocalist - until she started speaking between songs :-)
The M400 does allow recording and playback via USB-stick, but it's only two channel and limited to 16 bits. It does allow a choice of 48k or 44.1k.
Multichannel recording is supported in Sonar fed via CAT-5e and the institution I'm working with has bought a computer (while XP Pro is still available) with the intent of adding the Roland recording package later. The M400 does have 8 XLR outs which can be routed to a recorder (although a late start precluded setting that up on Sunday) and the other Roland snake components (1608, 4000s in various flavors) also have 8 (or more) outputs.
I'm pretty impressed with what Roland has done here. I wish the USB stick allowed 24 bit recording; and the numbering system for the trimpots takes some getting used to. But it all starts to make sense after a while.
best,
john