Transferring Roland 2480 to Computer??

[Bang]

Does anyone know an easy way to digitally transfer tracks from a Roland 2480 to the DAW? I have a group coming who tracked everything to it and I haven't seen one in years.

[TheTruffleKing]

I'm afraid it's gonna be a two-track at a time affair from the digital outs unless you buy a Roland DIF-AT box, which lets you transfer 8 tracks through Roland's proprietary R-Bus to ADAT. It's a $400 box unless you can find one on eBay. Be aware that the original DIF-AT units out there are only 20-bit. You need a DIF-AT24 to transfer 24-bit signals.

[Jonathan Starr]

I moved a lot of projects from a VS-2480 DVD to ProTools about a year ago.

You can export the tracks to a CDR as .wav files, and then pull them into the PT playlist. They line up just fine.

I forget the details of the mechanics of it. I think I described it in an earlier thread. If you need more help, let me know and I can pull out the old 2480 and refamiliarize myself and get you the scoop.

[Bang]

Jonathan, I'm PMing you. I definitely need to know the mechanics of dumping to CDR and having everything line up.

[Jonathan Starr]

Here is my post from last February, when I was actively transferring tracks:

"I just moved a whole bunch of tracks from my old VS-2480DVD into ProTools. It was easy and bulletproof. They never sounded so good.

The Export Wav function works fine, even with tracks with a lot of punches etc.

I don't know how the import function works on Cubase.

When you export the tracks, you can select which tracks to export. You can set it to "ALL" so you get all of the takes for all of the tracks, or just pick the last take of each track or whatever. If you have a bunch of takes, the files get kinda large and the DVD drive makes it a lot more convenient.

With PT I can bring the tracks into the region list (best if I'm bringing all the takes) and then drag the ones I want onto active tracks; or I can import them directly into fresh tracks if I'm only lifting the last takes."

Try it out. Let me know if anything is confusing.

This is the old thread: http://gearslutz.com/board/showthrea...hlight=vs-2480

[TheTruffleKing]

Burning waves to CD from the 2480 does work fine, but it's ridiculously s-l-o-o-o-w. I had a large number of songs to transfer, and the first large project (lots of v-tracks) I tried took over an hour to burn to CD...that's just one song! So, I guess it just depends what your time's worth. But it does work, and the results are fine.

[Jonathan Starr]

The 2480 is indeed a slow boat. It's a lot more fun to get the .wav export or other function going and work on something else with a different system while it churns away.

It was a great starting tool for me, and with good pres and external converters it can sound pretty good; but between the waiting and limited editing and track count it didn't take me long to head to PTHD.