Any vs880/1680 users out there?

[kaydigi]

Originally Posted by MmBuddha

I am looking to move away from staring hour on end at my computer screen with 3 Safari tabs open in the background, iTunes blaring out to 'warm up my ears' and Logic open with 4 plugins I don't even need up on the screen fiddling around with settings and apparently 'making a beat'. Needless to say, this creative environment isn't working for me.

So I've been looking to buy an old second hand digital multitrack for zero pence that I can use to develop my creativity and focus, that will still offer me the ability to accomplish standard mixing and sequencing tasks to finish my beats before mastering/fiddling on the computer. All of this considered I've decided to buy a Roland vs880 (vxpanded or EX or whatever I find first) since they were great machines in their day, they still have fans now and can be picked up for next to nothing.

Is there ANYONE OUT THERE who still uses one of these machines? If you do, how do you make it work in a modern production environment? Are there clever ways of transferring the propriety format files into a (Macintosh) DAW to finalise them?

Any other tips or advice you have too would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help!

I use a 840 and converted the zip drive to a SD card reader. I then dump the wav's using BR8 software and import into Reaper.

I am deciding on upgrading to 1680 or Tascam DP 24. I just want more tracks upfront so I don't have to juggle track counts when recording some artist.