In this section, we'll go over the components we have in our little home studio, some good points and bad points and perhaps some ideas on where we'd like to go. Please bear in mind that we are fairly new to this and although we have learned a great deal, it's only a fraction of what there is to know. In this section, as in most of the others, all photographs will be linked to a larger version.

The Roland VS 1880 records the music digitally to an internal hard disk. More disk drives can be added via a SCSI port on the back of the console. After the music has been recorded to the hard drive it can then be written to CD either via the attached CD burner or any other audio recording device. The console also has optical and electronic digital outputs as well as analog outputs so that the music can be recorded on just about any kind of external CD burner or tape deck. One advantage of the CD burner that you see attached here, is that it is also capable of recording data CDs and these are used to back up the originally recorded track data off of the hard drive. This can then be restored and each of the original tracks will be available as they were recorded. This is also an excellent way to archive the songs. If you are like we are, with a substantial margin for improvement over time, it's good to be able to load songs back into the consoles hard drive and rework them at a later date.

The VS 1880 is capable of recording 8 tracks simultaneously and playing back 18. About the only time anyone would need that many input tracks is if you were recording a live performance. For home studio work, it is unlikely that one would use more than four inputs at once. The playback, however, is a very important point to consider. Generally, the way a recording session progresses is that a rhythm guitar or other accompaniment track is laid down first. Then vocals and other tracks follow. If you are only capable of playing back, say, 4 tracks simultaneously. Any tracks beyond the first four will have to be combined (bounced) into one track to make room for others. After the tracks have been bounced, they can no longer be independently modified.

The VS 1880 has huge capabilities beyond simply recording, playing back and burning CDs. Roland has built into the 1880 a variety of capabilities that would normally be added to the studio in racks of expensive stand-alone equipment. This includes guitar amp modeling, microphone modeling, special effects (reverb, flanger, etc), equalization, and many more.

Roland is now selling an updated version of this recording studio that has the CD burner built in. I highly recommend this unit.