Topic: EDIROL R-44 (PART IV)

[Chadfish]

Send them a REGISTERED LETTER demanding that they either fix or replace your deck, or you will take your complaint to the next level. Registered letters do wonders sometimes because they have signed that they received it, and it begins a paper trail that you can use in court.

[bhadella]

Does anybody have the name of a contact in the EDIROL repairs department? I have a question for them. I sent my deck to an "Authorized ROLAND repairshop" who I had gotten the info for from Roland's website for a repair on the phantom power only of my R-44, and the shop totally killed my deck. It doesn't work at all any more, won't power up or anything. I made the mistake of sending it to a ROLAND repair shop as opposed to an EDIROL repair shop I was told by an annoyed EDIROL employee when I called one time. The deck worked fine when I first brought it in, I just couldn't use the phantom power. Now this repair shop says that sometimes when they are checking a deck, when they feed it power to check it that it can fry the deck and they are not responsible for it. I say bullshit they were just supposed to work on the phantom power that's it! I mean, how can you bring a working unit to a repair shop, and they get away with totally killing it and saying that it's not their fault? Does anybody know if this can be true and if there is any precedent for this type of thing? I mean, if you brought your car into the autoshop for a repair they can't kill your car and just tell you sorry, right? Anyway, nobody here should ever send their equipment to Hi-Tech Electronics in Lawrence, MA, they have no idea what they are doing.

I had my R44 serviced by the Roland group.   I sent an email to Roland via support@rolandsystemsgroup.com and "Ted Rosen" <ted@rolandsystemsgroup.com> setup the repair and followed up afterwards.   The shipment was directly to the official Edirol repair location in WA. 

[rastasean]

The Ted names sounds familiar to me. I first emailed Roland about servicing my 09HR and received a reply from someone at the department whose name was most likely Ted. I have no idea what made me delete that email and keep all the other junk but I cannot find it.

[Myco]

Thanks guys.

[RichT]

Little experiment I did:

I've been looking around to see what the R-44 CTRL SYNC cable actually transmits/receives and came across this in the Roland FAQ:

"When two R-44s are connected via the CONTROL SYNC terminals, they share the audio clock.
Therefore, delay due to time passing does not occur with recorded data.
In addition, the operation information is also sent, and start and stop operations are also synchronized. However, there is a time lag between two R-44s and the recording start time can slightly differ.

Reference:
The clock synchronization jitter is 1000ppm or less.
Difference of recording start time between two R-44s is approximately 10msec.
If pre-recording is set, the time lag becomes larger.
Because a time lag occurs with the recording star[sic] time as mentioned above, you need to use DAW or other tools to strictly align the phases after recording."

Which appears to be word clock.

By getting a BNC cable, attached to my soundcard (RME multiface) with a bare connector and touching that against the ring of a 1/8" TRS minijack I found the following:

R-44 set as master: RME will sync to word clock (and change sample rate)

R-44 as slave- when in recording mode the sample rate will flash if sample rates do not match (eg 44.1k and 48k). It will record a file labelled as the rate it was set at (rather than incoming clock). Doesn't display anything different when sample rates are the same.

I can't do pull-up/down of sample rates on my soundcard so can't test these.

So, given that you can output/input Word Clock, with minijack-BNC connectors you should be able to sync multiple R-44's (more than 2) using BNC 'T' connectors, although the remote control probably won't work.

[Ozpeter]

Many thanks for doing those tests - at last we have good info on this.  I've always maintained (based on colleagues' reports) that there is proper sync between pairs of R-44s but others here have said that it doesn't work for them, and that Roland have said there is no real sync.   Based on your report I would have thought the debate is over.

(Heh, I guess that reads like "told you so"!  Well...)

[kirk97132]

As one of the people who experienced a drift issue personally AND had Edirol tell me that the units didn't sync.   I went to the Roland site to look for the FAQ mentioned.  Any chance that a link could be posted because I cannot find anything labeled as FAQ on their site or the R-44 pages.  I'm really interested in reading something that confirms the units clocks are synced.

What my personal experiences were that the two units I used had a drift issue that starts to become noticable after about 20 minutes.  Edirol tech stated that the units clocks are not synced and that the controls only handle transport functins.   They also said that there are no plans to change that.  This was in July of 2009.

[RichT]

the FAQ article's here:
http://www.roland.com/products/en/_support/faq.cfm?PRODUCT=R-44&iRcId=25711460&dsp=1

It may be a case that there's been some confusion overthe remote control (which isn't synced) and word clock. So you could be recording audio with little clock drift but not starting at the same time.

1000ppm is quite a lot of jitter compared to professional audio clocks.

also have a look at DualEyes/PluralEyes to fix non synced audio: http://www.singularsoftware.com/dualeyes.html

[kirk97132]

Yes I was refering to using the mini plug sync cable between two decks.  Thanks for the links

Edited after reading:
Well I am not sure what to make of this.  Using the cable as the say I had drift issues on two different decks after the were aligned in AA3.  And like I said when I called Edirol tech support they confirmed that this was indeed true.  the cable only synce the transport controls so that both decks could be controled off the master deck.  Yet, this says that the clocks are synced.  The only wildcard here is that the slave deck was modded by Busman.  Maybe that had something to do with it?  Aw hell who knows anymore.  it seems manufacturers can't get there stories straight anymore.  Same kind of thing happened with my Tascam, recent update notes say that the 680 is not able to sync clocks even though originally it read that you could sync them.  Maybe it's time for an alesis HD24 and just get it over with?

[RichT]

FYI mine's a stock model, although I'd expect busman/oade just swap out the op amps in the preamps, which shouldn't have anything to do with the digital side of things.

Also is there something that comes up on the display that a unit's synched when in slave mode? When the incoming clock matched the sample rate set the display was normal.  I also don't have a second R-44, I did this looking at video sync possibilities

Finally, if Roland/Edirol deny that this is a feature it's not likely they'll fix this if it's not working  .

[Dutchman1101]

What card class is everyone using? I thought I read a while back 4 worked the best. I been using a Kingston 16gb class 4 for a year now with no issues. I want to get a 32gb but want to get some feedback first.

Harrison

[Gutbucket]

My Kingston 32 GB class 4 cards from a year or two back work fine.  So does a Transcend 32GB class 10 I picked up last fall.

[WiFiJeff]

Sandisk Ultra class4 32GB never a problem.

Jeff

[matahaka]

Just always reformat once in a while, or before every take.

[ben_r_]

Kinda off topic I know, but Im kinda stuck and would appreciate any input. Im trying to decide between the Marantz PMD661 and the Edirol R44. At them moment I dont really need the four channels but it might be nice for future. Portability isnt really that important to me, nor is battery life. Limiters on the Edirol would be nice, but seeing as how I dont have them on the Marantz PMD661 I already have its not a deal breaker. What I want to know is has anyway compared the sound recording on both of these units. I dont seem to be able to find comparison tests between the two anywhere online. Any advice shed on the matter would be much appreciated. Also, FWIW I do intend to jump up to a Sound Devices 702 (or hopefully a 704 if they ever come out with one!) but I wont have the funding for that jump until probably early next year.