Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code

Comments about Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code:

After using it today for 12 hours. I found one huge flaw. The recorder can not send TC out of a previously recorded track. It can only send TC for Record run and Internal TC.

Comments about Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code:

I bought it for outdoor use, exelent choice.

Comments about Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code:

I do production sound for a living. I went the quality but less costly route for my kit. Edirol R-4 Pro, PSC ProMix6, Sennheiser G3 Wireless Lavs, & Rode NTG3 Shotgun. This combination is an extremely pleasing sounding setup, especially when you mix the shotgun with the lavs.

Unlike the standard Sound Devices & Lectros which can sound very stale and plain with no true character, probably because it so commonly used.

The R-4 Pro turns out to have very nice clean sounding preamps with plenty of gain. The limiters work well but add a very minimal amount of noise but anything will when you add them to a signal chain. Options for framerate and resolution are on par with most high-end recorders. Timecode works perfect but you need to bring a few different styles of connectors or cables so you can jam to anything. I don't know about internal batteries but using it along with an NP1 type battery will give you 15 hours of continuous record time. The 80gig hard drive will let me record for a couple weeks at 48k 24bit before I have to dump the audio. The options to record 4 channels to 1 bwf file, 2 stereo, 1 stereo, 4 3 2 or 1 mono channels is pretty nice to have. I did wish it had panning ability, roll off, and mic/line level controls but it's not a mixer. The trim knobs are strange and I can't tell if I feel that they feel cheap or just different. I also don't use the editing features but having the shuttle wheel is pretty nice for ff or rev playback. Lastly the RCA output connectors are weird, if they had to go cheap they should have used trs out instead of RCA but it is a RECORDER and NOT A MIXER.

Comments about Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code:

It takes a while to get used to the menu systems with numerous pages, but once you get your head round that it is a great little machine.

The buttons on the main panel and on top are all well spaces and intuitive, with a good responsive feel no matter how cold your finger tips get!
The AA battery life is terrible, esp with phantom on but it has a 4 pin XLR for connecting an NP1 or other long life battery. with my NP1's you can get a whole day of filming from 1 battery (depending on how long the takes are etc).

The timecode is great and never dropped out for me.

Main problem for me is the headphone pre-amps. You have to have lots of faith in what is going to tape is clean because if you drive the headphone gain it gets very noisy in your hear. Luckily tho it is clean when played back on the computer.
could also do with XLR outs not RCA as they have no locking so quite dangerous if sending feeds to the camera.
also its a shame you cannot specify pan to the individual channels, you have to only use their factory configuration. thus a bit limited for monitoring.

Comments about Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code:

The tracks that do record sound pretty clean.

There must be a problem with my machine if there are other people who love theirs. But a major problem is that the mics plugged into inputs one and two both show exactly the same levels on the front panel meters for channels 1 and 2 and come through both sides of the headphones identically for monitoring (even though I have it set to monitor L-R separately - even if I'm shouting into one mic and covering up the other!). They seem to record properly to tracks 1 and 2, but I can't judge levels from the meters. Then the mic on 4 reads on the meter and monitors properly through the right side of the headphone but does NOT record. So at this point it is a somewhat brain-damaged three-track.

In addition, while the manual says all you need to do to create BWF's is set the timecode mode to anything but "Off", when I ran TC out to my HD-P2 for extra sync tracks (which it read it just fine), when I uploaded the audio files from the R4 Pro, they were not recognized in the NLE as BWFs.

So I've been to the Roland support website and not received any response - either as to some obscure menu setting I have wrong or to send it in for service. So I have to give them low points for support. I'm still hopeful they will resolve this, I just wonder how much it will ultimately cost me. If they'd just respond and take care of it in a timely manner, I'd up the review to five stars and recommend it. Then I might send it to Oade for their low-noise upgrade and use it with more confidence on location

But now, with the latest generation of affordable eight-tracks coming out, I might just donate this to a school and move up to eight or ten tracks.

Comments about Edirol / Roland R-4 Pro 4 Channel Portable Field Recorder w/ SMPTE Time Code:

We are getting this one for recording sound on an action/thriller feature, as obviously the Edirol R-44 is just not up for the task. You need to have SMPTE TC, of course.

Most versatily and most attractively priced 4-track hard drive field recorder on the market today. Thanxs, Edirol.