#Cdxtract roland disc manual#
#Cdxtract roland disc upgrade#
#Cdxtract roland disc software#
#Cdxtract roland disc free#

A slide‑out CD drawer is located at the front right of the machine and above it are status LEDs for CD‑RW, CD‑R, Audio CD and Busy, with an Eject button for unmounting and ejecting the CD. Disc Lab Detailsĭisc Lab CDX1 comes in a neat but purposeful looking package with a smoky translucent perspex outer shell and a silver control panel with large buttons and clear legending. Other applications include the playback of audio CDs and the ability to record live audio inputs and sample pads directly to a CD‑R disc.

#Cdxtract roland disc software#

The Disc Lab CDX1 also includes two sets of hardware effects, one for inserting into the record signal path and one for send/return use, plus there are several preset‑based software mastering tools that can be applied to finished mixes, prior to CD burning, which provide a number of multi‑band compression and EQ options optimised for different types of material. Anything stored in the internal RAM is lost when the unit is powered down, so samples stored in pads may also be backed up to the same CD‑RW disc as used for audio recording. Once your audio tracks have been recorded and any sampled parts transferred to an audio track, the song can be mixed to the internal RAM (after first clearing out the sample pad memories), then burned in track‑at‑once mode to a CD‑R disc.

#Cdxtract roland disc free#

To help redress the balance, there is an internal sequencer that can be used to play back the samples stored on the pads, so once you've got these firing on all cylinders, you can bounce them down to a stereo audio track to free up polyphony or to make more sample pads available. Disc Lab CDX1 can also sample directly via its audio inputs, but one caveat I must mention early on is that the audio polyphony of the unit limits it to producing eight mono or four stereo sounds at any one time, whether these sounds are triggered from pads or played from the multitrack recorder.

#Cdxtract roland disc upgrade#

As supplied, the machine comes with 32Mb of memory fitted, but it would be a good idea to upgrade this to its maximum of 128Mb for serious use, as any material being mastered has to be recorded to RAM.Īnother reason more memory is a good idea is that, in addition to an eight‑track CD‑RW recorder, there are also eight sample playback pads, which can be loaded up from audio CDs or from WAV files on CDs. Like other Boss/Roland recorders, the user can choose from three levels of data compression to extend the recording time, at the cost of reduced audio quality, but the best quality mode is pretty much indistinguishable from regular uncompressed audio and still provides adequate recording time.ĭisc Lab CDX1 also uses internal RAM memory for sampling, mastering and some recording operations, though this is conventional DIMM memory, which is currently quite cheap. Note that only high‑speed CD‑RW discs are usable in the machine - regular CD‑RWs will be rejected at the formatting stage. The Disc Lab CDX1 provides a unique approach to the multitrack workstation, insofar as it uses relatively inexpensive high‑speed CD‑RW discs for its storage medium, rather than a hard drive or SmartMedia cards.

#Cdxtract roland disc manual#

Reading the introduction in the manual doesn't clarify matters much either, but the gratifyingly clear, step‑by‑step tutorials towards the end of the manual more than make up for this, and having read through them, I feel a little more comfortable in trying to describe the machine. When you first look at it, you might easily imagine that Roland's Disc Lab CDX1 is just another eight‑track recorder, for there is little to immediately reveal what else it is capable of. Roland's innovative new audio workstation is the first multitracker to use a CD‑RW disc in place of a hard disk, and offers a one‑stop production station with multitrack recording, phrase sampling, and CD mastering.