Fostex VF08

Derek Johnson & Debbie Poyser test Fostex's new eight‑tracker, which once again lowers the entry‑level price for the musician aspiring to digital.

As digital recording technology filters down to the entry level, digital products are gradually supplanting their analogue equivalents. There are some who find this trend sad, but they're unlikely to be the musicians with a few hundred quid to spend on a portable multitracker. Such people have good reason to bless the digital revolution, because it's responsible for bringing greatly improved audio quality and some very useful features within their reach. For those looking at the ultra‑budget end of the market — £200‑300, say — the analogue cassette multitracker is still in the running, but anyone with around £500 burning the proverbial hole will find that their recording options increase exponentially with the extra cash.

A new contender in this price bracket is the Fostex VF08, a chunky little brick of a hard disk multitracker that skims past a few corners for the sake of affordability, but nevertheless represents a great sonic advance over similarly priced analogue counterparts of just a few years ago.

The Weight Of Eight

Though the VF08 provides for both mic and line input signals, there are no dedicated high‑impedance guitar inputs.

The appealingly compact VF08 is extremely portable, yet reassuringly solid and heavy. Some of that weight is no doubt due to its internal power supply, and the built‑in 5.1Gb IDE hard drive to which the VF08 can commit eight tracks of uncompressed 16‑bit, 44.1kHz digital audio, plus 16 'virtual' tracks per song. Its recorder section resembles that of several other Fostex hard disk machines and is married to a fairly basic mixer, with a single integral effects processor. Some Fostex products offer higher bit depths and sample rates, but the VF08 isn't one of them — not a major problem for most people, though.

The I/O tour starts at the two main recording inputs, with trim pots and accompanying peak LEDs, on both balanced XLRs (with globally switchable phantom power) and unbalanced jacks. There's no separate guitar input, though each jack's gain range is suitable for line, guitar or mic signals. Since there are just two inputs, only two tracks may be recorded simultaneously. More expensive machines, of course, allow more tracks of simultaneous recording, but achieving a price of £599 entails some compromises. Unless you're into live recording of a band playing together, the two‑track simultaneous recording restriction probably won't be a problem.

Outputs comprise a headphone socket and a stereo mix output on quarter‑inch jack sockets. There's no independent monitoring output, aside from the headphone socket, but happily Fostex have provided coaxial S/PDIF digital I/O, so the digital signal path can be preserved right through to DAT or domestic CD‑recorder mastering. There's also an option to back up to DAT via the S/PDIF output, which is cost‑effective, though not quick — in fact, unless the optional 8340 SCSI card is fitted, DAT is the only backup method. With the SCSI card, the backup options expand to fixed and removable hard drives, and WAV‑file import and export is added. According to Fostex, a future software update will include a CD‑R backup routine, but this will only work with the SCSI card fitted.

Fostex have a long history of specifying the useful ADAT eight‑channel interface on their digital recorders, but sadly there's no ADAT interfacing on the VF08. As mentioned above, you can't have everything you might like at this price.

Fader Ways

The mixing and editing functions of the VF08 are accessible from this central bank of illuminated buttons.

The VF08's front panel is simple and pleasingly designed, dividing broadly into two sections: mixing and related functions in the leftmost two‑thirds, with recording controls, small backlit LCD and slightly odd, recessed Jog/Shuttle wheel occupying the remaining space. The mixer section is probably where the design compromises show most. It is an eight‑channel mixer, but the channel count is made up of six mono and one fixed stereo, each with a 60mm fader. The six mono channels each offer a pan control (in virtual form, via the display), a pre‑fade or post‑fade send to the built‑in effects processor, a mute button (but no solo) and a simple two‑band EQ, also applied via the display. Actually, the EQ is extremely simple, being a library of 37 presets with such names as Fat Bass, Clean Electric Guitar, Female Vocal, and Analog Mix. The manual lists centre frequencies, bandwidths and default gain settings for each preset, but the only thing that's editable is gain — cut or boost of up to 18dB is available per band.

The idea, presumably, is that you choose a preset named for your source and see if it suits. If it doesn't, and none of the other presets do either, tough. As it happens, the library is pretty good, but no‑one who's experienced in recording will be totally happy with this approach unless they don't envisage needing EQ, or are making only demos on their VF08. Beginners might welcome the provision of presets, but it may be harder for them to learn about using EQ properly with an implementation like this.

The stereo mixer channel ('7&8 2Trk') offers only a balance control and no EQ or effect send. This is a bit annoying when the internal track‑bouncing path is preset as tracks 1‑6 (any or all) to 7&8. EQ and an effect can be applied during bouncing, but once audio has arrived at 7&8 it can't be treated further while occupying that stereo track. Also, if a bounce has been done to 7&8 and you find you'd like to bounce down additional tracks, the audio on 7&8 must be moved to virtual tracks to make way for the new bounce.

That's not the end of the mixer's limitations: unfortunately it doesn't have the juice to mix external sound sources alongside disk tracks — as you would ideally want to do if you were syncing a sequencer's MIDI tracks to the VF08 handling audio tracks. If an input is used for, say, a sequencer‑driven synth, the corresponding disk track can't play back. There are ways of fudging a MIDI and audio mixdown, but they involve either using up audio tracks for MIDI sound sources or integrating an external mixer.

On the positive side, the VF08 benefits from Fostex's usual easy and precise onboard scene automation, offering 100 scenes per Song. Each of these captures the status of faders, pan controls, mute buttons and effect sends. Scenes can be recalled manually as a Song plays, or sequenced into a chain via a list display. The latter is a little fiddly to set up, but allows each snapshot to be named and have its time location set in bars, beats and ticks, in absolute time, or in MTC time — the last two cases boast sub‑frame resolution.

This scene‑sequencing process shares the display used by the locator system; up to 99 locator marks can be set on the fly, and scenes assigned to the marks. Oddly, while a scene does capture the current effect setting, the effect doesn't change as the scenes are automatically recalled in sequence. However, the effect change is made if you stop the Song and start it again, or select scenes manually (in which case there's a jump between scenes). This annoying bug aside, the automation system is effective, though a user‑editable crossfade to smooth scene transitions would be appreciated.

Disk Driving

The internal power supply, phantom power for capacitor mics and digital I/O are all attractive features on a machine of this price, but the VF08's MIDI implementation is fairly basic.

Recording with the VF08 is very straightforward: connect the sound source; arm a track for recording, with its dual‑function Track Status button (doubling as a mute control); set the correct level with the input Trim control, keeping an eye on the peak LED and the bargraph metering in the LCD; set up the built‑in metronome, if required, defining tempo (30‑250bpm) and time signature (1/4‑5/4, 1/8‑8/8); then press Record and Play, and away you go. The metering isn't the best in the world, being small, monochrome and not clearly calibrated, and you have to be close to the machine to see it, but you get by!

There's one level of undo/redo for consigning completely unsatisfactory performances to the bin, but if only certain parts need work there are two options: punch‑in/out to redo the substandard section; or digital editing, for assembling a track from different takes. The VF08's punch‑recording capabilities, like those of other Fostex machines, comprise manual (with the front‑panel buttons), footswitch‑controlled, and programmable. Selecting punch‑in/out points for the programmable method is quite easy, and can be done either on the fly or by inputting the precise points manually. All three methods produce excellent results — Fostex machines are always very good at seamless punches, in our experience. Punch‑in/out can be rehearsed with a dedicated Rehearsal function, and if this is used in conjunction with the Loop function, you can repeatedly practice a part while the VF08 simulates punch‑in/out.

Editing facilities are basic but sufficient for simple compiling needs, comprising copy‑and‑paste, move‑and‑paste and erasing of sections of audio (across one, two, or all eight tracks at a time), plus track exchange. The last swaps the positions of tracks and is especially applicable for moving playback tracks into virtual locations and vice versa. Edit points can be set with the same accuracy, and using the same time‑formats, as when setting locators. They are probably best captured on the fly as the track plays, or with the help of the fairly low‑res, non‑zoomable waveform display, which can be audibly scrubbed with the Jog/Shuttle wheel. Points defined in these ways may then be fine‑tuned with a list display. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (we always notice this about Fostex recorders!), you still can't paste audio and have it move subsequent audio along to make room. The new bit simply overwrites the existing bit, unless space has previously been made for it by a 'move' operation on the underlying audio. Also note that data can't be copied between Songs.

There's little left to say about the VF08's recorder, other than that it provides very good sound quality, exactly what you'd expect from a digital recorder and streets ahead of analogue multitrackers in terms of quietness, cleanness, sparkle, fidelity and lack of wow and flutter.

Due Processing

With just one effects processor, no aux sends for accessing outboard units, and no insert points, effects and processing are not the strongest suit of the VF08. However, Fostex do their best with the limited resources, even redeploying them as a mastering processor in one mode (see 'Mastering Mode' box).

The internal effects run to reverb, delay + reverb, delay, chorus, flange and pitch‑shift — one at a time. They are, happily, editable to a reasonable extent (see 'Example Effect Parameters' box) and don't sound at all bad, but one processor is a bit skimpy for eight tracks. In practice, you end up committing effects to disk tracks rather than waiting until mixdown, to make the most of it.

The 38‑strong preset library includes hall, stadium, room, plate, auditorium, vocal and arena reverbs, mono, panning and tempo delays, delay + reverb, doubling, chorus, flange, and two pitch‑shift settings. User edits can be captured as part of automation snapshots, and can also be saved within Songs, but there are no actual user effect memories. In case you're wondering whether effects parameters can be tweaked over MIDI, the answer is "no" — the VF08 has a pretty basic MIDI spec overall.

Anyone who records vocals regularly will have noticed that there's been no mention of compression thus far — basically because the VF08's effects don't include dynamics (except in Mastering mode), and channel dynamics aren't specified. The latter is understandable at the price, but the lack of insert points means that applying compression requires planning. Those who habitually record via a voice channel won't have a problem, but otherwise compressing a sound source before it gets to disk involves patching an external compressor between source and VF08.

Conclusion

The VF08 is an appealing, easy‑to‑use machine that offers very good audio quality and makes an extremely convenient and portable demo recorder. It could also be a good introduction to recording for novices, perhaps budding songwriters or singer/guitarists. However, it's marred for serious work by a number of shortcomings, chiefly the restrictive mixer, the strange decision to make EQ and the otherwise well‑conceived mastering treatments largely preset, and the skimpy effects provision, coupled with a lack of aux sends and inserts for compensating externally. We've no complaints about the recorder section, which follows Fostex's usual efficient formula. On the cost front, £599 is very attractive, though since SCSI is going to be pretty important to VF08 owners, unless they're happy with slow DAT backup, the 8340 SCSI card (£69) should really be factored in. The resulting figure still makes the VF08 the cheapest current digital eight‑track in the UK.

To sum up, then, the VF08 will be just the ticket for some people, and will provide good value for them, but if you're a reasonably experienced recordist, or are looking for more than a demo/ideas machine, it might be better to save a little longer and hold out for the extra facilities available from some of the slightly pricier competition.