Boss' BR-864 Digital 8-Track Ships

BR-864 (Click for a close-up)

Rear View (Click for a close-up)

At the Summer NAMM show, BOSS announced the BR-864 8-Track Digital Studio. With eight primary recording tracks, 64 Virtual Tracks, COSM effects and USB, the BR-864 offers a powerful, easy and portable 8-track recording solution for guitarists and songwriters. The BR-864 records to a 128MB Compact Flash card (included) for over an hour of high-quality recording.

The BR-864 is not only BOSS' smallest 8-track recorder, but it's also the most affordable. With 64 Virtual Tracks, there's plenty of room to track multiple overdubs, vocals and instruments. A built-in USB port makes it easy to load and convert .WAV/AIFF files from a Mac or PC directly into a track, or export songs for CD-burning and MP3 creation. It's also a great way to archive and back up song data.

Onboard effects include separate Loop and Insert processors with everything from COSM Amp Modeling and a Bass Simulator to wah effects, a guitar synth and Harmonist for scale-intelligent pitch shifting. An improved version of BOSS' Rhythm Guide offers full programmability and a new Tone Load function for creating custom drum sounds by importing .WAV and AIFF files. As before, the Rhythm Guide doesn't use any of the 64 recording tracks, enabling users to mix down up to eight tracks and drums.

Connections to the BR-864 include a 1/4-inch Instrument/Hi-Z Instrument input, XLR and 1/4-inch Microphone inputs, a stereo RCA Line input, stereo RCA Line output, a Headphone output, S/PDIF digital output and USB port. The BR-864 runs on batteries or optional AC power.