Home Recording

Hard Disk Recorder or Computer? The Argument I Was Having in 1998

By Mike · Published October 11, 2026

In March 1998 I posted on alt.music.4-track asking for the pros and cons of starting a hard disk recording setup with a PC and a decent wavetable sound card, versus building up from a standalone unit like the Roland VS-880. I was researching, not reporting from a finished studio, so this is an argument about gear I was weighing, not a review of gear I owned. It is also a good snapshot of the question every home recorder still has to answer: do you want a dedicated box or a computer?

The question I asked in March 1998

I posted two short lists. For the PC, I wrote that it was cheaper (assuming you already owned the computer), flexible, had a much better user interface because you were looking at a monitor instead of a tiny screen, made it easy to download samples and MIDI files, and had decent sampling capability.

For the Roland-style standalone unit, I listed dedicated components with no latency problem, portability, and the ability to record several tracks at once. The one real minus I gave it was that it had no good sampling capability.

That list is still a decent way to frame the choice. Latency, portability and a usable screen were the issues in 1998, and they are still the questions you should ask about any setup.

The gear, checked

The VS-880 was a real standard. Sound On Sound reviewed it in March 1996, and Roland's own page describes 64 tracks of digital hard disk recording, made up of eight primary tracks with eight virtual tracks each. The same review says it recorded to a hard disk through a SCSI interface and called it a cornerstone of small or semi-professional studios. Roland now lists it as no longer in production.

In my own words from December 1998, the VS-880 let you do much more in terms of non-destructive editing and moving parts around than an ADAT did, it had built-in effects, it was very portable, and with a burner you could put CDs straight out of it. I also noted that an ADAT has more value if you are taking it around and can use a PC for the major editing.

The in-between option I found in March 1998 was a Yamaha PC card. I passed on an announcement that pitched it as a way to get the benefits of a standalone VS-880-type recorder while keeping the flexibility of a computer, for under $1,000. That was Yamaha's claim in the announcement I read, and I asked the group for reactions. I have not checked how it worked in practice, so I am not reviewing it here.

MiniDisc, ADAT and the rest

I got pulled into a MiniDisc argument that spring. I told one poster to look somewhere other than MiniDisc if he wanted to go digital, because MiniDiscs use data compression and cannot hold that much, and that hard disk and Zip-disk recorders were becoming the standard. My point was that a hard disk can be backed up and a MiniDisc cannot. Another of my replies was that analog four-tracks are cheaper too, and that does not make them sound any better.

On the ADAT, I wrote in May 1998 that you would also need to buy a board for recording and mixing, which should be at least $300 to $400 for anything worthwhile, given the fidelity of the ADAT itself. In that same month I told someone asking about the Roland VS-840 that I would wait and get an 880, which seemed to be becoming a standard, because the 840's smaller capacity and track pairing meant effectively losing control of two tracks.

I also argued in December 1998, about the VS-1680, that it was making the gap between pro and consumer smaller but that the gap was still somewhat wide. By pro I meant a studio where the owner of the gear is recording other people and getting paid. Plenty of home recorders still do not need a pro setup, and most of what we write about on this site is aimed at exactly that gap.

Software in December 1998

In December 1998 I answered a question on rec.audio.pro about Cubase, Logic and Cakewalk. I said I was using Cakewalk Pro Audio 8.0, which seemed geared toward sequencing more than hard disk audio. What I had heard, and I said so, was that Cubase was a little better for hard disk audio but more expensive and less supported, that Logic had amazing flexibility but might overwhelm people who wanted something easy to set up, and that Cool Edit was a low-end option for around $50 that looked limited but like a nice value. I had downloaded a Samplitude demo and could not understand what was going on, while Cakewalk took one or two manual cracks. Those were opinions based on what I had heard and a few hours, so I would not hold anyone to them in 2026.

Another reply that month was a warning about hardware: a P-166 with 32 MB of memory would almost certainly need at least a memory upgrade to run the latest versions of those programs and play multiple hard disk tracks, though it might be fine for sequencing alone.

The same question now

The question has not changed. A dedicated recorder offers portability and fewer moving parts. A computer offers a bigger screen and more flexibility. What has changed is the price of the computer side.

REAPER, for example, has a discounted license at $60 for personal use or for commercial use with yearly gross revenue under $20,000, and it comes with a 60-day full-featured evaluation. Apple says GarageBand on the Mac lets you create and mix up to 255 audio tracks. The part of the old setup that was a card or a box with inputs is now an audio interface, and we have compared the budget ones in Scarlett Solo vs UMC22 vs M-Track Solo.

If you are starting from scratch, the practical version of everything above is in the budget home studio guide. I would still ask yourself the questions from my 1998 lists: how much latency can you live with, do you need to record away from home, and how much do you hate staring at a tiny screen?