CD Recorders

[Gee]

Greetings,

Just wanted to see what the forum has to say about TASCAM's CD recorders? I will use it to record albums to CDs and also CDs to CD-Rs. The model I am looking at goes for around $1000 USD.

I wanted to find out if anyone else has any of the models or do you have a different brand and what is recommended (personal experience)?

Thanks for any assistance
Gee

[kalcidis]

Is there any particular reason why people don't do this through their computers? I transfer all my music first to the computer just to tidy it up (delete noise in beginnings and ends) and then simply burn it to a CD-R.

[daCENSOREDone]

if you have some good mixer (equaliser, volume levels, digital output), a nice vinyl deck and a normal computer... I guess it will do it (at least)the same. I don't understand why you want to buy this cd recorder. buy a good mixer it is useful in many situations.

[Guest]

if the price was not that high i think it would be a nice way to record tunes & mixtapes...i mean cds.

[Dadi Digi]

I have the Tascam 700 stand alone player / recorder in my rack. It is a nice machine and I think it is superseeded now by the 900 model (few extra features) There great if you wanna burn straight to CDR whilst playin your chunes on the decks. After that there aint really much advantage to having it over a PC burner and decent sound card.

[bullit]

I have the Tascam CDRW 750 its a nice enough unit, like Dadi digi says, it best for mixing up a set onto cd but otherwise recording onto pc or a mixer with hd space might be better..

[Thomas]

I have a Marantz DR6000 (check the web for reviews) - I bought it from a friend for 200GPB (he paid 500GPB for it and had only recorded about 50 LPs). It makes great copies - better than using a PC in my opinion.

[Version Control]

Horses for Courses I suppose. After 3 years of frustration with my PC, I bought a basic Sony CD Recorder/Twin Player - at around £250 (GBP) I think? - and I'm delighted with it. It takes me back to the days when Mixtapes really were on tape, it's that easy!

But to be honest, that's probably more a reflection of my IT illiteracy than the CD Recorder being a superior way of making CDs. I guess if I ran everything through a software package on the PC (Soundforge?) it would be much better. But for now here's a complete novice's personal view of the pros and cons of using a basic CD Recorder:

GOOD
No more grey boxes saying "The Program has performed an illegal operation and must closedown immediately" half way through each track.

No more rushing across the room between the Hi-Fi and PC to start & stop recording every few minutes.

Burned discs work in all CD players, not just those that are mp3 compatible.

Track marks can be inserted at any time without disturbing the flow of the music.

BAD
Dedicated blank music CDs cost more than data discs.

Proper additional copies have to be done in real time.

If you have to mess around with the volumes and start/stop points, you'll need to run the disc through PC software afterwards anyway.

[leggo rocker]

GOOD
No more grey boxes saying "The Program has performed an illegal operation and must closedown immediately" half way through each track.

Get a Mac! Then you still won't have any of those annoying boxes!

No more rushing across the room between the Hi-Fi and PC to start & stop recording every few minutes.

Good recording software is supposed to sense the spaces between tracks and cut the tracks accordingly. I've always had to turn this function off as reggae seems to fool it, especially dub.

BAD
Dedicated blank music CDs cost more than data discs.

This is because the record labels forced a 'tax' onto music CDs so they would get paid for 'home taping'. As usual we all know that none of this money will get anywhere near the artists we are listening to here.

Proper additional copies have to be done in real time.

Or, you can use the PC to copy extra discs of those recorded on the CDR machine, no?

And if you want to use the vinyl on your internet radio show, then you're gonna have to deal with the recording to a computer as MP3 lark anyway as CDs are no use there!

[Version Control]

OK,thanks Leggo - interesting! I won't do the full Quotes bit again but:

1. Tax on blank Music CDs. Really? I hadn't realised that. I thought it was just lower volumes that caused the price differential (ie Data Discs = number of people with PCs vs Music Discs = number with CD Recorders).

2. Spaces between tracks? My PC recognises quiet bits if I record a whole LP side at once. But normally I'm doing compilations of 7" or 12" singles so I still need to Stop and Start each one as I play it.

3. Use the PC to make extra copies. Yes, I do this sometimes but it won't work for a continuous mixtape. Every time it spots a track marker it stops copying and creates a separate file, then starts copying again with the next track as a new file. So the original CD-Recorded version runs smoothly for the whole 75 mins but all of the PC copies create an abrupt gap between each track.

Ah well, getting there slowly...