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krj
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CD Recorders
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Oct 22 19:05 UTC 2000 |
Does anyone have any experience with the audio-component CD recorders?
I'm thinking of buying one.
Everyone says, no, get a CD burner to put in your computer. The problem is
that we don't have standard desktop/tower PCs; we have laptops.
What I've seen of the CD burner market for laptops doesn't thrill me
with joy.
It looks like the RIAA royalty-paid blanks have fallen to a price level
I can live with, and I don't expect the SCMS rubbish to be much of a
problem.
Right now I'm thinking about the Philips dual-CD model, which sells for
about $450.
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| 119 responses total. |
eeyore
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response 1 of 119:
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Oct 23 00:59 UTC 2000 |
Mu roomies has a modular for her laptop, and I know she really likes it. I
can find out more info from her, though.
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micklpkl
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response 2 of 119:
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Oct 23 18:21 UTC 2000 |
Ken:
Although I don't have personal experience with one of those stand-alone
component CD recorders, I have heard friends speak of them. I should think
that if you can deal with SCMS, and the higher priced blanks, you will be
fine.
Here's a link the archives of the CD-R mailing list, in case you might want
to try a search or two. There are several excellent external links from this
page, too.
http://cdr.navpoint.com/
There's also the CD-Recordable FAQ here
http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/faq05.html#[5-12]
Which has some links to articles about the Philips machines.
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mcnally
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response 3 of 119:
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Oct 23 20:07 UTC 2000 |
For $450 you can buy a used pentium system *and* a very, very decent
CD-RW burner and probably still have $100 or so left over to spend on
a stack of 150 or so blanks. Plus, you'd pay only about 20-30% as much
for future blank media, *plus* you'd have the ability to burn other
stuff to CD-R -- you could use it, for example, to back up files from
your laptops every once in a while if you connect them via serial or
parallel. You'll also have a much more flexible interface for making
custom mix CDs.. I could go on and on about why you'd be better off with
a PC-based CD-R or CD-RW system..
The music-only CD-R models fill a niche for consumers who aren't savvy
enough to handle a PC-based system but otherwise they're not a very good
deal.
If you don't want to buy a separate used PC system just to dupe CDs and
you can't think of any other use for it, you could connect an external
CD-RW to your laptops using either SCSI or USB (I would suggest SCSI if
you have room for an additional PC-card in your laptop..) The USB and
SCSI CD-RW units are more expensive, though, and I suspect the laptop SCSI
interfaces are less reliable -- as for USB, I've had enough troubles just
using USB mice that I'd be pretty wary about using it to burn CDs, although
the bandwidth is theoretically more than sufficient..
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ea
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response 4 of 119:
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Oct 24 05:45 UTC 2000 |
Re #3 - Best Buy is currently selling 50 cd spindles for $15.97 + s/h.
I got 150 for less than $50.
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anderyn
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response 5 of 119:
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Oct 24 12:03 UTC 2000 |
I saw a really nice CD to CD Phillips recorder at Best Buy yesterday. It
wasn't all that expensive. (Tho' I was still lusting after another mini-disc
player/recorder, since I *hate* taking the small one to work, and I'd like
a mini-disc/CD/cassette deck for there, since it is the easiest place to
record music (at home, there's no where to really do it, even with the
equipment, since *some people* (read: husband and kids) are always in the
living room with the tv on, or playing their own music....)
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mcnally
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response 6 of 119:
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Oct 24 20:35 UTC 2000 |
re #4: sounds like a good deal if they work with your burner.
for reasons I've never quite figured out, different CD-R burners
seem to work best with different CD-R media..
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ea
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response 7 of 119:
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Nov 5 23:17 UTC 2000 |
re #6: They're Imation CD-R blanks, work at any speed from 1-12x. They
seem to work on every burner I've tried them on (admittedly only 2)
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other
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response 8 of 119:
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Nov 7 22:18 UTC 2000 |
i read that as "Imitation CD-R blanks" and started to wonder...
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krj
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response 9 of 119:
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Jan 5 23:55 UTC 2001 |
This whole issue got overturned again for us when Leslie got a
digital camera for her birthday. Now it seems that burning CDs of
photos will become a priority, so we may be back to trying to figure
out how to stuff a tower-case PC into our overstuffed home. Sigh.
If we go this route: what's the best soundcard for digitizing from
analog sources such as LPs?
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mcnally
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response 10 of 119:
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Jan 6 02:28 UTC 2001 |
Best as in "best" or best as in "best reasonable-price consumer-market card"?
High end sound equipment is something you can always drop a bundle on whether
it connects to a computer or not..
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krj
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response 11 of 119:
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Jan 6 02:50 UTC 2001 |
Seriously, how about both answers?
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micklpkl
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response 12 of 119:
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Jan 6 03:00 UTC 2001 |
Not only that, but I have found that making a qualitative choice in any sort
of audio equipment requires a judgement call. Depending on the ears of the
buyer, and the task at hand, you might not need to spend the big bucks on
high-end equipment.
In this case, I would suspect that you're looking for a card with a better
than average analog-to-digital converter. I'm not up-to-date with the market
anymore --- the last soundcard I bought was in 1999, when I upgraded to the
Creative Soundblaster LIVE edition. (I should explaing that I have had 3
different soundcards in my 5-1/2 yr old Pentium desktop: the original ISA
wavetable board, a low-end Turtle Beach DaytonaPCI, and the present LIVE) I
can't be more pleased with the recording quality of this soundcard. I didn't
realise when I upgraded that I would have a minidisc, or else I would have
considered a soundcard with an optical digital output. I could still rig one,
because the LIVE edition does have SPDIF digital capibility, but to tell the
truth, I cannot tell any difference between the digital recordings I make at
work, and the analog to digital recording I get from the Soundblaster. I am
fortunate that the soundcard has two analog speaker outputs, for front and
rear, so that I can record without unplugging the speakers. You will, of
course, be using the LINE IN on the soundcard --- something I don't do very
often.
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mcnally
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response 13 of 119:
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Jan 6 03:50 UTC 2001 |
re #11: I don't know either answer, actually, I just have a strong
suspicion that there's a difference..
Someone who's a recording enthusiast or professional would be in a
much better position to answer..
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scott
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response 14 of 119:
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Jan 6 15:14 UTC 2001 |
From what little I know, I'll say this:
Pretty much any 16 bit sound card will do OK recordings. Hey, it *is* 16 bits
after all. Where you have losses of sound quality is in the oft-neglected
analog-to-digital conversion and especially in the analog input design. I'm
not sure even the Soundblaster Live will do that great a job, being more ofa
gaming card than a pro audio card.
Companies that make serious audio cards include Yamaha, Echo
(www.echoaudio.com), and probably others I'm too lazy to research. You might
check out musician sites such as http://www.harmonycentral.com or
http://www.sonicstate.com for reviews and such.
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raven
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response 15 of 119:
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Mar 19 01:25 UTC 2001 |
I'm helping a friend set up a digital recording studio. Proffesional
quality 24 bit sound cards start at aruond 400 dollars and go up from
there, they also include things you probably don't need like 8 channels
of digital sound out etc. Any standard 16 bit consumer card should do
fine for burning cds unless you are a real audiophile. My understnading
is that 24 bits is only neccesarry if you are mixing multitrack sound
it compensate for degredation in the mixing process, though obviously
I dodn't know all the details as to why that happens.
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scott
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response 16 of 119:
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Mar 19 01:57 UTC 2001 |
The extra bits (typically 20 or 24) are to compensate for accumulated math
rounding errors from digital processing.
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raven
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response 17 of 119:
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Apr 23 20:58 UTC 2001 |
re #16 Ah that makes sense, thanks. BTW I just got a cd-r 12X 10X 32X
an off brand but I figured out it's Ricoh hardware. I really like it,
but so far haven't had any luck getting it running under Linux (Mandrake
7.1) all the kernel modules seem to load OK but then I get a directory
permission error even though I'm logged in as root. it works fine as a player
underLinux and fine as a cd-r under windoze.
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scott
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response 18 of 119:
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May 25 18:54 UTC 2001 |
I'm going to have to renege on my "cheap sound cards are OK" assertion. I
finally figured out mine is rather weak on the bass when recording the line
in. I don't have exact numbers, but playing around with a test CD both on
the line in and from directly ripped tracks showed the bass clearly weaker
even at 63Hz. Bleah. I'll have to look for a somewhat better card before
I can do any more vinyl-CD conversions from my rare LPs.
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krj
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response 19 of 119:
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May 25 20:08 UTC 2001 |
I was looking for an "external sound card" type of device which
might allow me to make good LP recordings into the laptop via
the USB port. The only product I find on the web is the Roland UA30 USB
Audio Canvas Interface, for about $250. I'm not going to do
anything about this until I get some experience with the USB
CD burner I got, the Iomega Predator.
Other than that, I found some reviews of high-end sound cards at:
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm
After reading reviews, I have this fantasy of building a PC for audio
use around an Event Darla soundcard, or maybe a Gina.
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