response 100 of 119:

Mar 12 05:46 UTC 2002

Hah.  Leslie went out today and bought a Plextor brand "Plexwriter."
This appears to be a CD writer designed for tower case mounting, which 
has been stuffed into a a stand-alone case with a USB connector 
attached.  $199, about 25% cheaper than the (*expletive deleted*)
Iomega unit from last year.
 
We have not yet tried making a music CD.  However, Leslie dumped a 
bunch of photos to CD -- she has a year's worth of pictures piled 
on her laptop hard drive -- and it worked fine, first try.

Since most of our failures with the Predator involved problems
with getting the drive to accept the CD-R blanks, or getting the 
laptop to communicate with the drive, I regard it as a very good 
sign that these basic functions work with the new unit.

response 102 of 119:

Mar 14 05:10 UTC 2002

Count me as another satisfied Plextor user.

response 104 of 119:

Mar 18 21:45 UTC 2002

Steve Andre' had an amusing story for me this morning.  He met someone
who had nothing but dismal failure using a Plextor USB CD writer, 
and who is now a happy user of a Iomega Predator unit: the exact 
opposite of the path we travelled.
 
The Plextor writer is built like a Soviet truck -- it's in a solid 
steel case and weighs more than the laptop which drives it.  
 
The Easy CD Creator 5 which came with the Plextor has a few odd 
glitches.  The two most annoying ones:
    when reading from a CD, it does not tell you what track number 
    it's on.
 
    we no longer seem to have control over where the temporary 
    disk copy goes, which is a problem because our C: drive is 
    crammed full.    The program insists on using C: for a "copy CD"
    function but seems smart enough to use D: (without giving us a 
    choice) for "music CD" creation.
 
At least this version of Easy CD 5 fixed the system-killer bug which
was discussed earlier...
 
The "utility" software which came packaged with the Plextor is 
from a company called Oak.  I haven't played with it yet, but Leslie
was able to turn some mp3 files back into CDs without any difficulty.
 
What are some good options for MP3 editing?   Or does all editing 
have to be done on files in the WAV format?  I'm looking 
for the most convenient ways to handle one-hour blocks of audio
recorded off the radio -- both for archiving, and to extract the 
best bits for compilations.

response 106 of 119:

Mar 21 07:25 UTC 2002

        The Iomega Predator in question has some odd problems;  it seems to
be a one-off, most of Iomega's products, and most external CD-RW drives,
aren't that buggy.

        A friend of mine did buy the Philips CD duplicator;  he was unhappy
with it, since it was unable to burn at high speeds and made mixing
difficult, and since spent the money on a tower system with a burner.

response 108 of 119:

Mar 23 00:22 UTC 2002

(Ken, I'd be interested in playing with it a bit if you get one.  My iBook
doesn't have an audio in)

response 110 of 119:

Jul 15 03:08 UTC 2002

So the new toy here is the Windows 2000 PC, a significant upgrade to a 
1999-vintage Dell PIII 500 mhz machine which I acquired used.  
The chip is a bit slow, but it's loaded with memory and disk (or it 
will be loaded with disk when I get the replacement for the out-of-box
-flaky drive from the manufacturer...)

The relevant upgrade here is the USB 2.0 card, which makes the 
USB Plexwriter race along at quite acceptable speed.   
To write a 54 minute CD, the new rig took 
4 minutes 40 seconds.  I think that will be fast enough.

response 112 of 119:

Mar 6 23:12 UTC 2003

resp:107 ::  so we did buy the Extigy USB soundcard-like-thingy, and 
then it sat around for a year gathering dust.   This weekend I 
hooked it up to see about making recordings from MiniDisc --
right now we are trying to make a CD of Leslie singing some songs,
to send off as an audition disc for a program she wants to 
participate in.
 
I need more gain!  Mickey talked me through all the windows gain 
settings he knows about, and everything I can find on the Creative
Extigy software is maxed out.   I thought the recording level 
meters were broken, but I finally got them to flutter just a bit.
 
So I need to figure out which will sound worse: raising the volume 
by about 300-400% in the digital editor (Creative WaveStudio), 
or patching in a tape deck to use its input amps to boost the 
signal.  Come to think of it, I have a damn fine Nakamichi tape
deck gathering dust in the basement....

response 114 of 119:

Mar 7 05:41 UTC 2003

Sounds like you need a preamp...

response 116 of 119:

May 6 22:06 UTC 2003

Hmm, I misremembered Tim's response above as an endorsement of Cool Edit,
which is a product he doesn't mention at all.  I'll have to look up
SoundForge now.

response 118 of 119:

May 13 15:02 UTC 2003

I'm definitely curious about Linux audio these days - I had put together a
pretty nice set of programs to do basic stereo stuff (mostly moving vinyl to
CD) but never took it any further.