difference between CD recorder and PC burner


Has anybody had the chance to compare CDs created with a decent CD recorder and those created with a CD-R with a good sound card on a PC. At some point I will be replacing my Nak cassette deck with either a CD recorder or a CD-R on my computer. If I get a CD recorder, it will have to be a dual well recorder since I don't want to have a CD player and a CD recorder - I like things simple. The other alternative is just buying a better CD player and then buying a CD-R and a good sound card. Whenever I want to record I could just run a cable from the tape out of my receiver over to the sound card of the computer. I will most likely be recording more LPs than CDs, so whichever method I choose should have a good ADC on board. I don't need absolute high end sound (that's why I have scaled down to my Fisher 400 tubed receiver) but I don't want crap either. The CDs would be played only in the car which has a pretty decent sound system (although cassette based at the moment). I would appreciate hearing comments from anybody that has experience with both choices.

Mike
mike_cole

Showing 2 responses by rosstaman

I useed to burn my cdr's on my Macintosh G4 using Toast. I always thought they sounded pretty good. Not as good as the originals, but close enough. Especially, since I only use the cdr's for my car stereo. I learned to extract the music on to my hard drive, then burn the cd from the hard drive. This process produced superior cdr's than simply alowing the cd burner to read/write in segments. Additionally, the quality of the cdr's differ. The best I've used are Sony, Maxell and Fuji. The worst was Memorex.

However, this year I purchased an Alesis Masterlink 9600 High-Resolution Master Disk Recorder. This hard disk/cdr burner produces Red Book cd's and up to 24-bit/96kHz cd's.

All I can say is that all my favorite cdr's in my car are being replaced using the Alesis ML9600. The sound quality was far superior to the quality of cdr's from my Macintosh G4 computer. Hands down, no comparison and worth every penny. The Alesis Masterlink 9600 can be found new for under $1000.
The Alesis Masterlink 9600 also does an excellent job recording vinyl onto cdr's.