Cap'n, it's important to know how you'll playback your digitized music for there are negative sonic effects associated with sample rate conversion. For instance, if 44.1kHz is your final playback sample rate, then your music will sound better if digitized at 44.1kHz rather than at 96kHz and down converted to 44.1kHz. Avoid SRC if at all possible. Whatever you do, record at a 24bit depth rate.
Despite the above comments which favor stand alone CDRs, computer based systems offer the potential for better sound quality and greater flexibility. The downside is that a good computer setup is fairly expensive. First, you'll need a fast computer (I prefer a Mac because of the better software selection), a pro-quality soundcard (the Lynx Two offers 192kHz A/D conversion) and vast amounts of hard disk space for file storage. For software I use t.c. works Spark XL, but there are others (Sound Forge, WaveLab, Peak). Such a system will approach $3,000, but it will sound better than and be able to do more than a simple CDR machine.
Despite the above comments which favor stand alone CDRs, computer based systems offer the potential for better sound quality and greater flexibility. The downside is that a good computer setup is fairly expensive. First, you'll need a fast computer (I prefer a Mac because of the better software selection), a pro-quality soundcard (the Lynx Two offers 192kHz A/D conversion) and vast amounts of hard disk space for file storage. For software I use t.c. works Spark XL, but there are others (Sound Forge, WaveLab, Peak). Such a system will approach $3,000, but it will sound better than and be able to do more than a simple CDR machine.
