difference between CD recorder and PC burner

Sogood51: If I buy one of the pro decks, I should be able to use the same CD-ROM disks that PCs use. I am just not sure if all CD players can play them back. But it sounds like using the HDD to store all the songs I want to record and then using SW to arrange them and burn them sounds like a good way to do this.

Kthomas: How can you config the CD burner without using the sound card. I need the ADC in the sound card to convert the analog LP into digital for the CD burner.

Dogeatpuppy: Probably a third of the tapes I make are compilation tapes. Can you just stop and start the recorder like a cassette deck? Is there a way to tell the recorder where each new track starts so that it makes a TOC?

Thanks for the responses guys. It will probably be a while before I make a decision. I am pretty sure that I cannot sell my Nak cassette deck for anything near what it is worth, so I may hang on to it for a while longer (at least until it needs to be repaired again). Besides that, I will have to buy a CD player for my car and my wife's car if I get rid of the cassette deck. I guess another alternative would be to find a CD changer that can be controlled by a separate remote. Then I could use the extra inputs on my casstte player to provide the sound.

Mike

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.

Rosstaman,I just went to the alesis masterlink web site and that is a very nice recorder.

The Alesis Masterlink 9600 also does an excellent job recording vinyl onto cdr's.

There is also a difference between the type of blanks an audio recorderwill take and a PC burner will take. The stand alone CDRs use Audio CD blanks which cost more but have a "royalty" built in to the cost. There is also an issue with ability of some units to play burned/recorded CDs. check with the manufacturer.