CD Burning: What Route Should I Go?

Thanks, guys. I have a G3 Mac and it doesn't have Firewire. Considering the cost involved in putting in Firewire card and getting an external burner, I guess it makes the most sense to just buy another computer, such as the Emac for $799 (though I'm not crazy about the all-in-one monitor thing). There is some divergence in opinion here about sonics, but most of you seem to think putting on the hard drive & then burning gives best results.

I had considered buying a Windows computer, as you get so much more software and processing power for less money than Mac, but with the vulnerability of Windows, I almost think one is better off with Apple, as it is pretty much immune to the viruses and hacking that plague Bill Gates' ill-conceived creations.

Where can you get Mitsui's at a fair price, rather than paying through the nose for them at the few audio dealers or high-priced boutiques that carry them?

To give you good advice about your options with your current Mac we'd need to know which model it is, or at least a couple of things about it. Does it have SCSI or USB as its input port, or ports? And is it a model that will accept a PCI card, so that you could add USB or Firewire?

1998 was the first year for the iMac and, if that is what you have, you can get an external USB CD burner, as was suggested above, along with software like Roxio's Toast, and you're in business. The big advantage of using both the internal CD player and an external burner along with Toast is that it's a one step operation, drag the image of the audio CD onto Toast, rearrange the order of the tracks by dragging if you want, and burn directly from the original to the copy in one step, rather than copying to the hard drive and then to the burner.

If you have a different desktop Mac, not an iMac, that instead of USB has a SCSI port, it's possible to buy a SCSI external burner but they might be hard to find and would be more expensive than a USB burner. A better alternative for one of those machines would probably be to buy a combination USB/Firewire PCI card and get an external USB or Firewire drive, as described above.

I haven't found it to be true that an external drive requires 'audio' grade blank CD's. I've got a bulletproof SCSI external burner built by APS that will write perfect CD's on absolutely any brand or grade of media, even the no-name stuff from an office supply warehouse.

Here's my two cents.

1. Get a new computer with a built-in cd burner.

2. Get the Freeware (yes it's free) EXACT audio copy on the internet.

There are major high-end audio manufacturers who use this method over anything else for compilation demos at CES and in-house for their own use, even above stand-alone ''professionnal'' audio burners.

This freeware is a bit complicated, but when you have learned all of it's parameters and possibilities, you can tailor the sound and actually remove some of cd's inherent faults with this incredible software. And best of all, it's free.

Kevziek,
I get my Mitsui's for excellent prices at American Digital Services. Their number is 1-888-872-3287. Have fun!

Kevziek,

You should be able to burn CDs with your computer, but I think you'll need to buy an external burner, a firewire PCI card and Toast in order to do it. What OS are you running?

I've had sketchy experiences with the compatibility of some add on PCI firewire, USB, video, SCSI cards in different models of Macs over the past seven years. Compatibilty can be hit or miss, and it'll be tougher with an older machine.

For burning CDs and DVDs I have had success with Macs of varying vintages.

I have a 1996 Powermac 8500 with processor and video accelerator cards, an internal Firewire/USB PCI card, and an external burner and Toast and it runs fine. I use a Dual 1.25GHz with a built-in SuperDrive at work which runs great. And I do all my iMovie and iDVD projects on a suped-up Apple Cube with an external LaCie SuperDrive which allows me to burn my Tivo content onto custom made DVDs.

It can be done with an older machine, but I think your idea of getting a $799 eMac is a much better solution. It comes with a built-in combo drive that will allow you to burn CD-Rs and view DVDs, so the only thing you might have to buy is a copy of Toast. Another thing you may have to worry about is getting used to using the new OS 10.3 Panther operating system.

Have fun!