News and Reviews....

Digital Recorders... Making sense of it all    April 2002

For component based digital audio recording, you have basically three choices: Recordable CD (CD-R or CD-RW), Mini disc and hard disc recorders.

Recordable CD comes in two varieties: CD-R, which is write-once and CD-RW, which can be erased and rewritten. CD-Rs are compatible with essentially all standard CD players. They can be played in DVD players that have a separate laser pickup for CD and DVD but not in most single pickup DVD players. You can send a CD-R to almost anyone and be confident it will play. You can play CD-Rs in your computer. But, once it is recorded, that is the way it will stay.

CD-RWs can be erased and rewritten thousands of times. Erasure is an all or nothing proposition. You cannot go back to a completed CD-RW and record over one track unless it is the last track. CD-RWs only play in machines designed for them. Most CD players and some DVD players will not play them. CD-RWs cost more then CD-Rs and so most CD recorders support both CD-Rs and CD-RWs but due to cost you are likely to use more CD-Rs. One small hitch, CD-R and CD-RW blanks are different for computer and stand alone Audio components. The Audio ones pay a royalty to songwriters and so the difference in price.

Mini-Disc excels in the area where CD recorders are the weakest, Editing and recording. You can remove and reorganize the tracks on an MD as many times as necessary. Midi in the beginning offered inferior sound due to its compression, today's MD is much better. MD did not catch on like CDs and to this day is not very prominent in the industry.

The latest approach to home audio recording are the Hard Disc recorders. They are comprised  of a CD player and Hard Disc, like the one found in your computer. A 30 Gigabyte (GB) hard disk can hold more then 50 CDs worth the music in its original uncompressed 16 bit/44.1 Khz format. Many more if in MP3 or some other compressed format. They can also output multiple tracks at the same time for multi-room individual choice. They can be setup in play lists, by genre, or artist and recalled in the same way. Some Digital Recorder companies offer a service whereby you can ship them your CD collection and they copy all onto your hard disc for you. There are also software programs that will go on line and download the cover art of your Hard Disc Collection. When coupled with a wall mounted touch panel or screen of some sort you have a neat high tech juke box that allows choice by picture over your entire collection.