I want to make mixed tapes. I also want to make copies of my radio talk shows from grad school, which are on cassette.
This would imply that I should buy a two-bay cassette deck. But cassette tape seems to be a fading technology, what with CDs, MP3s, minidiscs and whatnot.
So what should I buy? I do have a portable cassette recorder/player and patch cables, so that will help with the transfer no matter what I go for.
I’m looking for a new stereo component, not multimedia devices for my Mac.
Get a standalone recordable CD unit. They’re about the sae price as minidisks now (roughly £150 here in the UK - probably cheaper in the US). I find it’s the easiest way to share stuff with others. If you’re only going to record stuff for yourself, you should probably go for a minidisk thingammy.
I bought a Philips 560 CD recorder about 18 months ago and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s got patch ins and an optical line, so you can burn true digital to digital CDs, as well as burn CDs from tapes or records or whatever else. (that link is going to ebay so I don’t know how long it will be good)
It cost me a tad over $300 then, I imagine you could do much better than that now. That one I linked to sold for $160. Making mix CDs is nice. So is making CD copies of stuff you have on tape that you can’t get anywhere else (I had several bootleg concerts, recordings of local and friends bands, in your case the radio shows).
Look into it. Also, if you decide you dont want to get one of these, if you wanna give me those tapes, I’ll burn em to CD for you. Just let me know.
I’m not sure what you’re saying, mouthbreather. Did you get the Philips device retail for $300, or secondhand off eBay for $300?
How does it work? Do you play the whole source into the machine, then “play” it all back onto the new CD? Or does it record the source in realtime? What I’m getting at is, is it easy to eliminate pauses like when I have to flip the tape?
Also, can you clean up the source before depositing it on the CD? Eliminate hiss, boost the levels as necessary, etc.?
I paid $315 for it, off of ebay, but it was new & unused in the box (remember this was probably around Thanksgiving in 99).
It records in realtime. You can pause recording to flip tape/do whatever.
There’s no mixing done on the recorder. What comes in is what you get. You have an input level meter so you can control the level at which you record, but no sound cleanup. I know that Harmon Kardon also makes some CD recorders, theres were much more expensive – almost 2x as much (but also nicer) than the Philips. But even with the HK I don’t think they had any sound mixing. You’re going to need to really crack the piggy bank to get one that does that, AFAIK.
Minidisc is closest to cassette in terms of portability and rewritability and it’s pretty cool in a star-trek kind of way. You can label each track, shuffle tracks around, erase/replace specified tracks, and so on. It’s like a mini hard-drive (actually it’s a magneto-optical drive). Anyway check out the minidisc community page for more info. Minidisc is not as ubiquitous as CD so that’s another consideration, as is the fact that it uses a lossy compression scheme (sounds fine to me). http://www.minidisc.org/index.html
If portability or editing isn’t an issue and you just want to archive stuff CDR is probably better. If you want the absolute highest-fi CD is the current consumer standard.
I’m not much of an expert, but my husband is just getting into home recording (has a nice analog board to play with) and wanted a dual cassette to mix down to.
I think this is what he got. I don’t know what kind of quality it is, but he was going for something simple and basic. Seems like a nice piece of equipment.
mack, what are the considerations of minidisc vs. CD? I’d always assumed minidiscs were just tiny CDRWs, but you seem to be describing something else. What’s their capacity? Can they be “locked” so you can’t overwrite them?
mouthbreather, I’ll take you up on your offer, since I probably won’t be buying a CD recorder anytime soon. There’s one of my shows in particular I need to make three CD copies of: one for myself, one for my former cohost and one for a Doper who asked for it. So any time we could arrange this, I’m game. I’ll pay for your time and materials and throw a couple of beers into the bargain.
Let me know. Keep in mind that a very small (only one or two) number of people have said that their CD player won’t play the CDs that I have burned, but I think that’s just becasue they are old CD players. (?) I have not had any toubles at all, and most people havent either.
Since you want three, I will probably burn your one from tape on the Philips, then make backup copies of that on the PC.
Email me so we can work it out. You know the name of my company (you should, at least) – just use david@<companyname>.com or you can use the mail.com address in my profile.
Minidiscs are permenantly sealed inside shuttered cases and will never be touched by grubby fingers. Minidiscs have the same capacity & (to the human ear) the same fidelity. Minidiscs don’t need to be “finalized” to make them playable on all other players as CDRs do (unless something new has happened in past few years- I haven’t been following CDRWs since I left my consumer electronics service job). Once CDRWs are finalized, they are not re-recordable any more (even on the unused portion of the disc- again, unless recent technology has changed this.). MDs can be locked in a manner similar to floppy disks (little flip-tab on the corner). MD players use a large buffer memory and therefore are virtually skip-proof on playback.
The only real con I can think of: blank MDs are more expensive (about $2 for a 74 minute disc, whereas I think CDRWs are 50¢ if you buy them in quantities of 50 or more). I think it’s worth it because you get the ability to name each trach (this too can be edited), which I don’t think has been incorporated into CDRWs yet.
So, Attrayant, how long have you worked for Sony?
Seriously, I agree with all of your points. Except you didnt mention one thing. You cant share with anyone, unless they also have a MD player.
This overrides all of the other good stuff you mentioned, IMO.
