Mike Langley ([email protected])
Thu, 09 Jul 1998 19:45:07 PDT
<<I hope to get one soon and hopefully in the near future, I will
be able to produce my own U2 CDR to make available to Wire.>>
I'm not signaling this guy out, but everyone who says "I'll get a cd-r
drive and make copies for people." This is a warning to you people. Stay
away from these people! They don't know what they are getting themselves
into. Anyone can make a cd copy of a show, but to do it with no
generational loss takes experience and the right hardware and software.
Adaptec makes some excellent SCSI cards, their cd-r software on the
other hand isn't all that great. Most of these people don't know what
DAE is or even what DAO is. Most of these people do "on the fly"
recording, which results in more generational loss especially w/ the
Adaptec software.
I only trade with people who use the following programs for DAE:
1. CD-DA Extractor ($25)
2. WinDAC ($31)
For hardware to do the DAE you should have a SCSI Plexor drive (approx
$150 depending on model) This is JUST a reader, you can't make cds on
this drive.
Despite the contrary belief of many a SCSI drive does not result in a
better cd. The only advantage of going SCSI is if need to multitask
and/or plan to add many peripherals to your system.
For a good cd-r drive expect to spend between $400 and $600 for a GOOD
drive.
<<Another thing, just like every other technology and computer
related rpoduct, the longer it is in the market and the more new
innovations arrive, the cheaper the original product will be. And it
will be dramatically cheaper. So, a CD write must be cheap already,
right?>>
They stop production of the older models. You can still find some of the
older models, but I'd stay away from them. Many companies will stop
support for them. There's a cd-r drive out right now for $150. (The name
escapes me at the moment). I test tens of thousands of dollars worth of
hardware and software each year. This drive says on the box "good for
audio." This drive doesn't support DAE, and you cannot record audio on
this. I extracted the audio using my 12Plex cd-rom drive and tried to
write the cd, and the resulting audio was very faulty. Stay away from
the low end generic cd drives. (This drive was only a 1X/2X)
This person wanted to make cds from cassette tapes. He's going to need
two things if he wants any chance to preserve the quality. He's going to
need a soundcard that has digital inputs. ($500+). If you can't afford
to do this, which most people can't there's the Ensoniq PCIAudio now
sold by Creative. It's an excellent product for it's cheap price. He's
also going to need software to clean the audio a little bit. There's the
$50 Cool Edit. Not the greatest software, but for it's price its an
excellent product. Then there's Sound Forge. At $500 again most people
can't afford it. (Stay away from Cakewalk, that program is like a toy)
Also every cdr owner should have a copy of the freeware program called
WaveCompare. This tells you if your DAE is perfect bit for bit.
To produce excellent cds on your computer it takes time and money, which
these "newbies" don't understand. These people lead many to believe that
cd-r is inferior when it's just the person who made the cds fault.
If you plan to buy cd-rs from someone ask me, and I can help you find
out what you should be asking this person if you want a good quality
cd-r copy.
A question for you people:
Why do many people think that MP3's are cd quality? Is there something
wrong with their ears?
++++++++++++++++
Michael Langley
AP Technologies
VAR/Webmaster
++++++++++++++++
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Thu Jul 09 1998 - 19:47:33 PDT