HD CD Recorders

Hi guys,

Thanks for the advice on the atennuators, those who replied.

I have another query for you. I've been thinking about getting a hard disc recorder and wondered if anyone knew what was available or had any recommendations

I've exclusively used minidisc until now as the editing facilities are superior to CD-R/RW - particularly useful if recording from vinyl. However I'm very tempted by the idea of a hd recorder to burn CDs from - mainly for recording from vinyl for use in the car.

Issues I guess are going to be the quality of the analogue to digital converter and size of HD. (Or should I just forget about it and wait for these DVD HD recorders to drop in price some - doi these burn to CD? or just DVD?)

Cheers

 

Yamaha CDRHD1300 does Hard Drive 80gb recording as well as a cdr/rw drive at £600. Thats enough for 120 cd storage at cd quality

otherwise
Sony HARLH500 has same capacity, but only a cd player. has usb connections to connect to computer for mp3 transfer, as well as names off the CDDB database at £400. 120 cd storage at that quality, or 1000 cd storage at ATRAC 3 quality.

Sony HARD1000 (yes, thats a hard 1000 ) is the older version of the HARLH500 and has half the capacity, at 40gb but has same internet facilities. was £500, but may find bargains around.

The Yamaha is black, the Sonys are silver. I know theres a Hercules one on the market at Richer Sounds, but never personally encountered it.

hths

 

Cheers Rory,

Not many then. I'm guessing the HD/CD-R concept may be obsolete from the starting block and already being overtaken by DVD/HD recorders. Do you know if these beasties will burn to CD as well as DVD discs?

Thanks again.

 

I don't know of any DVD HD recorders.

The Yamaha looks interesting, not least because it can store uncompressed audio, and will take any IDE drive, so it's an easy job to put a much larger drive in. Makes good recordings by all accounts.

-- Ian

 

Ian,

I believe there are such beasts:

http://www.dvd-recorders-guide.com/dvd-hard-drive-recorders.html

I think they are in the £600 to £800 sort of region. Don't know if they'll burn to CD-R/RW as well as DVD though

The Yamaha does look the most interesting of the CD/HD machines and if the sony's won't burn to CD, that's no good to me (its the burn to CD bit that's most important). £600 squids though - nah - think I'll skip for now.

PS. I know I could do all this on me PC - but I refuse to have one of those in my lounge Pah!!

 

DVD Recorders

Theres loads of cheapy DVD recorders on the market, from about 199gbp upwards.

Any one know if any of them :

1) Have an audio mode only (no video) ?
2) Selectable audio codecs ?
3) Selectable encoding rates ?
4) Can record audio on to CDR ?
5) Can record audio on CDRW ?
6) Can record video on to CDR ?
7) Can record video on CDRW ?

Cheers

 

Thanks Ants, didn't think DVD HD was in the market yet, but it appears it is.

I've seen the Yamaha for £500 in Tottenham Ct Rd and cheap online stores, but, like you, I'm waiting for them to get cheaper, which no doubt they will do in the next few months (they've only been available in any numbers for a few months). Must have a look at the weekend and see if anywhere's offering them at January sale proces ATM.

-- Ian

 

What's wrong with a big hard disc for your PC, a network cable or wi-fi card, one of these and rip your files as WAV's rather than MP3's

If you need to write CD's for the car get a CD writer too.

 

Everyone should buy as many hard disc devices as humanly possible.

More will be released in the future - so buy one now and then buy a new one next year.

please

 

Ian,

What I was thinking was, that if there are DVD/HD recorders on the market that'll burn to CD-R, then the market for CD/HD machines'll be dead in the water. Like Firestorm I don't know if they can burn to CD.

There was a group review of DVD/HD recorders in What HiFi last month, but no doubt becuase WHF seems to have no interest in anything other than AV these days you could read the whole review and be none the wiser as to how any of these machines performed for audio or indeed what there capabilities were full stop regarding audio.

Sgt. Rock,

I am an old fashioned cove who would like to be able to do all my hifi stuff in the living room via strange black boxes and leave my PC in the attic room, where the nasty thing belongs .

 

no dvd recorders will burn to cd

dvd recorder cum hdd start at £630 for a Tosh or Panny HS2

 

If there are no commercially available CD/DVD Recorders, then the only way to obtain these functions is to roll your own ?

a la media pc ?

So who'll be the first to recommend a solution that

1) Looks the part, I wouldn't a hulking great big beige tower that sounds like its about to take off.

2) That can be an easy to to use alternative to a CD and DVD recorder.

I'm no stranger to building pcs, I have a motley collection of pcs, from an old p166 to a Shuttle SN41G sporting an AMD Athlon 1.8GHz cpu and low noise fan, but even that is too loud for a living room.

I haven't seen anything that fits the bill yet, some come close, but none hit the mark. It needs to cost no more than 500gbp.

I've already got a nice dac that will sort out music duties.

 

None? ... bummer. Mebbe I'll have to buy me a new house then so's I can fit a nasty old PC in the lounge

 

Try a mini-ITX form factor PC

 

Problem solved. Its gotta either be the R2D2 PC, The Christmas Tree PC or the Gingerbread House PC for me then.

 

lAmBoY,

I'm looking for an ultra big, ultra quiet and ultra cheap one, you wouldn't happen to have one in your back pocket would you

 

OK All you hard disc owning wannabees, check out this little puppy......

http://www.digitalfidelity.com

I've seen one in action and its the mutts nuts.

160Gb too

Nice.

//lamboy

 

Hey Rock,

I happen to have large back pockets, but unfortunately only my wife thinks Im cheap.

I know of a particular brande of hard discs which are the quietest in the industry - and thats not just personal bias.

What capacity do you need? Maybe I can point you in the right direction

//lamboy

 

mini-itx boards ? possibly. The VIA EPIA Nehemiah M10000 1Ghz seems like the best candidate as it copes with divx/xvid decoding ok.

Lamboy, what HD do you recomend ? I have a recent 120Mb Maxtor 7200rpm, 250Gb Maxtor 5400 rpm and a IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 180Gb. The IBM is way too noisy. The 5400rpm Maxtor is the quietest.

Say if I wanted 80Gb/120/180/250/300Gb.

Case wise, it looks like it is worth ripping the guts out of a nice lookng cd/dvd/vcr as the dedicated mini itx cases are expensive. But it'll need some fabrication and diy ...

I've just seen adverts for the Asus Digimatrix, (http://www.aic.co.uk/computer/asus_digimatrix.htm) that looks interesting.

firestorm

 

I'm looking for a 120Gb+ IDE drive to go in my Mini-ITX PC that serves my Slim Devices MP3 player that feeds into my hi-fi, disk speed isn't too much of an issue i'm more interested in how quite they are.

I've heard good things about the Samsung range with the fluid dynamic bearings