Stand Alone CD Recorders

Stand-alone CD Recorders allows the consumer to make their own custom CD's. CD recorders allow you to either make a complete copy of a CD or mix-and-match music from a variety of sources, including favorite CD's, Audio Cassettes, or even Vinyl Records. However, with the increasing popularity of CD-burning using PCs, the number of standalone CD recorders has declined over time, but they are still available if you know where to look.

Yamaha CDR-HD1500 CD - Hard Drive Combination Recorder

Here is a CD - Hard Drive Combination Recorder for the ultimate music fan. With a 200 GB hard drive you can store up to 400 CDs worth of music, and can copy your stored music to blank CDs at 10x normal speed. You can also record from external sources such audio cassettes and Vinyl records and either listen to them directly off the hard drive, or copy them to CD as well. In addition, before copying from the hard drive to a CD, the CDR-HD1500 allows you to edit your recordings, enabling your own creatively to take over. This unit also has timer recording capability, which is great for recording radio broadcasts from a stereo or home theater receiver. The Yamaha CDR-HD1500 is a little pricey, but for what it offers, it is a very good value.

Sony RCD-W500C CD Recorder

Enjoy the benefits of a five-disc CD changer and recorder in one. The Sony RCD-W500C can mix selections in any order from the five disc changer and record them onto your "customized" CD-R/RW. This unit also features 4X high speed dubbing, CD-Text, and MP3-CD playback. The RCD-W500C also has both analog and digital audio inputs for recording from any source. Also, with both analog and digital audio output, this unit can be in corporated in a variety of audio or home theater setups.

Need Many More Than A Few?

You may seek out some quality CD production and replication houses. These firms will take your recorded master and setup  "turnkey" CD replication. They may be of assistance in cover design as well as offering tips on marketing your CD at reasonable price packages. 

You Can Always Use Your PC

You should connect to the line in input on your PC for recording. This will usually be a set of RCA connectors or a mini-jack labeled line in. On newer soundcards (with mini-jack connector) this input is usually color coded in black.

Using the microphone input (color coded red) is not recommended. This input is made for a signal with much lower volume than what mixers and other audio equipment will output. Also the microphone input is only mono, so it will probably not work very well.  Knock 'em out one at a time.