So I was in the Fry's parking lot at 7:45 this morning, waiting for them to open... went straight to the audio department and managed to score the last one they had in stock. I did two things I don't normally do when purchasing audio equipment: I took the "display model" on the shelf, which I did 'cause it was the only one they had left, and I got the "extra service" contract 'cause I tend to be suspicious of new technology like this...
Real quickly, the CDR 765 is a dual CD deck - one player, one recorder, that lets you "clone" CDs. It also has analog and digital inputs, which means you can write CDs from an external sound source. One of my main uses for this critter is going to be as a "mixdown deck" in my home recording studio. One thing that I knew about it, right out of the gate, is that it requires the "audio only" CDs, which are $5.99 a pop rather than the $1.99 you can get a standard CD for...
Anyway, since this is a brand new item that is probably of interest to a lot of people doing home recording, I thought I'd keep a diary of what happens... I picked up five write-once CDs and one re-writeable CD ($29.95 - ouch!) to play with.
I'll try to keep track of what it does and doesn't do, problems, cool stuff, etc. etc. etc. If you have questions about it, feel free to email me and I'll see what I can find out. I don't have the manual yet, but I just got a call from the sales guy at Fry's, that they found it, so I should have it by this evening...
Two minor weirdnesses: (1) the "record" tray is on the left and the "playback" tray is on the right. This is gonna take a little getting used to; (2) makes a weird little sound between tracks when dubbing. Assume this is normal...
As advertised in the manual, it did insert a little space between tracks (when the copy was finished, the unit indicated total time for the master was 58:32 and total time for the copy was 58:44, so it added 12 seconds over 22 cuts; not too bad. It would probably be audible and annoying on a "live" CD, though. My Denon indicated 58:46 for the total time...
I was doing some analog dubs a little earlier, to try out that part of the machine. I had dubbed about four songs, and listened back to them; then I went to add a fifth song to the CD, and in the middle of the song, the machine just shut down. No lights, sound, anything. Can't even get my CD out of the machine...
So... back to Fry's tomorrow, I guess.
On the brighter side, there is one really cool thing that the machine does when recording from analog: each time you hit pause, while you're finding the next song to track, it puts an index mark right there. Meaning that I don't have to worry about getting the recorder going, starting the cassette deck, and adding an index mark all at once.
Nonetheless, the coolness of that design feature is somewhat overshadowed at this point by the inability of the machine to do anything at all...
One thing I'm glad of: I'm glad I wasn't copying one of my original CDs in the machine when this happened... I would hate to have them sending it off to Philips service dept. with the master copy of one of my own CDs sitting in the "play" deck side.
Ah, well, we have a replacement unit, so I'll test that out. Will put up an update sometime Monday, probably. Hopefully, good news...
One thing that's going to take a little getting used to - mixing down to a non-erasable medium. Out of 16 songs, I only had one song that I had to re-mix, and that was because one of the cables had come loose. However, these were just headphone pre-mixes, so I wasn't being real critical on mix quality. (The "loose cable" thing: I started recording and noticed that only the right channel VU was going; it appears to be due to a loose cable, but I'm noting it here just in case it happens again...)
Comment on analog mixdowns: the unit provides VU meters, but does not give any indication of "margin" the way a DAT deck does. Philips suggests mixing so that the levels reach the top of the blue indicators but don't go into the red; I was mixing so that the levels went into the red a little bit now and then. My suspicion is that this is still a margin of maybe 6 db - I'm going to borrow a friend's DAT deck and use it to see if I can figure out what sort of margins I'm actually getting on analog dubs. What this means in real, practical terms: if your digital margin is any more than zero, then your mixdown CD isn't going to sound as "loud" as commercially produced CDs. More info on this once I get some numbers. I also want to try going "over margin" on an analog recording, just to see what happens. I can do that on DAT mixdowns, and as long as it's only an occasional "over," it's not even audible.
Thanks to those who have sent email... as noted in the FAQ below, I have my reasons for not going the computer CD-writer route. And I know there are lots of other CD writers out there, but the CDR765 is what I bought, and what I'm reporting on. Any questions people send, I'll try to figure out and add to the FAQ section.
One other nice thing I'll say about the unit: on the analog mixdowns I did over the weekend, I can't hear any "clicks" between tracks where I paused or stopped the unit while setting up the next song. I am, admittedly, listening at a fairly low volume today, due to some weirdness on my computer; nonetheless, on the DAT mixdowns I've done in the past and had transferred to CD, clicks between tracks have been a rather annoying constant... so score another point for the CDR 765.
Been talking to my brother in the Bay Area; I'm gonna bring along the CDR and some of my old, old 4-track masters when we go up there for the holidays (he's got my old 4-track deck, and I've got a few songs that I can't even find cassette mixes of, that I want to dub to CD for posterity).
Well, guess what? I stuck these two "blank" CDs in the drive and both of 'em had stuff written on them! 'Nother trip to Fry's in the a.m.
But... why, why, why would a store re-sell returned media like this? Particularly "write once" CD-ROM blanks, which can't be re-used once they've had anything written on them????
Let the buyer beware...
On the positive side, one thing I'm verifying as I write this: you don't have to copy a full CD, or CD tracks in any particular order, even in 2x dub mode. I wanted to make a copy of the P.P. Bliss premix CD I made a few days ago, but track 14 on that one was a bad mix - I needed to substitute track 17. So I set up a "program" (you _do_ have to have the remote control to set up a track program - the unit itself doesn't have number keys on the front panel) and then, once the program was set, went into dub mode. And it appears that it's going to do what I want... if not, you'll be hearing from me in the morning...
Unfortunately, I needed 'em, 'cause I'm going to take the deck up to the Bay Area with me when we go for Thanksgiving, and my brother (who has my old 4-track r-t-r deck) and I are going to sit around "rescuing" songs off some of my old 4-track masters, and I don't want to have to stop 'cause we ran out of blank CDs.
In a pinch, though... Tower Records does carry them... but you will be pinched...
Fry's is all out of "audio" blanks, and I just called Terrapin Tapes, and they are as well. Apparently the CDR765 and its cousins have taken the blank media world by storm! Guess there are more of us out there willing to pay $6 a pop to make CDs...
When I was talking to Terrapin, they said that they've been told that Kodak is supposed to be coming out with audio-type CDR blanks, and that the price may even be less than $6 apiece! Still in the rumor stage, but there may be more news (and maybe even product) in a week or so. So keep yer eyes open.
In the meantime, the biggest problem with the CDR765 seems to be that nobody has blank "audio" CDs for sale! But the unit itself seems to be working, still...
By the way - if anyone has tried the "swap trick" using the CDR 765 and either verified that it does or does not work, could you let me know? I've receieved several questions on this, and, while I'm too wimpy to try it myself (see FAQ item 2), I'd like to be able to give a better answer than "I don't know..."
Finished up a couple of CDs from the big Thanksgiving session, with no problems. I "finalized" the CDRW cd - it will play in the CDROM drive on our Windows 95 system at home, but it will NOT play in my brand new Aiwa audio CD player... my plan is to dub it over to a regular CD blank as soon as I can get my hands on some, but 'tis worth noting that the CDRW (rewriteable) cdroms apparently won't play in some/all regular "audio" cd players. It is important that it works in the computer, though, because future plans for the CDRW include using it to encode new song demos in RA for website posting...
Did verify that one can erase individual tracks on the CDRW, and also that pressing ">>" while recording will add an index mark on the CD, meaning you can put index marks on a "live" CD without pausing it between tracks...
Discovery on VU meter levels on the CDR - this DAT tape was mixed so that the margins on most of the songs were 0 (and a couple of the songs actually had a couple "overs" while recording, which, in my experience, are not audible problems), and my best guess at correlating the CDR 765 vu meters is: when one "red" led segment flashes on the CDR 765 vu, you're probably in the range of 0 db margin. When two or more red led segments flash on the CDR 765 vu's, you're probably "over margin."
For those who aren't familiar with the terminology: 0 vu is the "loudest" signal that can be recorded on a CD; 0 vu means, basically, "all bits on." So any time you go "over margin" it means there's lost data, and, potentially, audible distortion. Some people are very religious about never going over margin (or anywhere near it); I'm not so picky. But what this suggests is that if you mix analog input so that you get an occasional flash of the first red segment, you should be getting a reasonably "loud" CD.
While I understand (well, sorta), the thought behind all this copy protection stuff, I find the fact that this deck uses BOTH "consumer audio" blanks and SCMS copy protection to be really cheesy. As I think I wrote before... if I'm paying $4 a pop extra for the "consumer" blanks, and then on top of that, the machine invokes a copy protection scheme that really screws up what I'm trying to do with my OWN music... that's overkill, folks...
So I called up Cassette House and ordered the 30-pack of Kodak CD-R blanks - came to about $96.50 with shipping and whatever... half the price I'm paying right now :-) Who knows, maybe I'll even get around to putting some of those old Spanky and Our Gang albums on CD one of these days :-).
Following email a couple days ago from Christopher Simmons: "FYI -- Watch out for the Memorex 5-packs of rewritable CDRW that come with 5-free regular CDR discs (sell for about $30 at Best Buy and others). While the cardboard holder says "digital audio" in the little Compact Disc logo, the actual discs in the bundle are NOT audio ready for our Philips machines and the actual discs and disc case cards don't have the "digital audio" on them, even though the external cardboard wrap does. All of the ten-packs at my local Best Buy were labeled the same way, without having the right discs inside."
Maxell is now selling "audio" CD blanks as well - I see that Cassette House has them on sale for $2.75 apiece. Except that they're sold out at the moment, but more on order. Kodak's are still available for under $3 apiece if you buy 30, or if you go to Terrapin Tapes. I've heard a few stories of people having problems with the regular (non-audio) Maxell CD blanks, but don't have any experience of this myself (did a few copies onto Maxell non-audio blanks back when my only source for CD copying was to sneak into the software library at work and use the copier there, and didn't experience any problems myself)...
Anyway... the machine is still working, I'm using it regularly to do headphone mixdowns from 8-track masters in my home studio, and it seems to be working well...
Somebody emailed me the other day and asked if one could "fix" the audio-CD and SCMS requirements of the 765 by just pulling a chip or two out of the machine... I haven't heard anything like this; it would certainly void the warranty, and I'd be surprised if these functions were on a single chip that could be popped out, but... if anybody knows anything...
I've also been exchanging email with Richard (and a couple other people) about using CDRW's to "master" a CD, then copying the result to a CDR which you'd use as your master for making further copies. The problem with this is that the CDR would have SCMS protection turned on, so you wouldn't be able to make digital copies. One solution to this might be: if you know somebody who can copy CDs on a _computer_, the computer software doesn't know about SCMS, so you should be able to make a bit-for-bit copy of the CDRW onto CDR, and the CDR should still be digitally copy-able. (Some computer software may even have the ability to turn off the SCMS bits altogether, but at least it should let you make a copy-able copy of your CDRW once you've got good mixdowns of all your tunes).
The other issue that came up was - as you're collecting mixdowns on CDRW, it would be nice to be able to take that CDRW around and listen to it in your car, on a friend's stereo, etc. Unfortunately, most audio CD players - home and car - won't play the CDRW's. The whole technology for writing them is a bit different, so a typical audio CD player isn't going to be able to play them... didn't come up with a good solution for this yet... if you copy the mixes to CDR so that you can listen to them, you have to finalize the CDR, and that wipes out being able to write any more songs to the CDR... and you wind up blowing eight or ten CDR blanks just checking your mixes... anybody got any brilliant ideas????
On the subject of CDRW... has anybody else noticed that the instructions in the manual for un-finalizing a CDRW don't seem like they match up with reality? Even the indicator lights - this morning, my CDRW was showing the "CD" and "REWRITEABLE" lights, but not the "RECORDABLE" light - yet it allowed me to add a fourth song to the three mixes already on it...
I called up Cassette House and ordered another 30-pack of the Kodak blanks. For entirely superstitious reasons, I've been doing mixdowns mainly on TDKs and using Kodaks for "home copies" or dubs of old albums... I think my theory is that if the TDKs or the Kodaks prove to have a shorter-than-hoped-for halflife, I'll at least have a set of copies on the other media... my main purpose, really, for buying the CDR765 was to make copies of my own songs that I'll be able to listen to twenty years from now... and while there are lots of theories, nobody knows for sure when these sorts of media start to disintegrate...
And more email from "Ken," who works at Tower Records, and wanted to let me know that Tower now has audio CDRs for as low as $4.99 each. Which is cool, 'cause when you just hafta have a blank CDR _right now_ at 11 pm, Tower is the place :-)
Un-finalizing my CD-RW this morning seemed like it was working "as advertised," so I guess it just hadn't been finalized when I started out yesterday...
I did an experiment the other day, one I've been thinking of doing for a while - took one of my SCMS protected CD copies and made a copy of it. I just set it up like a regular high speed dub; the 765 figured out that the tracks were SCMS protected, so shifted into "analog" mode to copy them (which means they were copied at 1x speed).
Subjective evaluation: I think there was a very tiny audible difference between the original and the copy; maybe just a little bit of loss in the high end. I didn't test this with any analyzers or anything, this is just very subjective, and I did know which one I was listening to at any given time, so it could all be in my mind, too. Just seemed like the copy had a teensy bit less punch than the original...
By the way, when the deck shifted into "analog copying" mode during this dub, the VU meter didn't indicate any action at all. But the disk did copy.
I got some email from Art Munson at Cassette House this morning. It said that they have "generic 80 minute digital audio 'consumer' recordable CDs." 10-pack for $23.90, even cheaper if you buy five packs. With jewel case. So... if anybody's been looking for the 80-minute 'audio' CD blanks, they now exist. Cassette house also has generic blanks, sans case, 100 pack for $225.
Latest email from Art Munson at Cassette House says that they have "generic" audio blanks, 100 blanks on a spindle (i.e., no jewel case) for $139. Somebody must have made some sort of negotiations with the RIAA, because at $1.39 a pop, there can't be a whole lot of "royalty" money going to them... anyway, for those who are doing a LOT of CD writing/copying, there you go...
Update 12/7/98 - email from Nick Verban (thanks!) suggests checking out the TDK website which lists a number of places to mail order CD blanks. In particular, he suggests checking here. (the "Cassette House" at this URL is another place that has a pretty good reputation among tape traders).
Date Media Type of Use Problems, Notes, Copy Speed
-----------------------------------------------------------
11/7/98 TDK R A 2x dub, full cd OK ("PP2" - in SDB archive)
11/7 TDK R A analog dubs machine died in middle of recording
11/8 ORIGINAL UNIT EXCHANGED FOR NEW UNIT AT FRY'S ELECTRONICS
11/8 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("Blissed Out" headphone premix)
11/13 TDK R A 2x dub, full cd OK ("ROTS")
11/14 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("SOITF Demos I" from cassettes)
11/14 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("SOITF Demos II" from cassettes)
11/18 TDK R A 2x dub, full cd OK ("Big Picture" - copy for WHW )
11/18 TDK R A 2x dub, pgm cd OK ("Blissed Out" - copy sent to J.T.)
11/25 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("SA vol. 2" from 4trk)
11/25 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("SA vol. 3" from 4trk)
11/25 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("STap" from 4trk)
11/25 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("ODFE" from 4trk)
11/25 TDK R A analog mixes OK ("YP demos" from 4trk)
11/25 Phi RWA analog mixes OK ("misc" from 4trk)
12/4 Phi RWA analog mixes OK (adding to RWA songs from 11/25)
12/4 TDK R A analog mixes OK (adding to "YP demos" cd from 11/25)
12/6 TDK R A dub from CDRW OK (copied my "SA 4" CDRW onto CDR)
12/6 TDK R A digital i/p OK ("DWY" premixed to DAT, dub to CDR)
12/8 TDK R A analog dub OK ("RC" from mix cassette)
12/9 TDK R A analog dub OK ("GSS" from mix cassette)
12/10 TDK R A analog dub OK ("DYTIS" from mix cassette)
12/10 TDK R A analog dub OK ("DUDS" from mix cassette)
12/11 TDK R A analog dub OK ("GRG1" from mix cassette)
12/11 TDK R A analog dub OK ("GRG2" from mix cassette)
12/12 TDK R A analog dub OK ("SA5" from mix cassettes, DAT)
I've set up five CDRs to use to dub original songs from old analog
cassettes and new analog mixes; they'll be used in multiple sessions
until they're filled, which could take months in some cases... I'll
list them here and will note when they're either successfully
completed, or encounter a failure...
12/31 TDK R A ana dub/mix ("SA6")
12/31 TDK R A ana dub/mix ("PP5")
12/31 TDK R A ana dub/mix ("PP6")
12/31 TDK R A ana dub/mix ("PP7")
12/31 TDK R A ana dub/mix ("DOM")
1/13 KOD R A ana lp dub OK ("S&OG" cuts)
1/21 KOD R A 2x dub, full cd OK ("SA1")
1/22 KOD R A 2x dub, full cd OK ("SA2")
...as noted above, haven't been keeping a close log, but as of 3/10/99,
I've used all but one of my KODAK CDR blanks. Only problem I've noted
so far is one time, when I was dubbing (2x) a CD, the "record" CD
stopped after track 16, even though the source CD played all the way
through to the end. I was able to go back and dub tracks 17-21 onto
the blank CD, and as far as I can tell, it's okay - no idea whether
this was a problem with the deck, the source CD (a TDK blank with my
own stuff on it) or the blank CD.