Computer-Hosted CD-R Drives

Computer-hosted CD-R drives (often with CD-RW capabilities) are the most popular hardware for CD recording. Even when bundled with the required recording software, drives are available for a few hundred dollars, generally far less expensive than standalone recorders. Beyond price, however, drives offer a number of practical benefits. If you are working on a digital audio workstation (DAW), the mixes you've recorded to your hard drive may be dumped directly to CD-R at anywhere from two to eight times faster than real time. Audio-oriented CD-R software packages will let you set your track IDs (PQ codes) precisely where you want them (a huge advantage), and some support post-write verification to ensure that the recording has gone without a hitch.

The Yamaha CRW8424 combines 8x recording with 4x rewrite and 24x read speed, and comes with a 4MB RAM buffer.

A boom in computer-oriented applications for CD-R has created an attractive market for drive manufacturers, and drives are made by most of the big-name electronics companies (JVC, Mitsumi, NEC, Panasonic, Philips, Plextor, Ricoh, Sanyo, Sony, Teac, and Yamaha, to be specific). Drives from these companies are also supplied on an OEM basis for repackaging by other vendors.

Because audio applications for CD-R are basically riding the coattails of data applications, not all drives are well suited for audio use. In particular, if you're going to record audio you should definitely get a drive that supports the Disc-at-Once writing mode, so that you can place Track IDs within an uninterrupted program (such as a live album).

Other important factors to consider in choosing a drive are the write, play, and rewrite speeds (if CD-RW). If you'll only be recording once in a while, you may be able to live with a 2x write speed, though 4x write is now common and inexpensive. If you plan to send out CD-Rs all the time, or you will need to make a number of discs in a short time, consider at least a 6x drive, or better yet one of the newer 8x models available from companies such as Panasonic (model 7503), Teac (model 8X24), or Yamaha (model CRW8424).

The Teac 8X24 is a Fast SCSI-2 CD-R drive with a 4MB RAM buffer and 24x read speed.

At 8x, you can burn a 74-minute CD in less than ten minutes. But another advantage of the faster drives is that they tend to come with a larger RAM buffer -- 4MB rather than the 2MB (or even stingy 1MB) that comes with many drives. This means that inconsistencies in the data transfer rate from your hard drive are less likely to result in an interruption in recording (which causes an aborted disc). A related factor to check into is the speed of your hard drive. The Yamaha CRW8424 CD-R drive, for instance, requires that your hard drive access time be less than 19ms. However, this should not be a problem for drives purchased in the last few years.

Last, but not least, you'll want to verify that your computer supports the interface to which the drive is designed to connect. In most cases this will be some variant of the common computer interface standards: SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface), IDE (Intelligent Device Electronics interface), or USB (Universal Serial Bus). The details of these standards are beyond the scope of this guide, but it's important to realize that to take advantage of the fastest CD-R drives on the market, you may require a particular interface (SCSI-3 for example) that may not already be supported by your computer (meaning you may need to purchase a special interface card).

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