DVD recorders vs CD recorders for analog audio transfer (1 Viewer)

[Lee ps]

I hope this is the proper forum, but am sure it will be redirected if it isn't.

I have thousands of hours of live music on reel to reel and cassette tapes scattered around the house and want to copy the best of it on cds or dvds. I would need a cd or dvd recorder for that, but it appears the cd recorder's glory days are over. I opened a letter from Circuit City and found they had but a single cd recorder in stock, a $400 Sony. That's pretty steep, considering what it cannot do. And I would need hundreds of blank cds, even though they are nearly free.

I have heard, perhaps in error, that one can record 6 to 8 hours of sound on a dvd. Is that possible? CDs are only good for 80 minutes or so.

What I might like to do would use some old CGI laserdisc for some video with the audio in either stereo or 2 channel mono. If I do that, the audio would probably be limited to the time of the video. Would that be right?

The first thing I would do would be to record on DVDs or CDs a digital master copy that I could then use to make sub-copies for the people who are interested in different portions of it.

It appears that I might need two DVD recorders to stay within the digital realm. I have two Sony CD players and a JVC DVD player, all old and unlikely to have a digital output. Everything I have is very old.

I could buy a dvd recorder and use one of the cd players as a source, but that would make the signal go from digital to analog and back again.

Any ideas or recommendations out there? Thanks, Lee.

 

[Greg Bright]

Here's some possibilities.

Pick up a used CD recorder on EBay. Problem here is that they use special music CD discs that aren't as cheap as regular computer grade CD-Rs. My Harman Kardon CDR 26 is an excellent example of the breed. I've copied hundreds of LPs to CD with it.

Use your computer as a CD recorder. Lots of software is available that will convert incoming analog to digital and burn it to discs. Cheap discs.

Also consider converting your recordings to lossless MP3 or WMA for even greater disc capacity.

Depending on the compression format used you could get much more than 6-8 hours on a DVD.

Greg