|
|
Setting Levels
June/July 1999
"Digital Audio CD-RW Review"
Edited by Paul L. "Pro" Pearson, Ph.D., (pro@strangepleasures.com)
Strange Pleasures-www.strangepleasures.com
Tape of the Month
Site of the Month
Warm weather’s here and the jambands are out and about sweating and playing their asses off at festivals, clubs and amphitheaters around the country. The sound guys/girls are sweating even more, because they’ve gotta do their best to please all the hemp-clad spinners and shakers looking for aural gratification. The tapers are out there too-you’ve seen ‘em lugging that stuff around and setting up the huge trees, chatting with everyone wanting a copy. Nothing better than a crazy starlight jam that you can listen to and relive for years to come…see you at Sandstone on June 30!!
Call it an impulse buy if you will, but this month I went out and purchased a Philips CD recorder. My column this month will be a critical review of the CDR-765. I’d be pleased to hear from anyone else who has purchased a digital audio CD-RW and let me know what your thoughts are. As always, you are invited to submit articles on taping, trading, mixing or listening for the July issue of Jambands.com. I’m always on the lookout for crispy nuggets for next month’s ‘tape of the month’ as well, so send me your dank first-gens. or CDR’s.
Take care,
Pro (mailto:pro@strangepleasures.com)
"Review-Philips CDR765 CD Recorder"
Paul L. "Pro" Pearson, Ph.D.
Strange Pleasures
http://www.strangepleasures.comWhile strolling though a local music chain store, I spied the new digital audio CD recorders. After a couple of days of the plastic burning my pocket and a two-hour internet search for information, I decided to take the plunge and buy the Philips CDR-765 before one of our weekly shows this past month. I put the CDR-765 through its paces in the live setting, then took it home and dubbed some CD’s, CDR’s and DAT’s. Here’s my take on the technology…
The main difference between the digital audio CD recorder and a normal CD burner is the type of media it takes and the price you have to pay. Digital audio CD recordables (CDR’s) and CD recordable/writables (CD-RW’s) employ the serial copy management system (SCMS), and have a built-in royalty fee. This prevents you from using a normal CDR as media and also from making digital copies of digital copies. The cost per CDR disc (readable on virtually any player) is roughly $3.33 at the same chain store, with the CDRW’s running about $10 each-these are erasable and reusable up to 1000 times, but can only be played on a digital audio deck. A quick internet check brings the price down to $1.87 (CDR) and $6.50 (CDRW) in bulk.
The Philips CDR-765(retail $599.99-Best Buy, Omaha NE) is a dual-deck digital audio CD player (which will play CDRW’s) and CD play/record. It has optical, digital and analog inputs, as well as analog and digital outputs. It also has a basic function remote control, which makes the tracking process and playback more convenient.
In the live setting, the CDR-765 functions like any other audio component used for taping. It produces very clear, faithful recordings of the analog soundboard source on CDR that can be listened to in the car on the way home. Recording on a CDRW requires dubbing onto a CDR (which proceeds at double-speed) to listen in your car or on another home player.
There are, however, a few drawbacks to the CDR-765 that make it less than desirable to me for taping and archiving live performances.
1. I found it annoying to have to pause and restart the disc to track the songs, occasionally missing the beginning of the next song or having tracks starting with a minute of silence while the band figured out what was next on the slate. Certainly not as slick as automatic ID writing, as on a digital audio tape (DAT).
2. The literature/website for the CDR-765 boasted a level control (a MUST) but I was unhappy to find that this was a four-position input level control, rather than a conventional dial. You can only go from a cut of 3dB to a boost of 6dB at 3dB increments. Not a positive feature for anyone serious about taping. I found it difficult to adequately control the input to produce a recording at the proper level-any change in input level causes an audible drop or rise in volume from the final product, also undesirable. Boo!!
- While ‘finalizing’ a disc during teardown, an accidental bump of the deck caused a disc error that prevented CD to CD copying, leaving the master unreadable except for making an analog/digital output copy from the CD-RW deck. The night I did this, I wasn’t recording on DAT, so I was very disappointed to learn that I had essentially lost my digital master. This probably rules out the CDR-765 for semi-serious recording in anything but a controlled environment, something seldom seen in live taping.
- Utilizing the optical output of the DAT (no such luxury on the CDR-765), I burned a CDR of another show live. I was extremely upset to find that the SCMS regarded this as a ‘digital copy’ and would not make a subsequent digital copy of this ‘master’. It will copy a CD in analog mode, which is both slower (real time instead of double-speed), and much less faithful. D’oh! (One could get around this by using the digital output of the CDR into the DAT, which is what I’ll do next time.)
- Apparently, it also isn’t possible to make a "digitally-copyable master" CDR or CDRW from a previously recorded DAT source in digital/optical mode. It evidently treats any digital/optical recording made as a "digital copy", preventing you from archiving and spinning from CD to CD digitally. To me, a live or DAT digital source should not have been subject to the ‘copy-protection’ in such a manner, even if CD’s are (I thought the goal of the SCMS was to prevent mass CD copying). That blew this deck, and the technology for me as a true band resource, particularly because I had hoped to use this for quickly copying and sending out limited numbers of demos and masters for tape trading. (You could make DAT->(analog output) CD first gen digital masters that can spawn digital CD’s, however, but I suspect a detectable loss of clarity will follow.)
- Despite all that, having a CD of a live show to listen to at the after-bar party is super cool.
Taken into the friendly confines of the living room, the CDR-765 is a better beast. Copying a full 74minute disc takes only 37 minutes and a two-minute finalization process. Hypothetically, if a couple of road-weary travelers stop by your house at 3:41, you can send them back with a copy of your latest show AND copy one they brought for yourself by 4:59-exactly the amount of time it takes to relax and refresh. The double speed feature makes a 6 CD set a lazy afternoon project at best. Nice and no copyright infringements to bother the conscience.
Although an easy to use and fairly reliable component, the CDR-765 is better left at home. This particular unit (and the technology as a whole) was clearly meant for a market that is primarily interested in copying selected tracks from their friends CD collections (I must have seen the Philips commercial 50 times and didn’t know it was for a CD recorder!). There are other component models available from Philips, Tascam, Marantz, and Pioneer. There is reportedly a rack-mountable pro version from one of the manufacturers, which may address some of my technical concerns, but the above caveats about source/archiving will probably still apply, and the price tag will probably be prohibitive at this time. The cost of discs is another concern, but as the technology finds a wider audience, the prices should drop somewhat. At this point, other than listening to the show on the way home or to the next stop on tour, CD recording with the Philips CDR-765 from a live source doesn’t seem a suitable alternative to DAT.
Disco Biscuits- 5/29/99 Martyr's - Chicago, IL
Set 1: Plan B > Once The Fiddler Paid > Plan B, Above The Waves, Pat and Dex > Voices Insane
Set 2: Little Lai > Helicopters > Aceetobee > Pygmy Twylyte > Little Lai
DAT>CD>Analog
If you’d like a copy of this tape, here’s the rules:
1>you have to have less than 20 hours of jamband tapes (unless you want to submit one of your crunchiest recent acquisitions as a candidate for next month)
2>you have to send me a 100min blank and postage
3>you have to promise to be a good trader and spread this tape around.
Email your request to (mailto:pro@strangepleasures.com)
PauseRecord ( http://www.pauserecord.com)
PauseRecord is a site I visit frequently because it’s another jamband/taper friendly forum. You can find lots of jamband-related articles, interviews, cd reviews and hosts of links to tape trading, setlist archives, j-card generators, Event Finder, etc. An excellent resource to supplement your jamband surf list.
Pro was born on a baseball diamond in Nebraska at the age of 9. He is the president of the unofficial Kurt Rambis Fan Club, Omaha NE chapter and is into Strange Pleasures when he isn’t analyzing your DNA. © 1999, www.strangepleasures.com
June Issue: Home | Editors | Features | Columns | Photos | Regional | New Groove
Road Trip | Tour Journal | Venue | Levels | Ghosts | Homegrown | Inaudible | CDs | Charts
JamBands.Com is published on the 15th of every month. Submissions are due ten days earlier on the fifth of each month. Please contact the specific editor for the section you are interested in contributing to. For general content comments, please e-mail jambands@jambands.com. For all technical web site related issues, please contact Sarah Bruner or David Steinberg