cd recorder vs. computer burner

There is a audiophile madness that has been spread by all the rubbish written in the audiophile press to make you feel nervous about your equipment.

I have yet to find a fully working computer cd burner that does not burn files correctly onto a disk. Assuming the in the case of audio that the correct bandwidth is being used and the speed of the burning process is low, you will find it hard to beat.

If you are noticing your standalone cd recorder sounds different I would guess it is more to do with how you are feeding the information to it.

Personally I have many of the outboard recorders including years ago DATs, harddisk recorders and cd burners. Burning files direct from the computer has always been the best way out of jail. But if you are using your burner like an old fashioned tape recorder, then all the usual audiophile paranoid stuff will apply. Like how good are the input amps cables etc and recording levels.

I've done the comparison burning at 4X vs 24X and on my computer it does make a difference. I think the stand alone burners usually sound better because of their slow burn times which produce fewer errors.

I don't think I've ever heard a CD recorded on a computer, especially one made at a high burn rate, that sounds as faithful to the source as one made at 1X speed on my Tascam CD-RW700. And I've heard a lot of them. 'Course this could all be "audiophile madness." :-)

I have compared CDR's burned on my computer vs. my Pioneer Elite burner, both by my own ears and with blind tests with audiophile friends. The discs burned with the Pioneer definitely sound better. The difference is noticeable, but not dramatic.

My personal experience was that even basic stand-alone CD recorders outperform my crappy computer's sound card. Note that ripped and burned CDs made on my computer are fine, but digitizing analog sources (cassette tapes, for example) resulted in very noisy CDRs. I have been using a "prosumer" Marantz CDR-632 for about three years with pleasing results.