Best CD-R Recorder--Tascam, HHB, Marantz, Sony???

Avoid any of the consumer machines as these use consumer CD-Rs which are less readily available, I have found to be a lower quality sounding disc, and also don't tend to make as good of a disc. Most consumer machines usually focus more on flashy features that you will never use rather than the mechanicals of the unit. Also, consumer units will have the Serial Copy Management System in it preventing you from making more than 1 generation of discs.

The HHB is a great unit and makes excellent CDs even using its internal A/Ds when recording from analog sources. The professional Marantz units have also been historically good units.

A great "add on" that isn't very expensive if you are going to be dubbing LPs is the Apogee Rosetta A/D convertor.
I also hope that your DATs were recorded at 44.1 instead of the 48 kHZ DAT standard. If they were recorded at 48 kHZ, you will need a sample rate convertor.

While I can't speak about specific burners, I can suggest two very reputable sources of goods (media, DAT & CD-R recorders, etc.) to the live music taping & trading community. Check out Terrapin Tapes (www.terrapintapes.com) and Oade Brothers Audio (www.oade.com). Both cater primarily to folks like you who are digitally recording and transferring shows, and both have been doing so for quite some time. The Oades go waaay back with the Grateful Dead's taping community and even make mic. preamps for live recording. I'm sure either outfit would be glad to discuss features/pros/cons of various burners with you.

Tascam CDRW700. Got mine at the local Guitar Center for under $600, to replace a Pioneer 555 that sounded okay but restricted you to "Audio" disks and forbad digital dubbing. The Tascam sounds really great, is very flexible, and has burned several hundred CDRs without a hitch. Even has a timer built in.

I have the Tascam CDRW5000. It makes copies that sound as good as the original. Keep in mind that the digital cable you use makes a big diffrence, as does the brand of CDR (Mitsui Gold is the best) I would highly reccomend the Acoustic Zen MC2 digital cable.

You might want to take a look at the Alesis
Masterlink. It's a Hard disc recorder which
can do any range of bit sizes between 16&24 and
sampling rates of 44-96. Once the info is on the
Hard Disc you can "Master" it, EQ, Normalize, Compress,
Limit ..... and burn back to 16/44. You can also burn
@16-24/44-96 aiff format to cdr. Has 3.x gig hard drive.
(1.7 hours @ 24/96, 5.4 hours @ 16/44.1)

There have been several reviews on this piece if you
search the Pro Audio mags. I got one a year back and
it's been great!!

Regards,

Joe T.