Sony RCD-W100

I've owned one of there for many years, recording my vinyl to digital for the car and other stuff. It works brilliantly, the process is a bit labourious, but it's worth it. Burn each side from vinyl, pressing pause inbetween each side, copy the resulting WAV files to a PC/Laptop, then run Audacity to cut up each side into tracks and label accordingly.

I owned a Pioneer CD (music) recorder for many years, but it died last year of old age! Imagine my surprise when I looked for a new such recorder. In the UK only the Sony available (Sony RCD W100). That's the only reason i would recommend this machine. Recording with this is a chance event - maybe it only works if there is a full moon. You put in a disc to record (I am recordong from a collection of old LP's). It whirr's, it shuffles, it whirrs some more it sows a message, shirrs and shuffles some more then up comes OPC more whirrs and shuffles, then finally "Blank disc". You have to manually enter the start of new tracks (my old pioneer - you out a disc in and it just said blank disc and then hey presto off you go, silence between tracks started a new track). Some discs it just keeps whirring and shuffling and wont do anything! Some discs will "record" and after you have sat for over an hour pressing record for new tracks it whirrs and shuffles some more and then hey presto you have a................"blank disc", zippo, nothing. Some more records 7 tracks 72 mins - finalize. Put back into deck A - more whirring and shuffling and guess what - blank disc. This is over 30% of discs. SO I decide maybe I ought to get Sony discs - now I have even more whirring and shuffling and even more failures!!! This machine is a piece of c..p - worst purchaase I have made in ages. Avoid it like the plague. If you must make CD copies of original LP's, send them away and have them recorded professionally, you will get better value for your £280.

I bought the Sony RCD-W100 machine because my computer stopped copying CDs. It was cheaper than buying a new computer or getting the malfunctioning one fixed.

The other reason I bought it was because I wanted to copy music from vinyl, cassette, mini disc and the radio onto CD, which the computer could not do.

I know that the fashion is to copy/download everything nowadays onto MP3 players, but I don't have one of those and I play music through my hi-fi using two decent sets of speakers, not through tinny little headphones that annoy everybody else on the tube/bus/train. And don't get me started on the latest craze for playing music through the pathetically lo-fi speakers found in mobile phones!

So what do you get for your money? Well, you get a machine which is fairly robust in construction comes in a range of colours (well two, actually, black or silver) and is fairly easy to use.

The instruction manual is fairly well written and is not in the usual English that used to be the curse of manuals translated from Japanese. Having said that, it does assume that you understand the technical acronyms (e.g TOC, SBM and OPC) that are liberally sprinkled throughout.

So how well does it work?

When I first unpacked the machine and wired it into the hi-fi I thought I'd use it to copy a CD. This seemed to be the most basic function that the machine performs and a good place to start.

I placed the CD to be copied into deck A and put a blank CD into deck B as per instructions. I pressed the "high speed synchro" button and waited to be told to press the "Play" button which would start the copying process.

Imagine my disappointment when the message came on the display "Data disc". I had stumbled upon the drawback with this machine (and all similar machines on the market) and it is this:- The machine will only copy onto CDs which are specifically for music. i.e. they must be marked with "Digital Audio" under the compact disc logo, just above where it says "recordable"or "rerecordable". See the picture below for visual representation.

Most blank CDs are not like this. They are for Data / music and will work OK in computers but will not work in CD making machines of this type.

Once I had secured the right sort of CDs there was no problem.

Most manufacturers produce the "right" sort of CDs but you must look carefully at the compact disc logo.

The only other drawback with the machine is that,unlike computers, this will not copy copies. This is because this type of CD making machine has a program built in called SCMS (or Serial Copy Management System). This prevents copies being copied. A computer does not have SCMS, and will therefore copy any CD, copy or original.

The machine uses several different inputs depending on which source you are recording from. These are digital (CD to CD), analogue (from turntable/cassette deck to CD) and optical (DAB radio/minidisc to CD).

The digital or optical connections rather unsurprisingly give the clearest results.

I have managed to copy from cassette (analogue), CD (digital), DAB radio and minidisc (through an optical lead) and vinyl (analogue). All have produced acceptable results.

There are two modes of copying CDs. One is "high speed" where you cannot monitor the recording and the other is "normal" where you can. Monitoring is possible through the amplifier or through headphones which can be plugged directly into the machine.

Obviously recording from sources other than the built -in CD player only happens at normal speed.

The only other thing to mention is "finishing" discs. CDs can only be played on the A deck or any CD player when they have been "finished". They will play on the B deck in any state.

The machine will make a "finished" CD or an "unfinished"CD depending on how you have the machine set up. Leaving a CD "unfinished" means you can add tracks to it later providing there is ample room on the CD to do so.

It records CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

This machine will cope with MP3 files even though its description on Ciao says that it doesn't.

All in all a very useful piece of kit if you'd like to transfer your old vinyl or cassette-bound music onto CD.

Reasonably priced at around £199.95. I managed to pick up mine at Richer Sounds for £169.95 and I'm sure if you search around you can find one under the RRP of £245.00.

One or two have commented on the fact that this seems quite expensive, when compared to the price of a computer which would "burn" CDs. This is all well and good, but a computer would not be able to copy from vinyl or other analogue sources such as cassettes. (Not without a lot of additional software at any rate).

This is the primary reason why I bought the machine in the first place. Having over two thousand vinyl LPs and about a thousand cassettes, (which I want to preserve) transferring them onto CD seemed like the ideal way. This would mean I could put the vinyl LPs away without imposing any further wear and tear on them. Ditto the cassettes which would no longer be subject to stretching due to rewinding and forwarding.

Overall I'm pleased with the machine because it means I have CDs of albums which are not available commercially on CD and rare recordings made of friends' bands and the like which would never see a commercial release.

There is a version called RCDW-500 which will cope with up to 5 discs at once.

ADDENDUM

A year and a half later I thought I'd update this review.

The machine is still functioning well for the most part, but I have found that copying at "high speed" tends to miscopy the first few seconds of a CD. This means that the first few seconds of the first track are missing. This is annoying to say the least.

What this means in practice is that I use "normal speed" copying to ensure the whole of the CD I want to copy is captured.

I have also found that a small percentage of CDRs will fail entirely.

I put this down to the media itself rather than the machine. This is especially annoying if you have just sat through an entire CD only to watch the machine produce the message "Blank Disc". There is no indication that the process is failing until it reaches the end of its run and then displays the annoying message.

The only way round this is to scrap the CD and insert a new one. Re-recording using the same disc is a waste of time.

Overall, the machine still functions well after a year and a bit, so it was still worth the money. It has saved me a great deal.

I have learned to live with the fact that a percentage of the discs I buy will fail. As I have already mentioned, this is down to the media, and as the media is fairly cheap it isn't any hardship to throw away a dodgy disc and replace it with another.

Also note is that this machine will copy exactly what it is presented with as a source. This means that if you are copying a scratchy old vinyl LP, you will get a perfect copy of that complete with scratches. This is also true of CDs which "jump" or "stick". It is best to play the thing through beforehand to ensure that there are no faults in your source material.

It may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how clear scratches on vinyl sound once they are transferred to CD.

When copying from an analogue source, it is necessary to "track mark" the recording you are making. The machine will do this automatically if you are recording from a digital source (i.e a CD or minidisc). If you don't track mark, you will end up with a CD with only one track which lasts the entire length of the recording. Not good if you want to skip tracks or use a shuffle function.