@siebrand I bought one of these Tascam 900 models some years ago for my own needle drops and while it worked, it worked great. It started failing me a few years ago, which stinks because this was my trusted machine to use for my work. But, just like my old Pioneer PDR-05, the dual tray Phillips and now my Tascam 900, they all die sooner or later and not a one of them ever gave me much notice when they did. I have been looking ever since to find a new CD-RW recorder to go directly from vinyl to CD, but I have yet to find a worthy candidate yet, that isn't cost prohibitive or a chance buy on ebay, where their player is probably about to call it a day, so they want to dump it before it officially does?
I've owned and used one of these Tascam CD recorders for several years now after previously owning a Yamaha and SONY CD recorder. I can highly recommend it. I use it for my 'continuous' needledrops by using a blank CDR in it and manually marking tracks OR, using a CD-RW and downloading into my computer to clean up the tracks. I run it through a mixer to powered monitors. I probably only use it once a month so not much wear and tear on it. My old Yamaha was a piece of sh__ and the Sony's CD tray mechanics failed. The TASCAM I have (same as your pic.) is also good value for the price.
I also often used CD-RW's in my TASCAM, especially once it started always "erroring" and wasting my CD blanks and then I would also take the CD-RW over to my computer and clean up my needle drops, which was a GREAT system for me to work with. By the time my TASCAM finally quit recording properly, I might only get :30 seconds to a minute into a recording and it would immediately "error" and throw the CD out, which is sickening. Go figure but that thing still plays CD's back perfectly, but it won't record anymore. I so badly want to replace it because it was so simple for doing needledrops, but I just can't bring my wallet to take the chance on another one as they aren't all that cheap, in my opinion. I honestly don't do that much needle dropping these days, unless I have a song on vinyl that is rare MONO or off an album where the vinyl just sounds "fuller" and "warmer" than the same song on a CD. By the way, I did buy a handheld TASCAM DR-05, which I use more for lifting audio from rare tracks found on the web, than I do for my own needle drops. The sound from that DR-05 is decent but nowhere near as good as what I used to get from the 900. I guess that the DR-05 would be a great little gizmo to record board meetings or for those who bootleg concerts, but it's not all that great for needle drops.
I have one of these, but it has a slot load, instead of the drawer. I have used it a lot, and it makes great recordings. Have had it for at least 10 years, and it has performed flawlessly. Easy to use also.
I don't own the CD recorder you're citing, but my suggestion would be to buy a Tascam solid-state recorder, not a CD recorder. No point in recording to CD if what you want to do is generate a file on a PC to create a number of CDs from there. Record to file as you do at present, transfer to PC and make CDs.
Since some here are looking for a CD-RW900 replacement, seems to me the TASCAM DA-3000 would be ideal, yes/no?
The DA-3000 is or was the range-topper, but any of the other Tascam solid-state recorders down range would also be suitable, depending on how the facility set matches what the user wants to do. Other makes of solid state recorder are also available.
I still record LPs to DAT using Sony PCM-7010F Recorders. These recorders are no longer working without some coaxing so I have been appraising the DA-3000. Thing is Apple Music downloads these days typically sound better than my best LP digitization efforts, which is primarily for the convenience of the digitized music, as well as for a performance free from distracting snap, crackle, and pop.
I've been using the DA-3000 for a few years now. Ask me if you need to know anything specific about it.
Yes, connect a USB keyboard and all functions apart from headphone volume and power on/off are accessible. You can separate tracks by manually pressing New Track as you record, or by later revisiting a single track, inserting Markers at the selected split points, then using Split Track to separate them at the markers. Folders and individual tracks can be re-named.
If you record cd quality DA 3000 is probably an overkill. You can do with their handheld recorder DR-100MKIII, there was a thread about it.
I've owned a tascam rw900SL (slot loader) for 10 years. i use it 8 hours a day 5 days a week for playback, and i record a few cdr's a month. For playback it's hooked up to a nuprime dac-10, my other cd player is an oppo bdp-103 also hooked up to the nuprime. it's been rock solid for 10 years, occasionally complaining about a disc, but a blast of compressed air usually sorts it out. It's a workhorse and does what it say on the tin. when i A/B with the oppo with both through the nuprime i can detect no difference between the two, so the transports are solid and nothing is done to the digital signal passed to the coax or optical outputs on the tascam that makes it sound 'worse' than the oppo. using the internal dacs, the the oppo wins hands down, but if you want a workhorse transport for an external dac that will last years the tascam is it.
All I can say is that I miss my HHB machine. A ton. Served me well for 17 years. I generally do not like Tascam products and I tolerate my CD-RW 900 because it was the only non-SCMS machine I could find around 2016 or so. Dan
My Tascam CDRW 900 MKII also died on me, so I thought I give this a try. I bought a Teac DV-W5600 S drive. It's almost identical to the drive I took out, except that was a CD-W5600S. Swapping them was very easy, and I could even click off the fascias and swap them. Playing and recording all work fine, but when I want to finalize a cd-r or a cd-rw I get an "EJECT ERROR" message, even though the machine does not eject the cd. Have I done anything wrong?
I used to do CD recording with a Pioneer deck (a few actually) but then I got smart and got a Tascam DR-3000. I can needledrop something like well over 200 lps on one SD card and then dump into the computer for whatever reason (streaming, backup or CD burning). Once in awhile I hop over to Microcenter and get a SD card on sale, I keep one card just for jazz one for rock and one for out there stuff. It has been a revelation for me as I don't need to hunt down discs anymore and the 'library' of SD card recordings fits in a 4"x4"x2" box. Once they are all backed up and put on HD for streaming I don't really have to keep the recordings on the SD card but because it is a cheap medium I just keep the recordings on the SD as a further backup. The deck is used in the stereo just like a cassette deck would be in the old days except for play the feed goes balanced into the same dac that the streamer and CD plug into.
I think I figured out the problem on my own and I don't think I did anything wrong. It seems to be a firmware issue. I wanted to do a firmware update. With the old drive I could see the firmware version was T.2G, which, according to the site, should be updated to T.2P. When I inserted the new drive it showed the firmware to be something with T.3. Also, I noticed that with the new drive connected to the Tascam, the tray could be opened with the eject button on the Tascam AND on the drive itself. With the old drive you could only open the tray with the eject button on the Tascam, not the one on the drive. Also, with the new drivve the green light flashed all the time, and with the old drive the green light didn't do anything at all. So I guess the good folks at Tascam got wind of the possibility to swap out drives and circumventing their planned obsolescence scheme, and make sure the firmware of all other cdrw drives is incompatible with the Tascam CDRW 900 MkII
Unfortunately the TASCAM website only has the latest firmware available, and not older versions. I doubt if it would be successful, though, since all my attempts to update the drive (and the older one) resulted in a "FAILURE" error message.
Happy Bump on St Patty's Day! Well since I am expecting today my New Tascam CDRW900SX I thought I'd Bump this thread to see if anybody has bought one since it's been avail since Q3 of 2022. My old 18 or so year old 900 is still going strong, no lie, but I haven't been recording that much lately so it's been in the closet. But saw that Tascam was knocking off $100 for the Month of March and BOOM, out go the lights. So looking forward to continuing the conversation And Does anybody know what A/D D/A Chipset their using in the new version. The old one had an AKM, but I can't find any information at all on the Dac in this thing. And yes, my old 900 never, never had issues, the most reliable Transport I've ever used. Except for the Maggy's!! Beave Make it GREEN!!
I mentioned my CDwriter a few months ago. I am not able to say if it is better or not (and, if so, on WHICH parameters) than the CDrecorder object of this thread. I know, however, that I am fully satisfied with the model that I bought. It's expensive, it's true, but products of (alleged?) quality are difficult to find for very little money. However, I noticed that the "250" is not of interest here, and I don't mind that much. Whoever reads/writes in this thread may be at least a little interested, Therefore, I'm re-linking, because I think, that this type of product, in general, can give better results, when compared to a CD-R made with PC... My new toy: Tascam SS-CDR250N .. .. .. owners, here?
