Best CD copier, Yamaha 1500 or Azur 640H

Hi, I’m sorry if this has been covered before, but I was wondering if anyone knows which is the best product out their for making near identical copies of cd’s with? I was thinking of getting the Yamaha CDR HD 1500 as I believe it makes near prefect copies until I recently discovered the Azur 640H and now I am nolonger sure which is the best, and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction?
Thanks

 

I'd guess a dual-deck CD Writer will probably be better than either of those two.

I think Marantz and Philips made one

 

Thanks, I should have said that i was after one with a HD drive though, . Up until now i've been using MD and have got use to the editing functions etc that they offer, that is matched and further added to with these two machines. The otheir thing that puts me either of thoughs machines you mentioned is that they would be without garranty, and when i went to look at a used Yahama 1500 yesterday, the 1500 blew up as soon as it was plugged in!

 

Are you sure the Azur 640H is a CD recorder?

AFAIK it just allows you to copy your CDs onto the internal hard drive & play them back from there.

Why not buy a CD/DVD writer drive for your PC?

 

PC version would be a good idea, otherwise I think the hifidelio has a cd-writer built into it.

 

Yep the Azur has a cd burn built in. Its what it and the Yamaha appeal to me about them, the fact that i can rip all my cd's to them, arrange a play list as i like for burning to CD, but still have the easy access to the music on the hard drive for other times. I did look at the PC route, but the sound quality just isnt good enough. As for the hifidelio, whilst it may be a good music server, its a poor cd copier, (according to the reviews i've found on it)which removes it from the list.

 

im sure with the right software it would be just as good using a pc and alot cheaper

 

If you've got a PC already Exact Audio Copy lets you rip files from a CD, staying as close as possible (well, at the moment - I think improved techniques are being developed) to the original. This would therefore probably be the best option - you could then copy the ripped files to your harddrive player. That said, unless the CD reader/writer you're using *really* sucks I'd be surprised if you can hear any difference between CD copies ripped on either the yamaha, cambridge or using Exact Audio Copy (unless the original disks are scratched to hell). While there will probably be some errors on most copies made with the CD writers you mention, the error correction on CD players should deal with these inaudibly.

 

Cheers for the info on Exact Audio Copy software, its not one i've used, so i'll give the PC route another try. So far the only PC software I've used is Windows Media Player, which whilst simple to use produced copies that i could tell were copies if that makes sense and as a result put me off the PC route

 

Hi Lizard

I expect you would like to hear from someone who is happy with one of the CD recorders you are considering. Sorry, can't help there other than to report how delighted I have been for the last 4 years with the old model (looks identical but only has 80 GB hard drive) Yamaha CDR-HD1300. I bought this when they first came out and have had absolutely no problems at all. The new model can surely only be an improvement. Even if the only improvement is the tripling of the HDD size. I will definitely buy another one if my old one packs up, but only a new one, not secondhand.

These things store hundreds of discs, so unless all your CDs have text you'll have to keep on top of the disc titles and track listing. Best to do it as you copy each disc, preferably using the dedicated software and keeping the unit connected to a PC via the RS232 port. It takes ages to do it with the remote, one letter at a time like mobile phone texting. (I'm probably too old to do that

I must add that it will not copy onto cheap computer CD-Rs; you have to use Audio CD-Rs which are a lot more expensive, but sound quality is excellent and very difficult to distinguish from the original. Nobody I know can tell which is which on a blind comparison.

 

The Yamaha will be the better CD copier, as it writes larger pits than the average CD recorder, giving greater accuracy in writing and reading the disc.

 

Thanks for the info Helicon, chipray . The PC route really does not appeal to me (other than for editing whats on the Yamaha/Azur) and to find out that you would happly buy another Yamaha chipray tells me all i really need to know about the build quality and useabiltiy of it. Also thanks Helicon for the info about the CD copying ability of the Yahama, its enough now for me to be able to make up my mind and buy it.
Thanks again.

 

Hello Lizard,
Just to add more support for the Yamaha really. I have an HD1300 now, and had a 1000 before that. They are brilliant bits of kit, and I copy all my cd's using the Yamaha rather than Nero etc on my pc (copyright permitting, of course!). It may be me, but the recordings sound better - I have no explanation why!

 

hope you enjoy the yamaha Technically, I think using Exact Audio Copy, or one of its competitors, with a good quality CD drive (at least for ripping, if not for writing, CDs) should give more accurate copies; if you can hear the difference, your ears are better than mine, though...

 

How?! The Yamaha copies the CD bit for bit with NO compression!

 

Yes, but especially if the CDs are less than perfect, some errors will take place. I haven't tried using the yamaha, but certainlyripping files to my harddrive using my CD drive and NERO, and also using an old marantz CD writer to burn tracks to CD, copies were not bit-for-bit identical with the originals (though, except on v scratched CDs, differences were v minor - and certainly not audible to me).

Exact Audio Copy tries to avoid this problem. As its website puts it "In secure mode, this program reads every audio sector at least twice. That is one reason why the program is so slow. But by using this technique non-identical sectors are detected. If an error occurs (read or sync error), the program keeps on reading this sector, until eight of 16 retries are identical, but at maximum one, three or five times (according to the error recovery quality) these 16 retries are read. So, in the worst case, bad sectors are read up to 82 times! But this will help the program to obtain best result by comparing all of the retries. If it is not sure that the stream is correct (at least it can be said at approx. 99.5%) the program will tell the user where the (possible) read error occurred. The program also tries to adjust the jitter artefacts that occur on the first block of a track, so that each extraction should be exactly the same." (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/)

 

Thanks for all the replies guys, I am know delighted to say i'm a proud owner of a Yamaha 1500. So far what little i have used of it (not made any CD yet) impress the hell out of me, it has all the convinace of MD (bar one thing ) but none of the loss in sound quality. The only problem now is that it has made my MD player obsolite! MD player anyone ?

 

Hi Lizard, I've been trawling these boards for the same reason as you . Yamaha 1500 or CA Azur 640. How are you getting on with adding the CD info using the PC? I really like the technical spec and the look of the Yam 1500, but the Azur seems to do all that CD info for you when you have ripped it. Is it only a minor inconvenience to add it manually. I assume you are just ripping the music directly from CD to the Hard disk of the Yam.

Maxy

 

Hi Maxy
Thanks to the software that you can download from the Yamaha site that allows you to connect your PC to the Yamaha for the purpose of naming tracks, it really is very easy and quick, after all the only think that effects your speed of naming disc/tracks is how quickly you can type the words in! The only downside with it is waiting for the PC to download/up load the information from the hard disc, but then I guess the same would apply with the Azur.

As to ripping the music to the hard drive, I’ve tried it both ways. The first from an external CD player and directly on the Yamaha (which is obviously the quickest), end result I couldn’t tell the difference between the two when playing them on the Yamaha or when I copied them to a cdr to compare. As to the writing capability of the Yamaha, it really is as they say; you will be very hard pressed to tell the difference between your copy and original CD

 

Thanks Lizard

 

Almost, but not quite - the Azur will go fetch the CD tracklisting, track times etc on it's own when you stick in a cd. You can override the names, genres etc if you wish, but I've yet to fond any CDs mis-identified. It's a pretty quick process - just a couple of seconds and all the info is there - means you can get ripping with the correct data pretty fast too.

Re. an earlier question, the Azur/640H can burn pretty well too - if you rip a CD and then burn it to a CDR (or, as I found out a CDR/W!) it'll then be an exact copy of the original - even this copy will be identified in the same way as an original..neat.

Hope you get on well with your box, I'm very happy with the 640H, even more so after the recent software update (check the cambridge audio website for a download).