Remember when having an actual CD of your music was like finding the Holy Grail? A few short years ago, it cost you some significantly big bucks to burn "one-offs" from your DAT tape, and even more if you had your recording mastered properly before burning a disc (or a dozen or more).

It's amazing how times have changed! Today, for about the same price as having a dozen "one-offs" burned a few years back, you can now act as your own CD factory thanks to companies like TASCAM.

The CD-RW700 ($699 list) is TASCAM's budget priced CD Recorder, but it's no stripped down model features came first when this product was designed! Like most CD recorders in this price range, the CD-RW700 offers unbalanced I/O, S/PDIF digital I/O in coax and optical formats. However, this product stands above the crowd with a built-in RAM buffer, 24-bit A/D and D/A converters for premium sound quality, digital gain adjustment and digital processing of fade in and fade outs from 3 to 30 seconds. It's also got a Monitor function that allows it to be used as an A/D converter or a sample rate converter, without the need to place a recordable disk in the tray or enter record ready mode. Of course, it's also the only one in its class that will rackmount with the rest of your gear.

Other features include adjustable gain on digital I/O, a built-in timer for preset play/record, sync start (all or one track), auto or manual track increment and there's even a programmable wireless remote included. The CD-RW700's playback has a sampling frequency of 44.1kHz, a frequency response of 20-20kHz ± 0.5dB and a signal-to-noise ratio of better than 96dB. The total harmonic distortion is less than 0.004 percent (at 1kHz, full scale) with channel separation better than 90dB (at 1kHz, full scale). Simply put, the 14-pound CD-RW700 is probably the most cost-effective, rackmountable professional CD recorder on the market today capable of replaying and recording both CDR-DA and CDRW-DA discs.

Of course, if you're in the CD duplication business or if you are looking to make multiple copies of an existing CD, you might want to consider the TASCAM CD-D4000MKII Professional CD Duplicator ($1299 list). The latest member of TASCAM's CD duplication range provides a quick and simple means of copying original audio material or data in CD format at more than real-time speeds, using low-cost CDR media.

The CD-D4000-MKII is especially useful for duplicating material produced using the TASCAM CD Recorders, but it can also be used to duplicate any CD-ROM material to which you own copyright or hold appropriate permission. The unit is housed in a 2U, 19-inch rackmount enclosure and encompasses a 1 x 32x CD-ROM drive and 1 x 8x24 CDR drive. It can read CDR or CDRW masters. Duplication of any CDR or CD-ROM can be performed at 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x or 8x speed. During CD-ROM duplication, discs can be compared after duplication. The Test Write mode checks the integrity of the duplication process at the selected speed before execution. CD audio discs can also be replayed on the CD-D4000MKII. There is also a mini-jack headphone socket with volume control on each drive.

Just two switches on the front panel control a simple menu system that navigates the end-user through copying, checking and comparing discs, playback of audio, and selection of duplication speed. With all the features the discerning professional could want, coupled with a very attractive price point, we expect the CD-D4000MKII to have a great impact in the professional and home CD duplication market. The CD-D4000 is a blessing for anyone needing to make limited duplication runs of CDs. Its simple interface and compact rackmount design make it at home in any studio and with all levels of users.

Since you can back up data discs as well as audio discs, this can be used to run off more than just your demo CDs. Financial records, press kits, and any other distribution materials can be duplicated as well. This becomes more than just a great music tool it also becomes an essential tool for today's office, where many records must be archived!

As if these two products weren't enough to make people sit up and take notice, TASCAM also debuted the CD-R Pro ($749 list) and CD-R Deluxe ($630 list) CD burner systems at the Winter NAMM Convention this past February. The systems feature high performance CDR drives from TASCAM's parent company, TEAC, combined with powerful software packages. The CD-R Pro and CD-R Deluxe are the first cross-platform bundles available, featuring complete software suites for both Mac and Windows based machines. Software for recording, editing, CD burning and Internet audio and an Adaptec 2903B SCSI card for both platforms is also included in each bundle.

The CD is the new standard of exchange for both audio and archiving, with CD-ROM drives found on nearly every computer made since 1994. TASCAM has put together the CD-R Pro and CD-R Deluxe burner bundles to give musicians extremely powerful tools to use the CDR format as a creative medium and will have a significant impact on the MI, DJ and Broadcast markets.

The TASCAM CD-R Pro bundle consists of the new TEAC 8x24 speed CD-R58S CD-R drive featuring superfast 150msec access time. The unit has a 4MB buffer and addresses Track at Once, Disc at Once, Multisession and Incremental formats. The drive is bundled with cabling and two blank TEAC CDR disks. Macintosh software includes: TC Works SparkLE for audio recording/editing, Adaptec Jam! for audio CD authoring/recording and Adaptec Toast for data CD authoring and recording. Windows software includes: SEK'D Red Roaster 24 for audio recording/editing and audio CD authoring, Adaptec EZ CD Creator for data CD authoring/recording and MyNet SonicBurn for burning MP3 files to Red Book Audio CD standards.

QuickTime 4 for advanced multimedia capability with MP3, Xing Audio-Catalyst 2.1 for MP3 compression for Mac and Windows is enclosed.

The TASCAM CD-R Deluxe bundle consists of the new TEAC 6x24 speed CD-R56S6 CD-R burner featuring 150msec access time. This unit has a 2MB buffer and addresses Track at Once, Disc at Once, Multisession and Incremental formats. The Deluxe bundle offers the same related hardware and media as the Pro bundle and the same software package, less Xing AudioCatalyst 2.1 and Adaptec Jam! for the Mac. Also, Red Roaster Lite is substituted for Red Roaster 24. Both the Pro and Deluxe packages will support 24-bit, 96kHz audio with an additional third-party high audio card.

We've come a long, long way in the last few years. In fact, this writer is still paying for the CD burner he purchased just three years ago at what was then, seemingly, a very reasonable price. But today, every home and project studio can afford to have its own CD burning (and duplication) facilities. Thanks to companies like TASCAM, no musician will ever have to spend ridiculous amounts of money just to have his or her music on one of those shiny plastic discs. And that's pretty great in our book. B.H.