A worthwhile addition to your home theater
Written: Apr 27 '02
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Pros: Reliable CD burner and player with all the inputs and outputs you'll ever need.
Cons: Save those instructions, very little on this unit is intuitive! Poor remote and text display.
The Bottom Line: Flawless copies at a reasonable cost, but be prepared to invest some time to learn the operation of this unit.
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| cvs8floz's Full Review: Pioneer PD-RW839 4-Disc CD Changer / Recorder |
This is the first component-based CD-burner I have ever owned or used, so I am unable to compare it to offerings from other manufacturers. Many articles have been written comparing computer and stand-alone burners, and I don't feel the need to expand on this topic. There are two things I really like about about component burners:
1) Making a straight copy requires almost no effort and 2) I can listen to the CD on my stereo while copying it. Yes, audio CD-Rs do cost more than data ones, but you should be able to find them for $0.50 or less if you shop around and buy in bulk, so media cost is not much of an issue.
The PDR-W839 offers a 3-disc cassette-type changer on the left and a single drawer player/burner on the right, so you are getting the equivalent of a 4-disc changer. The 3-disc changer is annoying: when you power up, it reads the TOC (table of contents) of each disc and finally settles on one, a procedure that takes too long for my taste. It will even attempt to read a non-existant disc in an empty slot, so having only one or two discs in the changer doesn't speed up the procedure. The discs are also a bit awkward to load, and they must lie perfectly flat or will jam when you close the changer, something that has happened to me several times. It is possible to change discs while another one is playing.
You can record on both CD-R and CD-W discs and there is a one-touch recording function that starts recording from disc 1 on the left at double speed and automatically finalizes the disc. If you want to record at normal speed or from another tray on the left, you first press Record, select the tray you want to copy from (1,2 or 3), then deselect 2X speed by pressing Reverse Track on the CD-R controls and finally press Record This to start recording. To finalize, you press Finalize and then Play on the CD-R controls, something which is not at all obvious and I had to look up. Finalization takes just over two minutes.
Recording mixes requires planning and preparation but is quite easy once you have selected the tracks you want to include. You simply record one track after the other, enter any text you want to add, then finalize the disc. Entering text via the poorly designed remote is a chore. The buttons are much too close together, and there are up to 4 letters assigned to each button, so you must press the button repeatedly to get to the letter you want to insert. Half the time, you overshoot and must start all over again. Luckily, you can connect a standard keyboard to make this task less laborious. But even then, I am not sure that the result is worth all the hassle, especially if you plan to listen to your recorded CDs primarily on this machine. The amber text display is extremely low res and doesn't automatically scroll through the entire title of a song. Instead, you only see the first 10-12 characters and you must press a button to see the rest, which you are unlikely to do. Most $80 CD players offer a sharper display and a better text-reading function than this Pioneer!
I am sure that I am not the only person who uses a CD-burner almost exclusively to copy CDs, so the other recording features hold little interest for me. If properly hooked up to a home theater receiver however, you can record sound from any source, including cassette decks, turntables and VCRs, or simply the radio. This is where a stand-alone deck holds a distinct advantage over computer burners. All these components are already connected to my receiver, so I don't have to run 50-foot long cables to connect them to my computer, assuming, of course, that my sound card is able to handle analog-to-digital conversion. The Pioneer features digital and analog synchro recording, where the recorder starts a new track after encountering 2 seconds of silence, in theory at least. Most cassettes and records have so much background noise between tracks that the recorder never senses a true period of silence, so unless you manually stop and restart the recording, everything will likely end up on one track on the CD. Again, you will have to follow the instructions step-by-step to make this type of recording happen: looking at the front panel alone and using common sense is not enough.
The sound quality of this unit is top-notch and reliability has been superb. I have now burned over 100 CDs without a single misfire, a record my computer burner could not match. The poorly designed remote, the lack of a clear text display and the not-so-user-friendly operation of the PDR-W839 prevent me from giving it an Excellent rating. If you have trouble programming your VCR, stay away from this machine. Everyone else should give this machine serious consideration, especially in light of its reasonable price.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 289
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Epinions.com ID:
cvs8floz
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Location: Cambridge, MA
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Married, one daughter, homeowner. Always appreciative of products that exceed my expectations.
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