Hey,

My Yamaha 8424 CDRW went up in smoke the other day, along with my
P4CPU (ouch) so now I'm looking for a CDRW to replace it.

Unfortunately Yamaha is out of the CDRW business, so I'm starting from
scratch.

The Yamaha drive was superior in quality as compared to the Philips
and Teac drives I have, as well as other generic brands I'd tried &
AB tested. It seems that even when burning at slowest speeds (x1), the
optical accuracy and/or some other aspect of CDRW are critical for
producing audiophile quality. Specifically, the Yamaha was the only
drive I'd used (including DVDRWs) that could translate really great
stereo imaging and could render stereo reverberant fields as good as
on the original wave files or CD.

The kind of transparency and ability to render stereo image is not
something I've ever been able to correlate with manuf. specs (at least
those provided) so test listening is usually in order. My old Sony
PCM was capable of that kind of performance in conjunction with a
really good video format and my old Sony CD player that I paid about
$350 for back in the early 80's was too. I've heard that Marantz CD
players have that kind of quality and there are no doubt lots of folks
who make less common audiphile gear that would qualify. But a CDRW?
I even had a Teac stand alone CD burner about 6 years ago and it
simply couldn't match the audio quality of the Yamaha 8424 for burning
CDs and frankly I'd rather stay away from stand alone burners for a
host of other reasons.

Anyone out there with a critical ear who's noticed knows of a
suitable CDRW for audiophile quality burning? I'd appreciate your
input. :-)


Skler
Austin-T