|
I previously owned a Harman Kardon, which was much, much easier to operate with concise easy instructions, but it didn't do half of what the Sony will do. Sony's CD recorder does it all for the home user. There are numerous by comments by other reviewers about the instruction booklet being complicated. If you embrace all of it's features and take the time to learn them, the trial and error of experimentation will be well worth it -- in my opinion.
I am learning this machine by experimentation, which means more than a couple of blank disks are not going to be "keepers." For me, it's worth the nominal costs of the disks to ensure I know and can effectively utilize all the unit's features. If you want to pop this unit out of the box and be off and running, it might not be for you. This puts the machine in a manual operating mode for recording, which means almost fully manual and, therefore, a little more complicated (and fun). This is very useful with older CDs.
The RCDW500C is a somewhat complicated piece of equipment with a number of attractive features. The thing I really like about my Sony is the ability to control the volume input from deck A while recording on deck B. I've only had mine a few days and am very pleased with it's features. (Then,too, the Harman Kardon was a high maintenance piece of equipment and they've given up on making them as far as I can tell).
The difficulties are my own short comings. It is but there's a very good reason for it. Quite frankly, I am still experimenting with it to understand all that it will do and how to do it.
I'm gonna go out on a pretty stable limb and say that any faulty operation of this unit is 100% user error/ignorance. It's all spelled out in there. The people complaining are probably the same people who had 12:00 flashing on their VCRs for 25 years. It's really a shame when so many people negatively criticize a great product. The moral of the story is to read (and re-read if necessary) the manual before trying to use. No problems because I read the manual thoroughly before use. You will be amazed how well it works if you do that.
Bought it in 2003. This thing is a little more complex than a toaster folks. I can just imagine the scores of fools out there who plopped in a CD-R and just pressed record, expecting a track marked CD. It's the exact same unit as this one except it does not have MP3 playback capability. Reading comprehension is your friend.
Time to clear the air on this thing. I completely disagree with the idea that the manual is poor. I have had it for 6 years now, and have never had a single problem with it, and didn't have a problem with it when I first attempted to use it. I have the model that was the immediate predecessor of this one, the RCDW50C. Same manual, same everything.
I wonder why there are so few choices for getting a CD player/recorder, is the technology for this function so difficult. As far as recording from outside sound sources such as radio, tape, or records, the manual was not very helpful for these issues, in fact it only mentioned an outside input source for recording in the instruction manual once when it said: "choose the sound source on your amplifier." Other than that one tidbit of info, I got the impression that this unit was made (primarily) for recording from CD to CD (from deck A to deck B). I was never able to get input levels to check before starting recording. Apparently.M. It made me wonder why this thing had an input cable at all if it would not work. I was looking for a CD player/recorder primarily to record from tapes & radio onto CD's.
But when using the instructions (for recording CD-R's) from the manual, at a certain point what the unit did diverged from what the manual said it would do. I will always wonder If there was some way I could have made this thing work, but in the 30 odd years I have hooked up stereos, or recorded with a 4 track, I have never hit a "brick wall" like trying to record with the RCD-W500C, and if I had known that it would not record from the radio, tape or turntable, I would not have bought it. From the information about the RCD-W500C on Amazon I assumed it could do these things, plus I had read one, or two of the customer reviews, where the person said they made CD's from records. When I first unpacked this item, I thought "oh no, my receiver is from (about) 1999-it only has a CD input, no output," but the (RCD-W500C) manual said to connect it (input/output) in a tape deck port, so that was one potential problem avoided. Gorrie It did play CD's better than my old player (my old one is junk).
I could not get an input signal from the tuner, or the tape deck, or the turntable.
Would tell others about this product and will keep buying from seller. In this century the church media ministry needs a cd recorder for modern day technical people. This product was purchased at the right time. BecAuse, Cassette tapes are going out of date.
Buy from Amazon, yes. So it appears learning from one will help using another. Buy another Sony, yes. This is a great unit. pf In reading other reviews the writers spoke of confusing instructions. It does all that I wanted it to do. Having had a Philips previously, that broke down and could not be prepared, the instructions learned from that unit made the Sony easy.
|
