review
M
ost of the attention and energy that used
to go into producing professional CD-R
machines in their various guises has
long been diverted by manufacturers to
solid-state devices, as we always knew they would.
The arguments for chips are compelling but if, like
me, you associate ‘memory card’ most immediately
with low-bit, compressed and back-to-mono then
the swathe of modern thin-line players and recorders
in rackmount and portable orientations will not
disappoint even though they are capable of better. We
know why that’s happened but there’s still a place in
a rack for a good audio CD-R machine although we
now expect a lot more from them. Choice is down on
CD-R recorders, with many older models victims of
ROHS, so it’s an interesting time to be presented with
an HHB CDR-882 because the technology has moved
on and the underlying reasons for having one have
moved on too.
Whereas once it was all about creating that ‘master’
yourself with a little bit of duplication, that’s not
enough in 2008. Thus we get two CD-R drives, rather
than the usual clever drive/dumb drive arrangement,
presented in a solid and reassuring hefty 2U. The
DualBurn in its title refers to its ability to effectively
‘lock’ the two drives together to act as one so you can
record the same thing onto both drives simultaneously.
This has implications for the CDR-882’s other trick,
DiscSpan, which can switch recording between the
two drives for continuous long recording. You load
up both drives with blanks and as the first drive’s
disc approaches its capacity the other drive picks up
recording. Meanwhile, the first disc is finalised up and
ejected so you can put another blank in ready for the
next change over. And on it can go up to a maximum
of 99 changed discs, which would account for most
eventualities outside of a Grateful Dead gig.
You can set fade in and fade out on the incoming
and outgoing drives and, most importantly, the
overlap period when both drives are recording. And
that, together with the track IDs that you’ve set,
is all you will need to reconstitute the recordings
in playback as the drives effectively reverse the
fade in, fade out routines and deliver uninterrupted
continuous playback as you drop the numbered discs
into the appropriate drives.
However, smartest of all is the ability to
multimachine CDR-882s via RS323 and effectively
HHB DualBurn CDR-882
The audiophile CD-R machine still has a place in racks yet the choice is not as wide as it once was.
ZENON SCHOEPE
enjoys a machine that
sets the bar higher for what you now expect from a new model.
