( 40 reviews )
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Posted: Sep 6 2009
My husband has this recorder. I began looking at the reviews because a google search line intrigued me. I must agree with most of the posters. This machine is a little complex, but it does everything. He records his cassettes and my albums to CD. He records CD's to Cd's. As far as directions, you must read thoroughly. If you are looking for a more intrinsic piece of equipment, this is not the one you should purchase particularly if you want to record from cassettes and albums. I only wish I could hook up a keyboard to it to label the CD's. When we decide to replace this one (this one is four years old) I will look for that feature.
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Posted: Jun 10 2009
Sony's CD recorder does it all for the home user. I've only had mine a few days and am very pleased with it's features. There are numerous by comments by other reviewers about the instruction booklet being complicated. It is but there's a very good reason for it. The RCDW500C is a somewhat complicated piece of equipment with a number of attractive features. Quite frankly, I am still experimenting with it to understand all that it will do and how to do it. The difficulties are my own short comings. 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. (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 thing I really like about my Sony is the ability to control the volume input from deck A while recording on deck B. This is very useful with older CDs. This puts the machine in a manual operating mode for recording, which means almost fully manual and, therefore, a little more complicated (and fun). 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. 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.
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Posted: May 29 2009
It's really a shame when so many people negatively criticize a great product. Time to clear the air on this thing. I'm gonna go out on a pretty stable limb and say that any faulty operation of this unit is 100% user error/ignorance. I have the model that was the immediate predecessor of this one, the RCDW50C. Bought it in 2003. It's the exact same unit as this one except it does not have MP3 playback capability. Same manual, same everything. 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. No problems because I read the manual thoroughly before use. It's all spelled out in there. I completely disagree with the idea that the manual is poor. Reading comprehension is your friend. 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. This thing is a little more complex than a toaster folks. The people complaining are probably the same people who had 12:00 flashing on their VCRs for 25 years. The moral of the story is to read (and re-read if necessary) the manual before trying to use. You will be amazed how well it works if you do that.
