I'm way behind on this, but want to start copying CDs,

[Brucey]

Can you give me the best advice for doing this? Add drive to computer, buy CD burner, or what? Thanks!

[Character Assassin]

1. You have to have some sort of Read/Write device

Be it an optical drive you put into your computer case, or a stand alone home audio deck, like one by Phillips.

You have your choice of CDRW, DVD/CDRW combo, or DVDRW.

It's completely straightforward, and the optical drives for computers will come with the appropriate software.

[Brucey]

5. Pros and cons?

What about cost and quality? I plan to copy a few music CDs each month.

[Character Assassin]

10. As someone in the industry, my best advice: go Lite-On.

They OEM most of the other ones that you see labelled as 'Sony', 'HP', etc...

Stay the hell away from BenQ.

[DK666]

2. Depends

On how many you are going to do and what kind.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. You can get a simple copying program like Roxio

which is relatively inexpensive or program with more mixing features like Cakewalk depending on if youwant to mix or performsimple copying...a burner is a must if you don't already have a RW drive on your computer.

If you simply want to dub...all you need is a burner.

[MercutioATC]

4. I'd recommend Ahead's Nero for software

Works great for me.

[donco6]

6. I've done both.

For the money, and if you have an available bay, installing the drive into the computer isn't that difficult. If you can follow directions, you can do it.

If you can't do that, and you have an available USB port, you can buy a USB external drive, but it'll be quite a bit more.

You need a CD RW (read/write) drive - and for your volume, you don't need anything fancy. It should come with some software - I've tried others and find Nero Burning to be the best.

Once you install the software, it's a simple matter of setting up your writes - just drag and drop files into the write queue.

You can write the files directly from your CD originals, or you can "rip" them to your hard drive first - up to you. If you use file sharing software, you probably want to rip. But the RIAA is starting to sue people, so I'd think a bit first.

The only trouble I've had is during the tranfer process - sometimes the drive skips if I'm working online at the same time I'm burning. So I do one or the other. And I slow the write drive down to about 12X for a CD. Still goes plenty fast, and I don't have to do it over when I find a #$$%#@ skip.

Hope this helps.

[Brucey]

7. Grateful.

Thanks very much for the info.

[ikojo]

8. CD rewriteable drives are relatively inexpensive right now.

I would suggest getting an external CD/DVD burner because once you get the hang of burning CDs you will want to try to burn a DVD.

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

9. For programs: Nero or Roxio

They're both good. They (or another program) usually come in some form with the drive you buy. Yamaha makes decent CD-RW drives and they are inexpensive. If you have room, go for an internal drive.