Sony RCD-W500C CD Player / Recorder

2 reviews for Sony RCD-W500C CD Player / Recorder

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   – December 5, 2024 Penelope Steuber MD

   Update: January, 2007: I simply must comment on the issue of TOC (table of contents) and disc error messages that many reviewers have mentioned. YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THEM OVER AND OVER. I have tried all different brands of music CD-R’s over the years and no brand, not even the Sonys, is exempt from this happening. Sometimes it happen to 2 or 3 discs in a row (after an hour of recording or so and especially when making mixed cd’s). It is VERY frustrating and I must say with today’s computer burning capabilities, it actually makes this unit a less that stellar choice in the home CD burning category. If you are looking for a CD burner, I’d have to suggest going with a computer because after 4 years of having this I can no longer use it. It just takes too long and the discs experience way to many read/TOC/finalizing errors thus wasting any time you may have spent recording. As a CD player, it works fine, but unless you like wasting hours in front of a component recording just to have it tell you “Unable to Finalize” or “TOC Error” at the end thus negating all your hard work, use a computer.————————————————————————I used to own a Philips single disc CD recorder which I had to hook up externally to my stereo and make analog recordings between the 2 components. It was a nightmare; Wasted discs, additional track numbers, skipped track numbers, unable to recognize disc if I stopped mid way through the mix, inability to finalize… I was so discouraged I thought I’d never buy another stereo CD recorder again, but then i took a chance on the Sony RCDW500C.First of all, I have to admit that the instructions leave a lot to be desired. You’ll find yourself flipping back and forth between pages trying to figure them out and half of it won’t seem to make any sense, (downsampling, bbs, analog recordings, upsampling, optical input, manual sound levelling, set up screen options yadda, yadda, yadda) so I’d suggest you actually sit in front of the recorder and actually perform the steps as you read them. If you’re looking for a recorder that you can hook a cassette player or turntable up to and record old formats, this unit will do that, but you’ll find there are a lot of settings that can be changed that will make the recorder work differently, so you’ll have to play with those to determine which is best for your own needs.All CD to CD recording is done internally and digitally from deck A to deck B resulting in excellent data transfer between the discs as long as the unit doesn’t have “disc error” problems which happen quite frequently. I made my first mixed CDR and then recorded it to another CDR with the touch of only 2 buttons and the 2nd CDR duplicated flawlessly. I also recorded a complete CD to a CDR using the “make disc” high speed button and was finished in less than 10 minutes. (The make disc function copies songs, full track CD text and finalizes the CDR for you all in one step.)On the other hand, this unit is plagued with problems when it comes to reading and writing on the actual discs. I have stuck vehemently to the suggestion of another reviewer here to stop recording at least 5-6 minutes before the end of the CDR to leave space for the finalizing data track and that has reduced the number of “Unable to Finalize” messages I’ve gotten. If you just start off with the assumption that an 80 minute CDR should actually only record about 72-74 minutes of music, you’ll be golden. Trying to squeeze that last song in up to the last few seconds of recording time displayed on the recorder may cause finalization problems. As for the “TOC error” and unable to read disc errors, well, you’re on your own for them. I have not been able to figure out any way to reduce the number or frequency of them showing up and overall, I’d say that about HALF of the discs I’ve attempted to make end up with some sort of read/write error half way through. ;8^(Another problem I did encounter in the directions is that they state when recording a CD track to the CDR, you first press the record button on deck B (puts deck B in “standby” for recording)then press the play button on track A. I found that when doing this, if there was more than a few seconds of silence between the time you press play on deck A and the time the song actually starts, deck B will skip to the next track number when the song starts. (ie. press record on deck B, press play on deck A, if more than 3 seconds pass while deck A is loading, when song starts deck B automatically detects the signal and then jumps to track 2, leaving track 1 as a few seconds of silence on your new CDR)Supposedly this “setting” can be turned off in the settings menu, but after turning it to “off”, it still happened, so to remedy the problem, I found it is better to switch the order in the instructions. In record mode, press Play on deck A first, wait a second or two while the player locates the proper track (you can hear the cd spinning inside faintly while the laser locates the track) then once the “spinning noise” from deck A stops, right before the track begins playing, manually start deck B recording. (It’s pretty simple to do this and after a few practices, it will become second nature.)If you have the time to sit down and get to know how it works and decide which settings you want to set it up with at the start, you shouldn’t have many problems with this player except the read/write problems mentioned above. and when it works and you’ll find out it can be a lot of fun.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   – December 22, 2024 Mina Dickens

   After being scared out of my wits by the negative reviews of this product, I bought one anyhow. I have never bought a Sony product that didn’t work right out of the box, and I figured I would have to be pretty unlucky for this to be the first. I also figured that Sony has had plenty of time to correct any of the problems that supposedly turned up when the product first came out.In fact, it works exactly as it is designed to work. The manual includes everything needed to use every feature, though it will take more than a cursory reading to do the necessary steps in the correct order. This is only to be expected in a machine that does so many different recording tasks.The sound of the recordings seems exactly the same as the sound source, even though vinyl records are supposed to have a richer sound. On Advent Heritage speakers, the four feet high kind, or Sennheiser HD 600 headphones, which have an incredible sound quality, I can hear no difference. Perhaps the finest test equipment in the world can tell the difference–that’s for others to decide.I did have to give up on the plan to find the perfect setting to get automatic detection of each track on my old record collection. The idea is that you set the machine to detect a certain level of silence when recording, which signals it to make a new track and assign it a number. The problem isn’t with the recorder, it’s the records. Either the “silence” between the tracks has a detectable level of noise (the background buzz on old records) and the recorder doesn’t make a new track, or when the threshold is set high enough to make a new track despite the buzz, there will be places where the music is so quiet that the threshold is triggered and a new track is made during the recording. I got songs that had 10 tracks numbered before the true end of the piece. The message here is simple: listen to your records while they’re being recorded, with the threshold set so low that no new tracks will be set automatically, or with auto-track-making disabled, and simply push a button when each track is finished. Press Pause when Side 1 finishes, which makes a new track number, and continue to the end.And please remember that the only time you don’t do the Finalize sequence is when you’re doing an exact duplication of a CD. Also, while you can use this recorder as a CD player, you will probably be disappointed with the random play function, or a play list with tracks from multiple discs (the Program function). Each time a new disc comes up, the machine has to read its Table of Contents before playing. This is a very handy feature for making a recording of your favorite tracks from 5 different CDs–you Program a play list, then record. The pause while a new disc is scanned does not become part of the finished disc.This product performs every recording task a home user can desire.