I have to second Terry's opinion on the Alesis Masterlink ML-9600.
Personally I think this is the absolute best option for a home studio
owner to make studio quality CDs. I got the newer version that ships
with a 20GB hard drive and I am amazed at the flawless audio quality
of this technical marvel.

First off, the unit costs $900. However, you must realize that you
are getting a hard disk recorder, CD burner and Mastering Tools
bundled in a very nifty easy to use standalone package.

Often home studio owner have the problem of not being able to get
their CDs to sound as loud as commercial CDs. Typically they sound
2-6dB softer. The missing link is the Masterlink. The Masterlink
has a clever look ahead peak limiter. When you engage this DSP tool
you can listen in real time how your average level will jump up
as you lower the threshold parameter. In addition, the Masterlink
has 3 more DSP tools. It has a 3 band equalizer, compressor and
a normalizer.

I also have a Tascam DA30 DAT machine and a Philips CDR880 CD
burner that I no longer use.

The Masterlink is a wonderful tool for a hobbyist. Short of going
to a professional studio for doing your mastering on mega budget
studio gear, the Masterlink will get you closest to audio nirvana.

After lots of trials and errors, I found the best way to make
those big sounding transparent mixes was to playback your MIDI
modules live via a software sequencer into an analog Mackie Mixer
like the LM-3204 or CR-1604 and take the stereo out and feed
that directly into the Masterlink and record to the hard drive
at 24-bits, 96kHz. This bypasses the noisy computer altogether.
Next, define your start/end points for each song, and crop.
Move the start time by 2 seconds for all songs. This will give
you a constant 2 second gap between songs with absolute silence.
Finally, make a red book CD while dithering down to 16-bit, 44.1kHz.

These CDs sound fabulous. Moreover there are no SCMS hassles and
the unit accepts any bargain basement brand of CDRs.

The Yamaha Ultimate CD burner mentioned before is another excellent
choice.

Tapas