TASCAM CD-D1X4 CD DUPLICATOR - Burn 4 CDs At Once

Author's Rating:

Pros: Quality, Price

Cons: Speed (16x), Only 4 CDs At A Time

The Bottom Line: 
Good For Small-Medium Quantities.

Author's Review
A Little Background Info:

A friend and I went in together to purchase one of the Tascam CD-D1X4s because they're cheap and easy to use. They only burn at up to 16x however, someday we'll upgrade to faster burners. Even though we do orders for other people, the main reason we bought it was to do the CD duplication for Closet Records and DeepTreble Entertainment (two companies I work for). It's much cheaper to do it ourselves. To have 1,000 CDs duplicated costs about $1,300+ from an outside company. With this machine we can duplicate 1,000 CDs for only about $350 (which includes electricity and the blank CDs)! If you including printing and pressing it ourselves it's about another $200 or so. So we save lots of money, and the Tascam pays for itself quickly. We're doing outside orders just to make some extra money mostly small run orders (2,000 CDs or less) for local artists and small businesses. It's great! We've had the machine for about 7 weeks and it's running for about 10 hours a day during the week and about 12 hours a day on the weekend. Eventually, I think we're going to get a DVD duplicator too. Electricity costs for running the Tascam is about the same as when I leave my computer on for the same amount of time. It's not too bad.


The Tascam's Perfect For: Independent Record Labels, Self-Publishing Artists, Small Businesses, and Professional CD Duplicators

Type Of Discs: CD-R, CD-RW, High-Speed CD-R; Compatible With Professional & Consumer Media

How's It Work: There are five drives in the CD-D1X4, one is the master copy drive and four duplicate the master copy. It's simple. Put the finished product in the master copy drive, insert a CD-R into the other four drives and bam!, several minutes later you now have four copies. You can duplicate regular audio CDs and CD-ROMs as well. This is a free standing machine, you don't need to hook it up to a computer. The only cables that attach in the back is the Cascade Cable (explained below) and the power cable, the power switch is on the back too. The front panel only has four main buttons: Standby/On, Escape, Mode, Enter. Mode allows you to select the recording methods and such, Escape lets you back out of a mode choice and Enter finalizes your selection.

Hook Two Tascam CD-D1X4s Together To Duplicate More Copies! The Cascade Port allows you to hook up two Tascam's, so you can make 8 CDs at once. It's a great feature. And the cable needed is included too!

Cool Functions: Check Master and Verify Disc functions insure that everything goes as it's supposed to!


Features:
* Create 4 Duplicates
* Audio CDs & More
* 16x Speed
* Analyze/Verification
* Daisy-Chain Two Units
* Industrial Quality Teac CD-ROM/CD-RW Drives
* 19" Rackmount


Final Comments:

This is a very simple machine to use, it's inexpensive, and it will pay for itself quickly. No more paying inflated prices for duplicates or burning CDs one by one at home! For us, we're saving money and making money! It's a great combination! We don't have a rack to mount our CD-D1X4, so we just set it on a desk. It works fine. Kinda ghetto but oh well. To burn a full-length CD it takes about 5 minutes (max). So you get four copies every 5 minutes. So for 100 copies, you can get them done in about 2 hours (usually less), so 1,000 copies takes 20 hours or so. What I like best about the Tascam, is that it's so simple. There's no huge manual you have to read to use it. It's very straight forward. This allowed us to focus on our music and our business instead of learning how to use the machine.


To hear some Closet Records/DeepTreble Entertainment music go to: www.soundclick.com/closetrecords


Thanks For Reading!
Enjoy Your Tascam!