Price Paid:  $350.00 from Xtremeshopper.com

Summary:
One of the reasons I wanted a CD recorder was to transfer my records and cassettes to CD. It has worked very good at that. Recording from another CD is faster, it has quadruple recording speed which I have been very pleased with, but you cannot quadruple speed when recording from analog sources.

The manual seems to be laid out pretty well. All of the recording methods are placed in one chapter with each method having an easy to find heading. Having several different ways of recording makes the product more versatile. I had to keep refering to the manual at first but if you only just record from CD's in the same way you will get used to the procedure pretty quick. One thing many people may not be aware of is that CD-R's do not work the same way as cassettes. If you make a mistake, you can't go back to where you left off and start again. The best you can do is place a skip track (which this recorder will do) and this player will ignore and not play that track. Not all players will recognize the skip track (the one in my car does not). I made a few mistakes on the first CD I recorded and I did not like my car playing those bad tracks (I guess I'm too lazy to press the "next track" button) so I redid that CD. This recorder will record on CD-RW's which can be re-recorded but they are a lot more expensive.

This recorder has an advantage over dual-tray CD recorders because this one has three trays for programmed playback. I previously had a one-tray CD player and did not like changing the CD all the time, especially since some CD's do not have very many good songs on them. It was one of my main reasons for buying this unit. Note: The recording tray can be used for playback but cannot be programmed in conjunction with the other three trays.

Strengths:
The remote control is laid out really well and so is the owner's manual. There are three programmable playback trays.

Weaknesses:
Auto-finalize defaults to On. There is a feature called auto-finalize and when you program in a few tracks to record, the display will say "auto-finalize?" and you have only a few seconds to hit cancel if you do not want to finalize the CD. (Finalizing tells the CD that you are done recording songs onto it. Once a CD-R is finalized, you cannot record any more tracks onto it.) You can turn off auto-finalize but the factory default is on. If you have it turned off but you unplug the recorder or the power goes off, auto-finalize will be turned back on when the recorder comes back on. I normally don't think to turn it back off again when that happens. It got reset on me during a brief power outage (less than 10 seconds) and when I had recorded some tracks onto a CD and the auto-finalize? message popped up, I could not find the cancel button fast enough and ended up with a finalized CD-R that was not very full. If JVC is going to have this feature, it should wait for a yes or no prompt instead of just proceeding if you don't hit cancel fast enough.

Similar Products Used:
Magnavox single tray CD player.

Price Paid:  $316.00 from Vanns.com

Summary:
Recorder is easy to use. It has a lot of features that are not obvious on the surface. When recording from both 1st generation and 2nd generation CDs, the recorder will automatically switch from digital to analog recording mode between the internal decks. It will also automatically adjust the analog signal level from the 2nd generation CD. Their is also a track marking feature, that will detect blank areas in analog source signals, and insert a new track on the recording CD. This can be useful when recording from LPs or Analog tape. This feature can be turned off, and the track marks can be inserted manually.

I have found this deck easier to use when recording, than my DAT decks. Plus CDs can be played in the car, DAT tapes can't.

The users manual has a lot of information, some of which is easy to read through, and not understand, until you encounter the function while using the recorder. Since I have only had this deck for about a month, it is too early to make a complete judgement on overall value. Initial impressions are: the deck has a lot of features and functions for the money. Performance to date has been very good. Recordings sound as good as the original material.

Strengths:
Ease of use, Many features, well thought out interface.

Weaknesses:
None of any concern to date.

Similar Products Used:
Sony DAT decks, TEAC Reel to Reel decks, Cassette Decks.