easy to use and control the pause and rerecord, easy to use remote, excellent manual (read it twice to be sure)

the ONLY weakness was trying to figure if there was a pause feature for switching album sonds then re record it by hitting play, FInally found it in the final notes on page 21 at the bottom, simple and nothing to be negative about.

OK, I said I would report the ONE and ONLY review to use when buying this CDR20 after I receive it and use it. FIRST, the instructions are EXCELLENT and anyone who sais they are not understandable should go back to school. Further more those who said they bought the unit and returned it and received another only to return that one did and does not have any clue how to read. OK that aside,, I bought the unit TODAY and just tested my Second CD on two cd players including a cheap battery portable and the quality and reproduction is EXCELLENT. I recorded from 5 albums and unsed the pause feature when switching to another album then pressed play again which automatically advanced the track number. I faded out live chearing from one song and faded into another on the next track, THe controls are EASY as can be (if you can read the book) the remote makes pausing and rerecoring a breeze, NOTHING bad to say about the unit. its EASY, great reproduction and lets you edit on the fly

Similar Products Used:

0

Excellent recording quality, easy to use

discs skip on playback on some players

I'm completely satisfied with this recorder in every respect, except that some of the discs skip when played on other players. I returned one unit when several discs that we recorded at 2x speed skipped. The second unit was fine until the latest disc that I made at regular speed. The disc plays fine on the playback deck of the recorder and on the cd player on my computer, but the last track skips on the cd player in my car. The recording is on a CD-RW disc that I have used several times with no problem. I would give this recorder five stars if I could rely on it to produce discs that I can play on any player. As it is, I'll have to return it and try another brand.

Similar Products Used:

none

Update

Update

I just seen the terrible review posted directly below this. I had to comment as everything complained about was caused by user error and not the machine. While I'm not pro HK, user error must be pointed out.

The machine does record single tracks at 1X speed. It's very simple. You have to program which track you want to record, select your speed, and then hit the dubbing button, very simple.

The player side will recognize a CDRW with music recorded on it. One thing, IT MUST BE FINALIZED. The play side will not recognize a recordable disc if it's not FINALIZED.

These occurances are very common in many recorders.

Some recorder have a single track dub button, but programming that track is just as easy. Programming that single track is what is RECOMMENDED in the HK CDR20 Manual for single track dubbs.

Many, if not most, CD recorders will not recognize an unfinalized disc in it's play side. I had a Philips CDR 685 which stated that finalizing wasn't needed for playback on the play side changer. WRONG!!! It was a 50/50 chance wheather the changer recognized the disc or not. I rather not have certain so called special features that don't work reliably. That way, there no questions on if the deck is working as it should and as it was designed.

Similar Products Used:

Update

Excellent CD Dual Tray Recorder & Player and like HK is built with class and simple to use and Awesome.

Truth this is one very sweet Dual Tray CD Recorder and player unit that is very well designed and does everything with ease. All recordings have been excellent but like any pro I took the time and read the users manual before using, so it made everything quite simple. I also noticed that the recordings were much better the the original CD's which is a big plus! I'm very pleased with this HK CD Recorder and recommend it to anyone looking for a first class CD Recorder/Player, can't go wrong!

Similar Products Used:

Phillips, Denon, Sony

ease of use, quality of recordings, quality of sound period, classy appearance

manual confusing, and the CD trays could be a bit more sturdy.

An excellent product so far. Sound quality refelcts HK's legendary warmth, without sacrificing detail. I agree with other reviews that some digital copies made actually sound better than the original. Another bonus is that the skip protection/oversampling is unsurpassed... you can make flawless new copies from many of your old scratched CD's. The design is very sexy, and the unit is very easy to use. And to hammer it away again, you CAN use at least 2x when copying single tracks. The sound quality is truly impressive.

pretty well made, records quite nicley

the one main flaw that is going to cause me to bring it back to the store. UNLESS IM DOING something totally wrong, YOU CANNOT monitor your recording (via analog) through the decks headphone jack

I cant stand this, this is the third recording deck i went through where their was some huge flaw in part by the manufacturer. Can't any of these companies get it right? It appears that to monitor your recording through the analog jack, you have to have this thing hooked up to a receiver. That is the most horrible and idiotic drawback i have come across. It does record fine though, but if i dont have a receiver handy, and for arguments sake lets say a tape deck with no headphone jack, then i cannot listen to and adjust my recording as/before it goes. This is why the deck is going right back to the store.
On the plus side for those that do live recordings of shows wishing to put them on cd, this unit works great. You can (using the manual track insert) put tracks were desired. It also copies this fine as well if you make a copy of the disc (the RCA deck i had actually skipped each time a new track went on!!).
So if you do not mind not hearing what you are recording at times or intend on having this hooked up to some other component to listen to, then this will be right up your alley.

Similar Products Used:

sony cdrw121, rca

ALL

NONE

I AM SHOCKED !!! I AM ONE OF THOSE ARROGANT FOOLS WITH ABOUT 15K INVESTED IN MY MAIN SYSTEM. I WAS SURE THAT NO MASS MARKET UNIT COULD REPRODUCE MUSIC AT HOME. WHILE I STILL HAVE YET TO HEAR A COMPUTER BASED RECORDING THAT IS WORTH MY TIME I AM VERY PLEASED WITH THE HK CDR 20. USING QUALITY BLANKS I HAVE RECORDED SEVERAL COMPOSITE CD'S AT NORMAL SPEED AND AM HARD PRESSED TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE !!! I HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU PURCHASE THIS UNIT. I BELIEVE PROBLEMS LISTED IN PREVIOUS REVIEWS IS DUE TO RECORDING AT TOO FAST A SPEED. KEEP IT SIMPLE & RECORD AT NORMAL SPEED & YOU WILL AGREE. JMO STEVE...

Similar Products Used:

NONE

no introduction of pauses between continuosuly mixed tracks.
4X speed recording worked faultlessly (so far...)

impressions on record quality of Harmon Kardon CDR20

I compared various recordings made using this machine against the original.

They were of Oystein Sevag, Link - a jazz piece recorded on Windham Hill /
BMG label. Onto Philips Audio 80min discs.

1) Harmon Kardon tray 1 - tray 2 using internal dub option - 1X speed
2) HK 1-2 2X speed
3) HK1-2 4X speed
4) Micromega Stage 6 source using digitial coaxial output (Monster) to HK
normal speed (there is also a 2X speed option of the Micromega I have not
yet tried. Nor have I tried a...
5) ...Micromega Stage 6 analogue copy using Van Den Hul The Source interconnect to
HK 1X speed

All comparative listenings used the Micromega as source, on an A-B-C-D-E-F
testing, listening to a 25 second passage only.

Yes on all recordings there is loss of original or introduction of new
characteristics.
I am likely to struggle to express degrees of relativity of difference!
Nevertheless:
a) I would be hard pressed if not doing a 1-1 comparative test to tell
recordings apart, having said that the same is true of audio equipment
comparisons. All recordings moved me, sounded balanced and involved me emotionally.
Only the 4X recording sounded in comparison perhaps a little clinical and introduced
noticeable treble "brittleness". Yes all recordings are perfectly acceptable. Of course I am
not after acceptable but chasing optimal in terms of close to original.

Option 4) sounded closest to original, on an "illustratively descriptive
continuum" (take that with a pinch of salt please!) of a 1 (original) to
100 I would place this around a 6-7 (?!). Noticeable differences were of an
ever so slightly rougher & slightly harsher treble (trumpet notes), bass not
quite as solid and tight, and soundstage noticeably smaller - e.g. one passage with a stereo
"whish" noise was not about 4m wide as the original, but say 3m wide. How do I measure the width?
I close my eyes, extend my arms to point to where the sound seems to be coming from then repeat with comparative disc.

There is also a quality difference through 1X to 4X recordings. If Option 4) scored say 6-7 on our makeshift scale, Option 1) would score say a 9-10 with treble showing greatest distinction from original (I am splitting hairs now!) Options 2) say score a 11-ishn and 3) a 12-14 ?


Other traits: I listen to a lot of continuously mixed CDs (i.e. DJ'ed) so it was important to me that the recorder did not introduce pauses no matter how miniscule between tracks - as our previous Philipps Dual Deck recorder did unless manually switched to Analogue (not an option as far as I am concerned).

Similar Products Used:

Philipps dual deck recorder (kept breaking, poor service)
Philipps single deck recorder

Superlative copying of analog sources. Analog input sensitivity high. Excellent appearance, relative ease of operation. Flexibility to manually add track numbers to CD being recorded.

Instruction booklet a little confusing -pictorial examples of hookups would be more helpful as Pioneer does with their audio products.

As with previous reviewers, was simply amazed with the quality of recording from an analog source (Lps). The beauty of this unit is you can maximize the length of the program being recorded if you are doing a lot of copying from vinyl. Allow the whole side of your favourite record to be "Track 1" by keeping the track selector in the "manual" mode, side 2 of your record becomes track 2 and so on, and you can pack a full 74mins. on each CD disc you record. You can index by time played per vinyl track, and search for a selection on your recorded CD that way.Not as instantaneous as searching by track no., but a good compromise if you want to pack maximum minutes into your CD.
Have dubbed CDs at all the speeds and experienced no problems. If you want to preserve your vinyl, and in fact improve their sound - this is your baby!

. I changed some things in my previous post/review.Great analog sampling rate for LP type recording

see review

Ok I had a bit more time to play with this deck, and I take back what I said about it in my previous post. After going through 3 other cdr decks (Jvc xl-r5010bk, Sony cdrw121, and an Rca) this deck is STAYING!!! While this still has 2 major flaws (get to that in a moment), this had the best sensitivity levels towards analog recording. What resulted from this was my recordings from LP records were much CLEANER and had more of a range then any other deck I have went through in these past weeks. I could not believe the difference in sound this had when playing the same clip made with other decks. HIGHLY recommended if you intend to do a lot of analog recording.
This deck seems to copy cds quite well and I did not hear any difference between the original and copy. As an added plus unlike Sony’s deck, this gave you the choice of using auto or manual tracking which is great for copying older lps as sometimes there were more then 3 seconds between a song (Sony’s deck would add a track). Now if I want to have a 60min 1 track cd with dead silence I can.
Onto the flaws, one of which you can fix. The first major flaw being that you cannot listen to (through the headphone jack) what you are recording if you hook something into it via the analog jacks (rca ). You would have to hook this up to a receiver in order to do so. I MADE a work around for this. I went to my local Radio Shack and picked up 2 wires that fixed the problem. One was what the package called “airplane headphone jack adapter”. This was a true stereo headphone input jack at one end and the other was 2 headphone out jacks that were labeled left and right. The second wire was a headphone jack that went into left and right rca wires, again making sure it had to be stereo. So I took the input jack from the first wire, and spliced it (making sure I had the correct left and rights hooked together) into the left and right audio rca wires from the second jack. Now I put the rca end into the cdr’s analog output on the deck itself and plugged my headphones into the input part of this wire. Any recording that I made via analog I could hear (and hear it quite well) via my headphones with the “recording level” acting as the actual volume. Using this method you can get an idea if you need to boost or lower the level for recording as your hearing it on the deck itself. I do want to thank a previous poster on this review board that mentioned the higher sensitivity levels this deck has for analog recording.
The second flaw is not easy to overcome (and this too I found out about by reading a review on here). If you burn (copy) at 4x the speed you may end up with glitches. It seems that if your cd is more like a live show (were the music just flows and the tracks numbers are not separated by any space), the last microseconds of a song will be tacked onto your next track. So if you go to track 5 you will hear the last second of track 4. Not such a big deal if you listen to the whole cd through, but if you just want certain track numbers this is a problem. The 4x speed seems to work fine however on regular recordings where their is that 2 second gap between the tracks.
Otherwise then that I have not yet found any other flaws with this deck. I am content with it and after going through 3 other decks; this one’s the keeper. Thanks--

Similar Products Used:

sony cdr121, RCA dual deck, Jvc xl-r5010bk