http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog_name=CTLG&product_id=42-7011
I got one of these cheap CD burners for Xmas ($199 or $179 w/coupon). It’s a dual tray player…one side records and both sides playback. Burns CDs at normal speed or 2x or 4x faster. Plug in from any source, like from the computer, a tape deck, radio, or auxillary CD player, and make a CD of your favorites…it pauses inbetween cuts and either manually or automatically goes to the next number. It allows you to set the volume on the recorder, or you can download music online through the computer and run it through a mixer source and cut tracks live while it’s happening.
I already had a great DVD-CD player that does a lot of this, but this one has the dual tray. The beauty in using this thing to make your CDs is that you don’t have to load all the tunes on your computer and waste all that space and time editing. Some protected content that won’t dub can be be played on another CD player plugged into this machine. I just made my own “favorites” of “B pipes only” CD…80 minutes worth!
And, I transferred all my grandfathers’s old cowboy songs from from his reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, and old 78s right directly onto a CD, without using the computer at all. Of course the computer is good if you want to edit the recordings, like remove scratches or eliminating mistakes or other gliches.
It’s handy…at your nearest RadioShack.