Microboards Copywriter Live

[ccmediadude]

Due to some very long sermons, we have missed some key points on our CD recording. This unit will span 2 disks, when one runs out it goes to the next one.

Has anyone used this unit? What is your opinion on it? I have always used the Tascam recorders and have been very happy with them, but they don't have a two disk, spanning type.

http://www.microboards.com/article.p...50706093025116

Thanks!!

John

[DaveW]

We started selling the Copywriter Live deck to our church clients in December. We've only had a limited time to play with one, but it seems like a good deck for the money. My only complaint thus far, and I may be wrong about this, is that you can't record the same signal on both bays at the same time (ie end up with 2 discs of the same program at the end of recording time.) I don't see this as a major problem.

[scdk0001]

We've been using ours for about 8 months. My only complaint and it's just a personal thing, is that I too have used Tascam equipment for years. The CopyWriter controls are somewhat sluggish when activated. Also, I don't like the audio level led bar, you only have 4 segments to register everything very low input to very high input. But other than that the spanning capability is great.

[Banginplates]

I am the media director at my church, and we bought the Copywriter live the 2nd month it was out. It does not last for the long haul. We cleaned the laser many times and name any other countless ways to service it. It stops recording and has many failures. Its great in the beginning,but after repeated use it turns out to be poorly made. We bought the first one in 2006 it went bad after 1 year. We bought another to hopefully help us out till the broken one was fixed. It eventually gave out. We are now recording to Mac using Audacity and we are upgrading to Pro Tools as our ministry has really grown. Just what we have experienced. It may work for you,but a definite bad choice for us.

[BradLyons]

John,

Let me throw you a curveball. While it's easy to record direct to CD, there are a few issues that can come up----what you mentioned is #2, but #1 is that if you have a bad CD, you just lost your recording. May I suggest recording to a FLASH recorder instead? This way you can record as long as you need, FTP (or remove the flash Compact Flash card and plug into your computer) to edit, clean-up, remove unwanted audio, and then burn to CD? I always tell my church clients NEVER to record directly to CD.

[revbobuk]

Another possibility would be the HHB 830 - a little more expensive, but it does have both the disk spanning you seek, and the record to both drives simultaneously.

SD card recorders are good - I've specified the bottom of the range Marantz rackmount, the PMD560 - but they are not cheap. The portable ones are much less expensive, but in my experience are fairly complex to operate.

For much less money, you can record to a laptop bought just for this purpose. Add a USB sound card (essential, IMHO) and something like Free Audio Editor which has a nice simple interface. When the service is over, burn a CD or upload to your website straight away.

[DMixer]

We have had ours for 2.5 years. 2 to 4 disks every Sunday. NEVER one problem. Did the firmware upgrade 2 months ago so that we can now record in both drives at one time. Use the spanning function about three times a year and it works perfectly! The setup function is a bit funky but we love this recorder.
David