Recommendations for CD burning towers
  • RagueneauRagueneau
    Posts: 2,592
    Friends,

    I'm assuming many of you (like me) make practice CD's for your choirs.

    I'm wondering if any of you "technical wizards" can recommend a nice CD tower.

    You know, one of those towers that you put the CD into, and then it burns a whole bunch of copies?

    Thanks!
  • Carl DCarl D
    Posts: 992
    I'm interested also. I'm only burning 8 CDs at the moment, but it does take a bit of time and wear&tear on my laptop's drive.

    It's rather depressing how much paper and plastic (CDs) we end up using in our schola. Wouldn't it be nice to have everyone with an iPad and do this all electronically.

    We can dream....
  • DougS
    Posts: 793
    My wife dumped physical recordings altogether in favor of streaming audio on a private blog. There was a little resistance from the people who "must" listen to it in the car, but I think my wife ended up sending the recordings via e-mail for those persons to burn on their own.

    Just to be clear, she records the excerpts on mini-disc, uploads to PC, crops and does touch ups with Audacity, and then uploads the files to DivShare, which has its own streaming Flash player. Once stored on DivShare, you can embed in the blog interface.

    There is virtually no physical waste with this procedure because the MDs are re-recordable.

    Hardly an answer to Jeff's question...more of a response to Carl. Maybe it will help his laptop rest a little!
  • I know that pricing has come down a lot in recent years for duplicating towers. About 3 years ago, I built one from components (Case and controller from a site I've long forgotten, DVD burners from NewEgg). At that time, with shipping, it was around $400, which was less than half the going rate for a 1-7 dvd duplicator.

    If I were going to do it all over again, I wouldn't and would instead go for a 1-1 robotic duplicator. Having to constantly reload cds is a major nuisance for me. A quick search on google showed that they can be had for less than $500. The cheapest 1-7 I saw was about $350 (with shipping), so I'd say the extra $150 is worth it. Here's a link to the first one I found.