Great unit for the price

I selected this unit over the others because of the mostly favorable reviews (on Amazon) and the price value. You do get what you pay for; many of the parts are plastic. This should be fine as long as you handle the unit accordingly or something is apt to break.

I've been quite happy with it. The instructions for getting started are pretty easy to follow. But, there is a learning curve on how to most efficiently create CDs. You get faster at it after your first few CDs. Once done digitizing the album onto my laptop it now takes me only a few minutes to identify the separate songs (tracks) and burn the files onto a CD.

There are a few "bugs". I learned that when burning the CD (at least with my laptop), you should not insert the blank CD into the driver until the software requests that it be done. The other minor problem I have is that I'm unable to shorten tracks (songs). For example, a custom album I created was a bit over 80 minutes (the max length that fits on a CD). So, I tried to shorten a few tracks using the tabs that allow you do do so when you are in the edit mode. Except, after "shortning" the tracks I ended up with the same length tracks, but with silence in the segments that I thought I had edited out. To fit w/in the 80 minute length I ended up eliminating one of the songs.

Note it also can be a bit difficult separating tracks for albums where one song essentially leads into the subsequent song (without a clear break between songs). In this case it helps to know the length of each song (hopefully song lengths are provided on the album) and then play back the music at where the first song is supposed to end. While listening you can then make a bit of an arbitrary decision where to break the two tracks for the CD. After you are done identifying the separate tracks you burn the CD.

The unit does not have the ability to record tapes (there is no input) like other units do. One nice feature is I can fade in/out songs in the edit mode.

The only (relatively minor) frustration I have is I haven't been able to figure out the software for eliminating pops/hiss/crackles. I figure if I dig deep enough in the help tab I'll be able to figure this out, but they sure don't make it easy. Luckily, most of my albums are in good shape so I don't much need to use the pop/hiss/crackle removing software.