Sunday, February 3, 2013

Buying a CD Duplicator

By Bob Jamal


Purchasing a good CD duplicator can be a major expense. It is well worth the price if your business is dependent on creating a high volume of CDs in a short period. A CD duplicator can save you money, as your only additional expense will be CD-R discs. If you are in a band and require a medium with which to reach your fans, a CD duplicator can make the process easier. If your company distributes media to potential customers on a wide scale, having access to this technology make the process much easier and faster. Before you buy you need to decide: What kind of discs will you be duplicating? How many will you need to make at one time? How fast will you need to duplicate?

You need to decide if you need a stand-alone unit or one that must be connected to another computer. In addition, you must learn about the drives capabilities within the duplicator. If you want the ability to use DVD-R media, you must ensure that your duplicator has the correct technology to write on these discs. The standalone DVD duplicator is an excellent solution for straightforward disc copying applications. You simply load the master CD/DVD, enter the number of copies you need, and press start. A standalone also eliminates tying up a computer.

How important is speed? If you need to get out a large number of discs in a hurry, you want one of the faster devices available. You have to understand that CD duplication is not an instant process; in fact, it can take several minutes up to several hours to complete one disc. Of course, this is dependent upon the speed of your duplicator and the size of the files you are copying. As a rule, CD's copy a lot faster than DVD file types. What effects speed of duplication? For starters, the number of target drives, each of these can only handle one disc at a time, so a four drive duplicator is going to be much slower than say and eight drive unit. Drive speed is another important factor, usually the more expensive models offer the fastest times. What are your goals? Faster times? Fewer errors? All of this will cost you a bit more money, the faster and more accurate the more you will pay for the unit.

The internet is a good source of information on CD duplicators of varying speeds. Generally, you want a device that can copy DVD-R with speeds of at least 24x while CD-R disc copying speeds should be at least 48x. If you are working at the industrial level, you may need duplicators with even more speed and the capability of producing multiple discs at one time. If you have a large company an industrial duplicator will be the best selection, albeit the much more expensive one! When choosing the best CD duplicator it is important to consider your media, video or audio?

CD duplicators come with a variety of features. They allow you to copy, compare, and test your creations before placing the media onto a disk. You can also mix audio tracks through the duplicator, so you can make last minute changes before creating your CD-R discs. The auto copy function allows you to set your duplicator up and then come back when the work has been completed.

If you are looking to duplicate more than CD-R discs it is a good idea to pay close attention to a duplicators supported media types. For example, a good unit will provide support for VCD, ISRC and CD+G, which makes it easier for you to create media in a broader variety of formats, and duplicate your CD-R discs.

As with any major purchase, research is vital before you buy a CD duplicator. Your needs are entirely dependent on your reason for making this purchase and the size of your enterprise. It is also important to purchase high quality blank CDs and DVDs because the quality of your copies is only as good as the media that you use. If you will be presenting this media to clients, spending a little extra can make a huge difference in quality.




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