Tascam CD-RW2000
A 2U rack recorder that treats CD-RW as a serious professional format, and asks you to trust a tray mechanism that Tascam itself kept revising.
Overview
Thirty watts. That's the entire power draw of the CD-RW2000, a 2U rack unit that measures 483 x 98 x 317.5 mm and weighs 7 kg. You notice the weight when you slide it into a rack, but it won't tax a crowded power strip. Tascam built it as a "Professional CD Rewritable Recorder," and the spec sheet reads like studio furniture, not a consumer burner. Inputs are balanced XLR at +4 dBu nominal with 10 kΩ input impedance, plus unbalanced RCA at -10 dBV. Digital I/O comes in both AES/EBU and coaxial/optical, on XLR, RCA, and TOSLINK connectors. The converters run 16-bit linear at 44.1 kHz, with a frequency convertor that accepts 32 kHz to 48 kHz input. That lets a studio feed it whatever digital source is on hand and still land a Red Book disc.
The numbers are respectable for the era. Playback signal-to-noise is rated at 98 dB, recording at 92 dB. Dynamic range is 94 dB playback and 92 dB recording. Total harmonic distortion is 0.004% on playback and 0.005% on record. Channel separation is 90 dB at 1 kHz on playback and 80 dB on record. Wow and flutter is listed as unmeasurable, under 0.001%. The headphone amp is a modest 35 mW + 35 mW into 32 Ω, which is fine for checking a take and not much else.
Owners tend to remember the media flexibility. The CD-RW2000 writes CD-R and CD-R-DA as well as CD-RW and CD-RW-DA, so a session can be rehearsed on a rewritable and then committed to a one-shot disc once it's right. That was the whole pitch of the format in this period, and Tascam leaned into it. Studio Sound (November 2000, p.28) reviewed the unit in its "New Technologies" section, alongside the wave of CD-R machines and DSP functions then arriving on digital and analogue inputs.
The service history is where this machine gets interesting, and not always in a good way. Tascam's own service documentation shows the CD-RW2000 went through at least three drive generations. The original CD-W54E was discontinued, and Tascam issued a substitution procedure (Tech Info 0505, August 2005) to fit the CD-W58DA into existing units. The job required replacing the Converter MPU, replacing the Front MPU, removing capacitor C402 on the Digital I/O PCB, swapping the drive, updating drive firmware, and mounting a new tray panel. A later bulletin (0701, February 2007) superseded the CD-W58DA with a RoHS-conforming CD-W58DB on V3 production. The service supplement warns in plain language that writing the older firmware onto the newer drive leaves it "totally no response," because the flash ROM type changed under RoHS. Anyone buying a used CD-RW2000 should find out which drive and which MPU revision it has.
Production of the V3 variant began at serial number 0390001, and the service supplement covering those units is effective August 2005. The unit shipped with the RC-RW2000 remote, a 2 m AC cord, and a rack-mount screw kit. The remote is the piece that goes missing and is annoying to replace. Power options covered 120 VAC/60 Hz for North America, 230 VAC/50 Hz for the UK and Europe, and 240 VAC/50 Hz for Australia, drawing 30 W with a peak inrush of 1.8 A.
The CD-RW2000 sits in an awkward spot. It's too new to be a tape-era machine, too old to be a current workflow tool, and it depends on a tray mechanism with a documented revision history. For a period-correct late-'90s or early-2000s studio, or for archiving digital sources onto physical CD, it does a specific job with balanced I/O and AES/EBU that most consumer burners never offered.
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