Tascam CD-RW700
A black 2U rack CD recorder that took whatever you fed it - DAT, MiniDisc, cassette, a record - and turned it into a disc you could hand to anybody.
Overview
The CD-RW700 is a standalone CD rewritable recorder, and it looks nothing like a Tascam. Studio Sound (April 2000, p.36) noted the machine arrived "in uncharacteristic black." The unit is 2U high and rackmountable. The I/O is what you'd expect from a deck that sits between a source and a disc: unbalanced RCA analog in and out, plus S/PDIF digital I/O in both coaxial and optical formats. Having both digital formats means the DAT deck, the MiniDisc recorder, and the sound card interface can all stay patched at once instead of being swapped in and out.
The signal path is where Tascam spent the money. The CD-RW700 carries 24-bit A/D and D/A converters, which is a serious conversion stage for a recorder in this class, and the digital processing runs in the digital domain rather than being bolted on after the fact. Fades can be dialed in from 3 to 30 seconds. The deck includes a sample rate converter, so digital sources arriving at something other than 44.1 kHz can be brought into the CD standard without an outboard box. Studio Sound (January 2000, p.31) described the machine as accepting CD-R and CD-RW media with a built-in sample converter, digital input level control, and the phono/coax/optical I/O set. The auto track increment is selectable across a granular range - −24, −30, −36, −42, −54, −60, −66, or −72 dB - so the deck can be told how quiet a passage has to get before it starts a new track.
The buffer is what separates this deck from the cheap consumer recorders of the period. A RAM buffer holds the incoming audio so that track ID marks land precisely without clipping the first fraction of a second off the top of a take. Tascam's own retail literature made a point of this, describing the CD-RW700 as standing "above the competition" on the strength of the buffer, the 24-bit conversion, the digital gain adjustment, and the digital-domain fades. That's marketing, but the buffer itself is real.
Recording behavior is otherwise straightforward. The deck writes to standard consumer CD-R and CD-RW media, with sync start available for either a single track or all tracks, and track increment settable to auto or manual. A wireless remote control is included. The CD-RW700 is a recorder first, but it will also play back discs, and the front panel has the usual transport controls and a display for track and time information.
What It Was For
The retail copy lays out the lineup plainly. The CD-RW700 was sold alongside the CD-RW2000 as part of a two-model CD recording line, with the 700 as the "professional, economical" option and the 2000 as the flagship. The 2000 added balanced XLR analog I/O, AES/EBU digital, a word clock input, and a D-sub 15-pin parallel control port for live applications, the sort of thing a broadcast facility needs when a console or a show-control system has to trigger the recorder. The 700 kept the unbalanced RCA path and the coax/optical S/PDIF, dropped the balanced and word-clock connections, and landed at a lower price. That is the whole distinction between the two machines. If your room ran on −10 dBV gear and you didn't need to lock the recorder to house clock, the 700 did the job for less money.
The list price moved around during the model's life. One distributor listed the CD-RW700 at a manufacturer's list of $749 with a street price of $599. Another retail sheet showed a list of $649 and a sale price of $499. Either way, it sat under the CD-RW2000's $1,125 list and well under the Alesis MasterLink's $1,699.
In Use
The deck makes clean digital copies of digital sources. The sample rate converter handles 32 kHz and 48 kHz material, which covers DAT tapes and MiniDiscs recorded at those rates. The digital input level can be adjusted, but only from the menu, not from the front panel. That's a small annoyance in daily use: if a source is running hot, you have to dive into the menu rather than reach for a knob. The fades and track increment behave as advertised, and the sync start function lets the recorder follow a source transport rather than requiring you to hit two buttons at once.
The caveat is media compatibility. The CD-RW700 writes to consumer CD-R and CD-RW discs, and some CD players, particularly older consumer units, may not read CD-RW media reliably. That is the nature of the format, not a defect unique to this deck. The practical answer is to record to CD-R when the disc is going out the door and reserve CD-RW for work discs that stay in-house.
Collectibility
The CD-RW700 is a working tool from the CD-recorder era: a rack-mount deck that will pull a clean 44.1 kHz master off a DAT, a cassette, or a turntable without a computer in the signal path. Buyers should check the transport and the laser, since a CD recorder that won't burn is a CD player with extra steps. They should also confirm that the remote and any rack ears are included. The rack brackets are formed into the end panels and can be removed, so a unit that has been de-racked may be missing them. The deck wants standard consumer CD-R and CD-RW discs, and the supply of good blank media is thinner than it was when the machine was new.