Hi, I've burned CDs on the computer before and I'd really like to try a standalone "stereo-component-style" burner instead. Burning on the computer somtimes yielded audible errors in the recording, and I'd really like to be able to hit power, pop in a couple discs, and hit record. Is it that easy? Do those kinds of recorders make a perfect recording or are they less accurate than computer recorders? Are there a lot of options to be messed with? It seem like the only option necessary with an audio disc would be "perfect recording".

First: Welcome to the forum.
You will have to use AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act) compliant, otherwise know as Audio disc rather than regular computer cds. Consumer recorders check to see if the disc inserted is an audio disc and will refuse to record if it isn't. These disc cost more than computer disc because a royalty has to be paid to a subsidiary of the RIAA in the USA, or an equivalent group in another country. These funds are supposed to be redistributed to the artist to compensate them for the lost revenues for the music that you didn't buy. I think these disc are generally poorer quality than computer cds because of this added cost and they must compete to some degree with computer disc. I actually believe that you can make a much better music cd with a computer recorder. Some computer CD-R/RW's actually have special anti-jitter features just for audio recording That's just my opinion, others may vary.

A standalone recorder uses, as BlackWolf said, more expensive CDRs, it burns slower (4x), introduces errors at the beginning of the burning that confuse EAC ripping (maybe not all burners do this), don't copy protected CDs, nor CDRs, but only unprotected originals.

On the other hand it has a good analog input for vinyl, cassette or radio recording.

Stand alone's don't copy cdr's??

wow, didn't know that...I won't ever consider one of those then...

Thanks for the info....

What burner do you have? If you get a LiteOn or Plextor and use a good install of Feurio! you should get excellent recordings. Ps if you have Roxio installed I would reformat and install Feurio!. Or atleast Nero. I suggest reformatting because Ez cd Creator(Roxio)
is really hard to remove from the system and it sucks. Just my opinion.

Btw, since we're talking about stand alone's....

Will the RCA jacks coming out of a DVD go into the input analog jacks of a stand alone and produce a decent sounding recording??

Digital>analog>digital?? Stupid question??

Never, ever, ever do that. If you want to dub a DVD soundtrack, do it the hard way by ripping the DVD, split the audio and video, then convert the WAV to format of your choice. Or you can do it the easy way by using a optical cable, connect to your DVD's optical out to any device w/ optical in (I prefer MD) and sync the recording.

In fact they do copy CDRs, but they comply with SCMS. SCMS, or Serial Copy Management System forbids the copy if the original has the protection flag set to "copy forbidden".
Nero burning ROM sets the protection ON if you copy tracks from another CD, so, though being careful you can always burn unprotected CDs yourself, unckecking the "protection" box, it is likely that you come across many protected CDRs that a standalone won't copy, and especially all that the burner will have burned itself from originals (flag set to "copy once" in factory, meaning that the writer will write "copy forbidden" on the first copy, and will refuse to make a copy of the copy).
A CD ROM drive ignores SCMS and reads any Red Book CD.

About the sound you get from an analog output, it is difficult to distinguish it from the sound of a direct digital copy.
You can try the blind test here, or just download the samples to get an idea. The results of the test are below in the same thread :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.p...T&f=21&t=6651&