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If you have a stereo system, you may want to purchase an audio component CD burner. My wife bought me a TEAC RW-CD22 at COSTCO for less than $200 this Christmas. The TEAC has a function for automatically cutting tracks while it is recording the CD, but it doesn't work as well as I would like, largely because it is difficult to adjust the sensitivity of the CD burner as to when it "hears" silence and adds a cut. This forces me to sometimes manually add cuts during the recording process. Obviously that can be tedious.

The advantage to a component CD burner is that your stereo system is built to allow you to record from one format to another; the end result, soundwise, is pretty good.

The disadvantages are, as described above, the need to sometimes manually cut tracks while recording and the fact that Audio CD-Rs (as distinct from Data CD-Rs used with computers) seem to cost about a dollar per CD, while data CD-Rs are about half of that. Perhaps there are newer models that can use data CD-Rs instead of audio CD-Rs. I don't know.

I also bought a TEAC CD-Recorder at COSTCO. It has a function to record Analog.

I found that I could use the cassette headphone jack as my output and run RCA plugs to the recorders Line-In inputs in the back.

As you said the recorder has trouble seperating tracks.

So I take my CD over to my computer and run a program called Audio Cleaning Lab. It's made by a company called Magix. It's on the web www.magix.com.

It allows me to seperate tracks, boost the sound, dehiss, and de-click the recordings (if scratched), and cut and paste songs.

I bought it at Best Buy for 40 Bucks. Then it allows my to burn it back on a cd or convert it to an MP3 file.

I usually make it an MP3 file and store it on the computer.

With NERO I convert it into a data file and store it on a CD.

You can get up to 200 songs on a CD this way. And anytime you want that song you can bring the CD back and with NERO drag and drop any songs from the CD to make an Audio CD.

Read your post about cd burners. I bought a Phillips a few months back.... and it also uses Audio CDR's. You can find those for about 43cents a piece on the net if you shop pretty hard. But... I also have heard that the Harmon Kardon brand CD Recorders use Media CDR's. Wish I had known that a few months back.

Audio CD-Rs (as distinct from Data CD-Rs used with computers) seem to cost about a dollar per CD, while data CD-Rs are about half of that

That's because the entertainment industry extorted itself a big fat cut in exchange for not tying the technology up in lawsuits.

(The industry is back demanding more, proving the accuracy of Kipling's observation about the result of paying Dane-geld.)