PC recording has NEVER been this good (updated 1/27/03).

The number 1500 holds a hallowed place among the audio products in Denon’s history. Their early audiophile CD player, the DCD-1500 from the early 1980s, was often considered THE first CD player from any manufacturer that was good enough to force dyed-in-the-wool vinyl LP audiophiles (including myself) to consider CDs--and digital content in general--as a viable format for the serious music listener. I certainly enjoyed my DCD-1500 immensely over the years. In fact, it still serves a role in our household despite being nearly 20 years old. Currently seated next to and connected into our computer, I still use it to occasionally dub and mix from. It might no longer be the best sounding machine around, but surprisingly its technology still holds up well against many of the mid-priced CD machines of today, especially those units whose manufacturers went hell-bent into the cheap, 1-bit D/A technology. And while the current marketplace has moved away from single disc players, machines like the DCD-1500 serve to remind us that just because a product is newer it certainly doesn’t mean it’s actually better.

I suppose it’s a more than a bit of a marketing ploy that Denon named their premium audio CD recorder the CDR-W1500. Likely there were hopes that it would be perceived and accepted as if the storied shadow of the original ?’ fell upon this burner somewhere along the way. They took a similar ploy with one of their first DVD players sold in North America--the DVD-1500--though from what I recall there was a fair bit of consternation with its mixed reception in the marketplace, and the fact that it didn’t really offer up a challenge to the class leaders. But with the CDR-W1500, in most respects the performance of this CD burner does live up to the reputation of the original namesake. Yet at the same time, it’s not a perfect device by any stretch, nor is it the sort of knockout that would have Denon’s competitors trembling.

Why buy a dedicated CD burner?

Simple: the bilious dreck known as computer-burned CDs. For any music connoisseur, it’s easy to get fed up with the mediocre audio results with copied discs using PC-based CD-RW burners. No matter how good or advanced the mass-market computer soundcard, the resultant discs have been far too bland and lifeless, with too little depth in the imaging of the music. When the reality is that cassette tape results are considerably more listenable, I have to face the truth that for the most ease and convenience out of using my Dell’s burner capabilities, I’m settling for the least quality out of the format and the technology. I imagine it must be like listening to music suspended in mid-air thousands of feet off the ground, with no solid reflective surfaces, only the thin air particles to refract the sound. No audio tapes that were created using my old Nakamichi tape decks ever sounded so blunted and dull.

Since my long past days of cassette tape, I still enjoy compilations discs over listening to single-artist collections, especially with mobile devices. This fact and the consistently poor PC CD-Rs made me willing to take a chance on a dedicated component, so as a result I bit the bullet and bought the Denon. My choice of the brand was guided simply by my past purchasing history of Denons, and my overall satisfaction with their products. From the original DCD-1500 up to the current master of all my particular Denons, the DCD-1650AR, the company has only rarely failed to satisfy my auditory tastes with their CD-oriented products. The only time I ever came away disappointed was with one of their multi-disc carousel players I sampled several years ago, and that was only because I was dissatisfied that this particular machine’s performance had not progressed significantly farther than the original DCD-1500 from twelve or thirteen years earlier. That carousel was the only Denon player I sampled that I actually returned for a refund.

I was fortunate enough to come across a cosmetically blemished unit at an authorized dealer. The discount was steep, and the burner only cost me $400 total, including my state’s sales tax because the store was paying for due to a special weekend sales promotion they were running. Even though the top of this particular unit has some cosmetic rippling in the sheet metal housing, the electronics of the unit worked fine in testing. Furthermore, once the unit is situated in its cubby, the area of damage will never be seen; even if it was exposed, considering the savings I’d take a ball-peen hammer to the spot before I’d consider returning it or paying full price for a appearance-perfect unit. Not bad saving $200-250 and STILL have the factory warranty (1 year parts and labor, but ONLY when purchased from an authorized Denon reseller).

Features of the Denon

The key feature to me for any CD burner system is having twin-drawer operation. Single-drawer burners have little or no attraction to me; the convenience of having a separate drawer for both source and target discs is too obvious to ignore for compilation creation. Even burning discs on the PC, I have to use two separate drives to be fully comfortable with the task—constantly swapping source and target discs is just too cumbersome. At times I might rip to a .wav file and store those on the hard drive prior to burning, but generally when I burn discs with the Dell (and use Roxio’s Easy CD Creator software), I’d burn directly off the original CD, thinking that the direct source should yield the best copies, even though in reality it rarely, if ever, did just that.

On the Denon, the left drawer (referred to as Drive 1 by Denon) serves as the audio source drive. For normal playback functions, it can also serve strictly as a single-disc player for regular listening sessions. The recorder drive on the right (Drive 2) can serve as a player also, but it has less functionality (i.e., limited remote-control accessibility) than the left CD drive. Both drives have their own separate operational controls located underneath their respective CD drawers. However, the machine still depends a lot on the infrared remote control for much of its functionality; for instance, there are no FF/REW scan controls located on the machine for either drive, and no such function at all for the burner drive, regardless of the remote (with the proper remote, this is no longer true; see the Correction below). As with all dedicated burners, music CD-Rs and CD-RWs are the only media allowed to be used on this machine by agreement with the recording industry. However, even the prices of these media types have come down where music CD-Rs in bulk can be had for considerably less that a buck a disc, including the thin-profile storage case.

The CDR-W1500 also is configured to interpret text information embedded on prerecorded discs, though aside from displaying artist and song title information in the LCD window, I'm not sure why this is such a big deal. This Denon only displays the information off the original prerecorded CD; none of that data can be written to a burned copy. Text burned onto a copy audio disk can only be entered in manually through the menu interface. Personally, these sorts of gimmicks dreamed up by the equipment and recording makers are often just too much unwanted garbage that we're forced to pay more for. I can see the value of this sort of feature in a carousel or hi-capacity jukebox-type player, but when I'm listening to a disc, especially in a machine designed for only single-disc operation, I typically already know who I'm listening to. If I want to know a song title, I can always read the liner notes of the CD case nearby the player. It's not like the LED display is large enough that the scrolling information from across the room, so you'd have to walk up to the machine anyways to see the text information. Big whoop.

The Denon also can play High Definition Capatible Digital (HDCD) format discs. The discs I have that are encoded in the HDCD format sound good, with greater richness that would be achieved with a standard format audio CD. But like the encoded text information on original discs, HDCD is only for playback, and only on the source drive; no HDCD encoder is used in conjunction with the recorder drive.

I’ve only begun to sample many of the things that this burner is capable of, but in reality, I rarely do any sort of burning beyond compilation discs, which is use is just simple one-track recording coupled with a lot of source disc swapping. I seldom do straight disc copying; so few pre-recorded albums are perfect across all tracks, so editing and mixing have become the rule for me. The Denon uses what seems to be a fairly comprehensive LED window for indicating pertinent data for both the source disc and the copy disc, recording modes and settings, etc., though the indicated time modes (or the lack of any other than the typical count up of a track time) while recording leave much to be desired. Simple playback CD functions are as easy to operate as with any standard single-disc CD player.

However with recording functions, at least in my opinion, this ease of use slips downhill, even after continual usage with the Denon. The methodology for recording discs is not at all intuitive, nor is it self-explanatory based solely on staring at the front panel of the Denon. If you’ve allowed a long period of time between recording sessions with the CDR-W1500, it’s extremely easy to forget just how to record with this thing. The owner’s manual has turned out to be a must-have guide kept close by in order to keep things straight and operating correctly.

A small mention must be made about the wireless remote. As it seems to be the habit of Denon these days, the supplied infrared remote control is more than a bit on the cheapish side. While it seems to have all the functions of the CDR-W1500 onboard, the quality of materials left me cold, as did the confused menu operation buttons which was an instant invitation to use the front panel of recorder instead. As good as Denon's main units may be, their remotes have far too much in the way of cheeziness to be taken as a serious workable piece of gear.

The Machine’s Performance

Ultimately, any dedicated burner will be compared to their counterpart systems on a PC or Mac. If I were to say which is more user-friendly, the computers would win hands down. Software writers have the hardware engineers beat without question when it comes to figuring out good user interfaces. For whatever reason, hardware companies like Denon still haven’t figured out that the user interface is what really makes the machine. All the best sonic performance on earth will go to naught if people feel that the unit’s too hard or too much a frustrating annoyance to use. And there are times that the Denon approaches that line, sometimes even crossing it.

The learning curve needed to fully understand this burner is steep, but once learned, the actual recording sessions are fairly straightforward as long as the manual is nearby in case of the occasional faulty memory, and you decline to fiddle with any of the additional recording controls. The Denon is capable of a number of recording adjustments, but here’s another area where the machine is sorely lacking. The menu system that Denon utilizes is cumbersome at best, confusing at worst, and downright irritating the rest of the time.

For instance, one feature the Denon has is the capability to adjust the recording level; however, to GET to the right menu location to make the change requires the concise hitting of buttons, figure out by the readout on the display where you are, re-hitting those buttons again, no, went too far, reset to start over again, hit buttons, twirling of the selector knob, go back to the manual, hit the selection, etc., etc., just to make what might only be a minute adjustment. Moreover, once the adjustment’s been made there’s no way to tell how effective the change is before the actual recording and burning, since the Denon doesn’t allow an audible preview of the setting. Making changes in a software package like Roxio’s Easy CD Creator or MusicMatch Jukebox 7 was never this hard or awkward.

In addition to the cumbersome menu trees, the Denon also suffers from a lack of functionality. Unlike burning packages for a PC, there’s no simple way to preprogram a recording list as you can on a computer. On a PC, many burner applications show you the cumulative effects with each song you choose for your disc (e.g., total time used, total time remaining, number of tracks, etc.). On the CDR-W1500, there’s no way this sort of playlist or a cumulative time log is created. I can’t feed in each disc for the Denon to store track info for the song I want to record; as soon as the disc is removed, the track info is gone as well. When using Easy CD on my PC I load in a disc, the app goes to an online CD info database, and the contents of the original CD are available to the app. I can then use the mouse to pick which songs I want for the recording by selecting and dragging the title to the recording list. Once all songs I want have been selected, I can eject the original CD for a new one, and the process of creating the songlist continues on. Once I’ve selected the songs I want to fill this copy, I can then go back and edit the song order to tailor it to whatever I think it needs to be. The Denon can do none of this itself; all planning must be done beforehand, off the machine, and with virtually no help from the CDR-W1500 in terms of keeping track of the amount of time left on the recording media. To get around this, I’ve begun to formulate playlists on the computer, and then take that information over to the Denon for burning. It’s not the most convenient method (the Dell and the CDR-W1500—plus the bulk of the 2300 or so pre-recorded CDs we have—are in separate rooms), but it seems to be the best compromise.

In addition, the few times where I’ve take multiple tracks off an original have also proven to try my patience as well. Once the proper menu item and record mode have been selected, the machine will start an intro scan play of the source CD; you then have about 8 or 9 seconds to select which songs you want before the Denon skips to the next track. If you become distracted or spend too much time trying to decipher a song’s lengthy introduction and miss selecting it, you can’t go back later and add it to the list of songs you want to record; the only recourse I’ve found is to redo the playlist from the start. The same is true when I’ve changed my mind about recording a particular song and now instead wanting to delete it from the playlist; there’s no deletion alternative but to start creating the playlist over again. Additionally, when recording in this mode, all the tracks will be burned in sequence dictated by the track number the song had on the original CD, starting with the lowest number first; there’s no reorganizing allowed here.

I’ve owned the Denon burner for about 3 months at the time of this writing; it’s been used to make audio a number of different CD compilation discs covering a wide range of music. Typically, I’ll record at 2x speed, which is the fastest burn rate the CDR-W1500 is capable of. Some conveniences, namely speed, I will not sacrifice even if the Denon’s burning quickness pales to that of a CR-RW drive in a common PC. Though the copies are still not quite to the same level as the original audio CD, the Denon’s results are significantly superior to those I got using my Dell and the SoundBlaster Audigy eX card. In fact, there’s really no comparison. To all but the most tone-deaf ear, the imaging depth of the Denon copies is virtually undistinguishable from the originals; there are no more bland-sounding compilations here. There is some loss in quality, which I’d judge to be in the prominent lower midrange bands down to the midbass levels, where I can readily hear a discernable fall-off in the presence of these frequencies. The difference is subtle, but with all manner of music types, CD players and environments I used to listen to these discs I could detect the loss fairly easily.

One thing that’s high on the to-do list is off-the-machine recording. I’ve yet to hook up another component to the Denon to record off of, but I do have a number of vinyl LPs I’d like to try burn to disc with the analog recording mode. The owner’s manual makes it look simple enough, but there’s a bit of synchronization involved and I’m sure that there’ll be a coaster or two along the way.

Conclusions So Far

While the end product is infinitely superior to than which I’ve done with my PC, I can’t help but wonder if there will ever be a time where a manufacturer will release a ‘perfect’ unit (or more precisely, whether the music labels will ever allow the hardware companies to build such a product—er, silly thought—of course it’ll never happen, not without all the protracted legal wranglings, lawsuits and countersuits). The copies I’ve made to date have convinced me the dedicated audio version of CD burning is a significantly better listening experience than that of any end results from a PC device.

However, I’m still surprised that the difference in audio quality between the Denon discs and the ones I’ve done on my Dell (via a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audigy eX) in certain aspects is less than I ever would've imagined it should have been. The Dell discs seem to have a musical presence across all frequencies equal to that of the original, though the dullness due the loss of imaging depth probably colors my perception and interpretation of the computer-generated end copies. But even more of a factor in the plus column for the PC is the usability and functionality issues with the Denon, where the getting there (i.e., the making of the discs themselves) is more painful than it ever was with a computer and my favorite software package.

The Bottom Line

Is the Denon CDR-W1500 worth the cost, even without the discount that I managed to get? For the audio quality alone: yes it is, at least it's so in my book. However bad the menu system and the counter-intuitive operation may be, this burner creates some wonderful-sounding output, and the end product ultimately is what counts. Sonically, it’s not perfect; I even recall that there were some cassette recordings I made on my Nak CR-7A and Dragon tape decks on premium metal tape that were even more true to the original CD. But unfortunately with tape, the falloff and degradation in performance begins the minute you first start the playback of the recording. With CD-Rs, the theory is that it’ll take decades before any discernible drop in quality is noticed, and by then, another media format will likely be around, and that no one will probably care about the old CDs (unless they’re full of original material). But it’s at least good to know that for now, good high-quality recordings are achievable, long-lasting and can be enjoyed without much fear of the audio degrading in the intervening years. I’ll easily put up with the inconvenience of the user interface for the resulting audio quality of this machine.

Though functionally not nearly close at all to a perfect machine, the Denon CDR-W1500 is a heartily RECOMMENDED component for anyone who appreciates spatially lush and generous audio recordings, which in and of itself in the realm of CD burning is worthy of the highest rating.


Correction: The supplied remote control recently had an up-close-and-personal with the hardwood floor. Boy, can solid oak make plastic parts fly. Against my better judgement, I decided to go out and replace the thing with another OEM remote, despite rarely ever using the thing. So I placed the order with the Denon outlet, and several weeks later it shows up. Imagine my surprise when the new remote was completely different that the one that came with the recorder.

Turns out the second remote is the true unit that's supposed to come with the CDR-W1500. Recall that the burner was originally purchased as an open-box unit; I'm guessing the dealer mistakenly switched the remote with another from a different Denon model when repacking the open box. No wonder the functions on the old one seemed to be somewhat at odds in regards to the CDR-W1500. The new one faithfully matches all the panel controls of the burner, and even has a toggle to allow it to be used with both CD drives. Shame on the dealer for making the switch, and shame on me for not looking more closely at the diagram in the owner's manual.

That said, the true remote still isn't the most fun or easiest to deal with. And it's still very much on the cheap side when it comes to materials and finish. But at least the CDR-W1500 now has the proper remote, in case I ever do choose to operate the recorder (or the playback, for that matter) with it.

BTW, this thing's still making wonderful-sounding audio CD discs. I still just wish the gathering and planning of recording information in making those wonderful-sounding compilations was a heck of a lot simplier. Sigh, maybe with the next machine...we can only hope. Listening, Denon?