HHB DualBurn CDR-882 Review

review

M

ost of the attention and energy that used
to go into producing professional CD-R
machines in their various guises has

long been diverted by manufacturers to
solid-state devices, as we always knew they would.
The arguments for chips are compelling but if, like
me, you associate ‘memory card’ most immediately
with low-bit, compressed and back-to-mono then
the swathe of modern thin-line players and recorders
in rackmount and portable orientations will not
disappoint even though they are capable of better. We
know why that’s happened but there’s still a place in
a rack for a good audio CD-R machine although we
now expect a lot more from them. Choice is down on
CD-R recorders, with many older models victims of
ROHS, so it’s an interesting time to be presented with

an HHB CDR-882 because the technology has moved
on and the underlying reasons for having one have
moved on too.

Whereas once it was all about creating that ‘master’
yourself with a little bit of duplication, that’s not
enough in 2008. Thus we get two CD-R drives, rather
than the usual clever drive/dumb drive arrangement,
presented in a solid and reassuring hefty 2U. The
DualBurn in its title refers to its ability to effectively
‘lock’ the two drives together to act as one so you can
record the same thing onto both drives simultaneously.
This has implications for the CDR-882’s other trick,
DiscSpan, which can switch recording between the
two drives for continuous long recording. You load
up both drives with blanks and as the first drive’s
disc approaches its capacity the other drive picks up

recording. Meanwhile, the first disc is finalised up and
ejected so you can put another blank in ready for the
next change over. And on it can go up to a maximum
of 99 changed discs, which would account for most
eventualities outside of a Grateful Dead gig.

You can set fade in and fade out on the incoming
and outgoing drives and, most importantly, the
overlap period when both drives are recording. And
that, together with the track IDs that you’ve set,
is all you will need to reconstitute the recordings
in playback as the drives effectively reverse the
fade in, fade out routines and deliver uninterrupted
continuous playback as you drop the numbered discs
into the appropriate drives.

However, smartest of all is the ability to
multimachine CDR-882s via RS323 and effectively

HHB DualBurn CDR-882

The audiophile CD-R machine still has a place in racks yet the choice is not as wide as it once was. ZENON SCHOEPE enjoys a machine that
sets the bar higher for what you now expect from a new model.

review

DualBurn and DiscSpan across them. You can load
and lock four CDR-882s and have unattended
continuous DiscSpan recording across the eight
drives, which beats sitting there on a full bladder
waiting to do the reloading manually.

There is a smartness to the CDR-882 that takes
some of the load off you — you can’t, for example,
feed it a non-blank disc during DiscSpan as it’ll spit
it back out and when doing a straight drive-to-drive
copy it works out the blank and the recorded disc for
itself. But it’s 2008 and it really ought to; you are
continually reminded that this is a newer incarnation
of CD-R machine than you are used to.

The rear panel has I-Os on balanced XLR and
phonos, AES-EBU I-O, SPDIF I-O on coaxial and
optical, plus Multimachine link input and output and
a parallel remote socket and Word input. The front
panel may seem as if it offers dedicated keys for
the two different drives but that’s not the case. You
select the drive you want and the controls apply to
it although many of the functions are more global
and pertain to the three operational modes of Single,
DualBurn or DiscSpan.

Configuration is accessed either via dedicated
buttons that access the function directly and show
it on the large central screen for adjustment with a
continuous dial with push-to-make, or by access

through a stepped menu. Recording involves choosing
the input from the rear panel pool, deciding how you
want to mark IDs and then adjusting the analogue
input level on the front panel pot or adjusting the
digital level after a bit of prodding around in the menu
and then tweaking with the dial.

Playback options are elaborate and include the
inevitable Program Play (useful for Program Copy
only) and you can with a bit of dexterity use it as a
dual playback machine.

A PS2 keyboard can be connected to the front or
rear but can only be used for CD Text entry, which
is handy but they’ve missed a trick here by not
endowing it with some remote functionality. The
infra red remote you get is adequate but lacking in
ergonomic prioritisation as all its buttons are the
same size and are amassed in a 4 x 10 field with
two hardly meaningful gaps. It’s difficult to read
the tiny legending above the buttons and, while
many of the front panel controls and functions
are represented here, it comes down to the usual
remote shortcoming of needing to be close enough
to the machine to be able to see confirmation of
your action on its display, in which case you might
as well use the front panel anyway. You find a
way of sharing operation between remote and panel
but I just can’t bring myself to initiate an important

Record on two small squidgy remote buttons, even
if they are red; I have to thump a front panel button
(10s shock buffer).

There is a lot in this machine and a degree of
complexity results although this is likely to be more
keenly felt by a reviewer, who feels obliged to at least
try to perform all the various routines being offered,
than an end-user who is unlikely to need it all. This
broad feature set means that the appeal will be wide
too. The RS232 and parallel remote will satisfy
one set of users, whereas others will want it as a
duplicator, for its DualBurnability, its DiscSpan record,
or even just as a plain old audiophile CD-R/CD player
with the ability to record on one while playing back
on the other. It does all this and more.

I’ve left the best to last and that is the sound of this
thing. I noticed it immediately; it has an exceptionally
fine back-end and the analogue input circuitry is
good too. Performance has moved on since the last
generation of machines and the CDR-882 is certainly
the best sounding CD-R I have heard. I actually
thought it would be more than the UK£569 (+
VAT) that’s being asked so I suppose that makes it a
bargain. Still, you won’t find anything else that does
what this can. Maybe it’s the last audio CD-R machine
that you will ever need to buy.

n

PROS

Clever logic; DiscSpan and DualBurn;
very wide application appeal; solid;
sounds splendid.

Remote is fiddly; Qwerty keyboard
connection limited to CD Text entry.

CONS

Contact

HHB, UK:
Website: www.hhb.co.uk