At one time, the band asked that folks not trade CDs because of the heightened risk (and quasi-legitimation) of bootleg sales. But several factors are bringing about a burdeoning CD trading movement:

• Quality: Digital quality without the temporal loss that DATs experience.
• Cost: CDR decks are now down to the cost of a good analog deck, and the discs themselves are below $2 each. That's cheaper than DAT, and comparable to or cheaper than analog.
• Cars: Newer cars seem as likely to have a CD player as an analog tape deck.
• Hot: With the quality benefit and the cost down, many analoguers who begin to appreciate (and demand/require) high quality copies are making the jump from analog to CD, ignoring DAT and sometimes transferring their entire analog collection (then selling the analogs in a "tape liquidation").

What brand to get:

• ??

What to pay for 'em: Expect to pay about $2 per disc, though in bulks of 100 or more they may drop to as low as $1 per.

Don't write on them, except with specially designed pens. Permanent markers and stickers/labels may interfere with proper playback.

Be sure to see Mike Richter's CDR Primer and CDR FAQ maintained by Andy McFadden (which includes a list of all CDR drives and what features they include).

Thanks also to Syd Schwartz , Noah Cole .

"... if you try to think too much about what you're trying to do, then it's not as good.""
-- Mike Gordon, quoted by Geoff Carr in the 1/17/01 Flagpole"