Dat vs cd burner

[LonelyBeat]

I am working on a 488 and I would like to start mixing down to some serious sources, other than the crappy homw stereo I am using now. I was thinking about getting a Dat machine cause thats what was suggested by the book I had read, and by word of mouth. I figured I could mix direct to that and then make cds off of it with my external cd burner

The other side of the coin is that I have seen by looking at other peoples posts that they mix to soundcards on the computers and cd burners. My burner is external and although it has analog inputs, it doesnt seem to read the analog info, even when set to analog and I try and burn from my reg stereo casette deck.
I was lloking at the Tascam da20 series as a possible dat recorder....but I would also like to hear what everone else has t say about the decision I have to soon make about what I am goona mix to.

[Stealthtech]

My suggestion:

Transfer the tracks from your Tascam to PC to convert to digital.
Get a relatively descent card like the audiophile 2496 and a recording program like Sonar or other enexpensive audio program so you can edit your tracks (add effects, etc..)
Mix in your audio program and bounce it all down to 16 bit and burn to an enternal CD writer.

If you go this route, you may be persuaded into recording directly to your PC for a much cleaner recording. (no tape saturation, etc..)
PC recording is far better than cassette based recorders with a ton more options.

[sloop]

If you like the sound coming out of the mixer, record direct to CD. They are a lot cheaper than DAT tapes. When you are done, transfer the tracks you like to a master CD.

I record quite a bit of live stuff going direct to CD(stand alone CD recorder), mainly small acoustic stuff and live orchestral work. With the acoustic stuff, I get the sound I want and the artists drops it straight onto the CD. If they screw up, start a new track. At $.20 or $.30 per CD it is a very inexpensive media.

Remember--there is no mix down later, you have to have want you want coming out of the mixer.