Rating: 
Summary: Sony burner, almost excellent
Review: Folks, I have had mine for a few weeks, and after many calls to Sony I believe I sorta understand the mystery about the love hate relationship of this product. It appears that if one tries to burn over about 74 min of material (and this varies due to disc to disc variations) on a 80 min disc the machine freezes up after the recording process and will it not fianalize. Sony says that this normal for this machine. I know one needs to leave room for the TOC, but this is more than anyone elses home burner specifies. I like the changer and the ability to program and burn from multiple discs all at once, very nice! Keep your recording time down to around 72 minutes on an 80 min disc and it always works.
Rating: 
Summary: Piece of crap
Review: I have to agree with the other two posters that this CD recorder is a piece of crap. So disappointing. It won't finalize any discs. Spent the entire evening trying to get it to work, with no success. What a complete waste of time and money. I have lots of other Sony audio equipment, and am generally satisfied with Sony products, but this CD recorder is joke. Please save your money and your time and buy another manufacturer's model.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to use, sounds nice, records easily
Review: I owned a Philips CD burner for five years before it petered out, dying a little at a time for about a year. When it would no longer reliably record I took it back to Sears, where I had an unexpired warranty for shop service. It couldn't be repaired and was no longer available (Philips quit making them a couple years ago) so I bought one of these, the only other CD player-recorder I could locate in the marketplace.
There are many similarities between this player and the Philips, especially the way it burns CDs. I made two new ones the first evening I had the thing out of the box. It tooks about 15 minutes with the instructions to figure out how to make one new CD from tracks on each of two prerecorded originals. Sony could have made that process a little easier but it wasn't hard to figure out. You have to toggle between two pages in the manual until you learn the process.
When you combine tracks from one of more CDs on the new one you're burning (there are five players available and, therefore, you can record from five CD sources at once) it will only record at real time. For most CDs that's 80 minutes or less. I don't know if that matters to you. When you record CD to CD it will do it in faster time. Based on those I've burned so far, it appears to transfer the signal in about one-third of recorded time. There is a process to perform automatic finalization I haven't learned yet. Manual finalization takes a minute or so.
One big improvement I've noticed is the stuff I recorded at the end of my Philips player's life -- some of which had noticeable noise on the surface when I played them in the car and often would not play in lesser machines -- sound great when I play them on this one. It make take 10 seconds for the Sony to read the first track but once it gets started it sounds every bit as good as the original.
I made CDs from all my cassettes with my Philips player so there's nothing left to record with the Sony. I've burned several CDs on this machine sourced from old LPs that were never released on CD. It's not difficult to do this, although it requires rapt attention since you have to manually track your CD.
It appears the digital signal increases the music signal more than the surface noise, which is sometimes less evident than others. I know you can acquire noise reduction technology and people that are going to make lots of CDs from LPs should consider acquiring that. I don't have it and am not unhappy with my results.
I learned last time that the digital signal makes everything larger than on the original source. I have some noticeable tape his on CDs I made from cassettes, especially at the beginning. Still, it's better to have the digital source available since you can always remaster them at a lower level.
All things considered, I've found the Sony CD burner easy to use, has good results, and sounds great when playing conventional prerecorded CDs or those I made on my last machine. So far it's done everything I've asked of it in spades. I paid $300 for mine at a national chain electronics store that advertised the lowest price, so if you can find one here for $250 and get it shipped cheaply, you're doing good.
The place I bought mine offered a five-year warranty for about $80. My prior experience taught me that is an essential purchase with one of these. If my experience this time is same as last, when this one conks out in a few years, Sony will no longer be making it.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult Instructions, but once you've figured it out...
Review: I used to own a Philips single disc CD recorder which I had to hook up externally to my stereo and make analog recordings between the 2 components. It was a nightmare; Wasted discs, additional track numbers, skipped track numbers, unable to recognize disc if I stopped mid way through the mix, inability to finalize... I was so discouraged I thought I'd never buy another stereo CD recorder again, but then i took a chance on the Sony RCDW500C and am I glad I did.
First of all, I have to admit that the instructions leave a lot to be desired. You'll find yourself flipping back and forth between pages trying to figure them out and half of it won't seem to make any sense, (downsampling, bbs, analog recordings, upsampling, optical input, manual sound levelling, set up screen options yadda, yadda, yadda) so I'd suggest you actually sit in front of the recorder and actually perform the steps as you read them. If you're looking for a recorder that you can hook a cassette player or turntable up to and record old formats, this unit will do that, but you'll find there are a lot of settings that can be changed that will make the recorder work differently, so you'll have to play with those to determine which is best for your own needs, but if you're looking for a simple way to record full CD's or single tracks to a CDR you can't get much better than this little baby.
First of all, all CD to CD recording is done internally and digitally from deck A to deck B resulting in excellent data transfer between the discs. I made my first mixed CDR and then recorded it to another CDR with the touch of only 2 buttons and the 2nd CDR duplicated flawlessly. I also recorded a complete CD to a CDR using the "make disc" high speed button and was finished in less than 10 minutes. (The make disc function copies songs, full track CD text and finalizes the CDR for you all in one step.)
I have yet to make a disc that would not finalize, but I have stuck vehemently to the suggestion of another reviewer here to stop recording at least 5-6 minutes before the end of the CDR to leave space for the finalizing data track. If you just start off with the assumption that an 80 minute CDR should actually only record about 72-74 minutes of music, you'll be golden. Trying to squeeze that last song in up to the last few seconds of recording time displayed on the recorder may cause finalization problems.
One problem I did encounter in the directions is that they state when recording a CD track to the CDR, you first press the record button on deck B (puts deck B in "standby" for recording)then press the play button on track A. I found that when doing this, if there was more than a few seconds of silence between the time you press play on deck A and the time the song actually starts, deck B will skip to the next track number when the song starts. (ie. press record on deck B, press play on deck A, if more than 3 seconds pass while deck A is loading, when song starts deck B automatically detects the signal and then jumps to track 2, leaving track 1 as a few seconds of silence on your new CDR)
Supposedly this "setting" can be turned off in the settings menu, but after turning it to "off", it still happened, so to remedy the problem, I found it is better to switch the order in the instructions. In record mode, press Play on deck A first, wait a second or two while the player locates the proper track (you can hear the cd spinning inside faintly while the laser locates the track) then once the "spinning noise" from deck A stops, right before the track begins playing, manually start deck B recording. (It's pretty simple to do this and after a few practices, it will become second nature.)
Overall, I am very pleased with this recorder. If you have the time to sit down and get to know how it works and decide which settings you want to set it up with at the start, you shouldn't have any problems and you'll find out it can be a lot of fun.
Rating:
Summary: Sony burner, almost excellent
Review: I was attracted to try this unit, but was also concerned, given some of the above reviews. Today I bought it, read the manual, tested almost every function, and it all worked great. Finalizing and unfinalizing, copying, recording direct from disc AND from my analog turntable was fine. There was even a feature that enhanced the analog recording, making it sound better than the original. This is my first cd recorder, and I'm no techie, but managed fine with a couple of thorough reads through the manual. Very nice to have 5 bays, for easy compiling, although that does make for more moving parts to eventually break. I'll update at a later date if I run into problems, but I am PEACHY pleased right now.
Rating:
Summary: First day-everything works fine
Review: I was attracted to try this unit, but was also concerned, given some of the above reviews. Today I bought it, read the manual, tested almost every function, and it all worked great. Finalizing and unfinalizing, copying, recording direct from disc AND from my analog turntable was fine. There was even a feature that enhanced the analog recording, making it sound better than the original. This is my first cd recorder, and I'm no techie, but managed fine with a couple of thorough reads through the manual. Very nice to have 5 bays, for easy compiling, although that does make for more moving parts to eventually break. I'll update at a later date if I run into problems, but I am PEACHY pleased right now.
Rating: 
Summary: I've been converted
Review: I'm revisiting to update my earlier 1-star review. Since posting a few months ago, I, too, figured out that the finalization problem only occurs when you try to record over 74 minutes of music onto a disc. Since that realization, I've been able to successfully finalize every disc I've recorded.I'm still only going to give the unit 3 stars (and I'm leaving the earlier 1-star review) because a) the unit should be able to record up to the full capacity of the disc, and b) given that it can't, the instruction manual should clearly point that out. You shouldn't have to fumble around wasting time (and wasting discs) until you stumble upon the fact that you have to keep the recording time below 74 minutes. A very bad documentation flaw. Luckily I figured it out before I returned the unit in disgust. Beyond the finalization issues, the only other problem I have is the unit's multi-disc playback capabilities. When I'm playing multi-discs randomly (this is how I listen to the unit 90% of the time), it's VERY annoying that the unit has to re-read each disc every time it reselects it. Causes loooonnngg silences between songs. No, not the worst problem in the world but annoying nonetheless. Overall, a great unit for recording, an okay unit for multi-disc playback. Three stars.
Rating:
Summary: I've been converted
Review: I'm revisiting to update my earlier 1-star review. Since posting a few months ago, I, too, figured out that the finalization problem only occurs when you try to record over 74 minutes of music onto a disc. Since that realization, I've been able to successfully finalize every disc I've recorded. I'm still only going to give the unit 3 stars (and I'm leaving the earlier 1-star review) because a) the unit should be able to record up to the full capacity of the disc, and b) given that it can't, the instruction manual should clearly point that out. You shouldn't have to fumble around wasting time (and wasting discs) until you stumble upon the fact that you have to keep the recording time below 74 minutes. A very bad documentation flaw. Luckily I figured it out before I returned the unit in disgust. Beyond the finalization issues, the only other problem I have is the unit's multi-disc playback capabilities. When I'm playing multi-discs randomly (this is how I listen to the unit 90% of the time), it's VERY annoying that the unit has to re-read each disc every time it reselects it. Causes loooonnngg silences between songs. No, not the worst problem in the world but annoying nonetheless. Overall, a great unit for recording, an okay unit for multi-disc playback. Three stars.
Rating:
Summary: No Problems With This
Review: I'm surprised by the other reviews. I bought the Sony RCD-W500C about 2 months ago and have had absolutely no problems finalizing any discs that I've made. The only complaint I had at the start was that the owners manual doesn't really explain how to "defeat" certain features so that you can customize how you want to record your CDs. And the manual should be better laid out so that you're not leafing back through earlier sections to find how two different functions relate to each other. Once I got through that I found the player/recorder very easy to use.
Rating: 
Summary: Works great ... once you figure it out
Review: Let me echo the other comments here and say that this is a great CD recorder. The user's manual, though, is awful -- Sony should be ashamed for putting out a manual that's confusing, skimpy and almost worthless.
REMEMBER: Buy CD-R MUSIC discs, not regular CD-R discs (they won't work -- as the manual not-so-clearly points out.)
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