Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony RCDW500C Compact Disc Player / Recorder

I bought this for use in a church to record sermons, etc. So we didn't exactly super-stress the unit. After about 4 months (note > 90 days) it would just stop recording after about 30-35 minutes. Sometimes we could finalize what we had, sometimes not. I didn't want to believe the negative reviews I saw before purchasing - I should have. If you do get one, get an extended warranty. I got one for 2 years and they're refunding my purchase price. Sony decided it's too costly to repair.

I've had 4 of these in the past 3 years, and all have had problems. The first lasted about 18 months, and maybe 700+ recordings, and then refused to finalize discs (the dreaded
C14 message). The second worked 11 months, then did the same (maybe 400 recordings). It was still under manufacturer's warranty, so Best Buy simply gave me another. It also failed after 11 months, with what looked like tiny scratches on the disc surface but actually were thin streams of oil. Best Buy either changed employees or policy and wouldn't exchange it, but charged me $30 to send it to their repair facility. So I bought another (the only recorder they stock, apparently) while I wait. It failed on the first recording (C14 again), and has failed about once every 2 days since. I guess I will have to exchange this for yet another. Quality control at Sony Malaysia is not up to this company's former standards.
BTW, none of them would record on TDK media (the ones made for audio/music, not the data discs), so I wound up tossing 200 of them. They also wouldn't record on Memorex, after they started putting out the 40x discs. I have stuck with Fuji, Sony, and Maxell, all of which work well, when the recorder actually works.
Sony should be ashamed of itself.

I had the unit for 2 months, worked perfectly, made about 80-90 disc-to-disc copies with no problems at all. Very satisfied with the result. I never tried dubbing from several discs to one, so can't comment on how easy or difficult that is.
But then the recording deck, Deck B, starting acting up, not finishing the recording cycle (very frustrating after going through a 15-minute recording session to then have the machine say either "Incomplete!" or just freeze up), couldn't read some blank discs and wouldn't even play some pre-recorded discs.
Hoped that Sony would be more reliable, although machines do malfunction and a CD recorder is more sensitive than a plain old CD player. Problem is that I had to ship the recorder to Laredo, Texas, (where it is in transit) at my own expense.
So, while the machine works fine when it works, as you can see from other reviews, it is a touchy, sensitive machine prone to breakdown.
Depending on Sony's resolution of this problem, I may come back to update this review.
As an update: Sony did fix the machine in a timely manner and I am satisfied with their customer service. I like the machine, but am still concerned with reliability issues.

I had a Pioneer real-time burner that I used for about 7 years prior to buying this piece of junk. The Pioneer unit worked fine until it finally gave out. The Sony deck was initially OK, once I worked my way through an extremely confusing operator's manual. I succeeded in making several good-quality "needle drop" CD's from older lp sources. However, after about 90 days, everything went wrong. I could still make whole CD's and finalize easily, but 4 out of every 5 cd's I made skip when played back in any other player, be that the car, my computer, or at the office. In short, all the time and money spent have been for naught. I won't buy any Sony components again.

I recently purchased the 500C recorder to convert records & tapes to CDs. Buying it over the Net saved me $100 over Circut City's store cost. Have recorded about 50 cds so far. Like others recommended-- plan on using extra cds during the beginning. The newly recorded cd music turns out very clear. Amazing! Read the instructions several times to understand what is happening. For the records with a skip at beginning, just turn down the dB volume and then raise sound level as the music starts playing the music.
Once you get the hang of it, it is really very much like recording music onto a tape deck. Seattle stores have been most kind in letting me figure out only MUSIC cds will work in this machine. The automatic tracking feature doesn't match number of songs on record. As you adjust to about 26 dB, this feature gets more tracks than the record, or less track number if adjusted to about 32 dB. I conclude best bet is to set feature to 50 dB & use the RECORD button to key in the desired tracks between songs. The HIspeed record feature works pretty nice going from CD to CD. Way faster than my computer CD unit also made by Sony. Overall I'm satisfied with this product adding it to my other Sony stereo equipment. This is a pretty fun hobby to get involved with, because for a couple hundred dollars one gets to save the old music that we loved years back! Others noted it is a bit noisy that is no big deal. Some noted the slowness in finishing the recorded CD however after recording one has to finalize the cd which really not much of an hastle as this takes about 64 seconds.