In message <Pine.SOL.3.90.971101152146.21727A-100000@rrzc6>, Hubert Feyrer writ
es:
>I'm thinking about getting some CD-Writer, mostly to use it for creating 
>audio CDs. Does anyone have experience in this area(s)?

Yes, but only on BSDI.

> - What are general gotchas?

Well, for one thing, at least according to the Philips web page, CD
writers can read audio from other audio CD's, but may have a lot of
trouble doing this at full speed.

My experience has been that, if I try to copy a song off of another
CD at *ANY* speed, and the CD is scratched, I will get large chunks
of sound from the last song I recorded.  These CD's play fine in
other players.

> - What writer (hardware) can you recommend? (SCSI!)

I got very lucky and found a Philips internal 6x/2x SCSI-2 at an
office supply store for about $260, when most of the SCSI ones
I've seen have been $400+.

> - Which software to use for slurping audio-tracks off CDs are available? 
>   (I had no luck with either cdda and read_cdda on my old Hitachi
>   SCSI CDROM)

There's a scsicmd-derived 'cdread', 'cdr', and 'cdwrite' on BSD/OS,
they might be portable, if you could get copies, and they're contrib
software, so they may be redistributable.

> - Can anyone confirm cdrecord works ok with audio tracks?

I don't know about 'cdrecord', but I've had reasonable luck; six out of
ten songs I tried to copy to make a comp for my wife came out fine.  :)

Anyway, it does appear that the ability to copy audio tracks is in there,
just a question of whether or not the software supports it.

-s