How about a link to that unit so we can check it out?
If you are going to record LPs and save them on a harddrive, there is no better way than with the computer. Unless you don't really care about how well it sounds, you WILL need to edit the audio and/or perform noise reduction, normalisation/compression, fade in/out, etc.
As for ripping CDs, a stand-alone unit that rips them and saves them on its own internal hard drive is less than ideal. It's quicker, but that's all I can say for it. This is something that I have lots of experience with and do everytime I buy new CDs. You are much better off using the computer and a good audio editor, although it will take more time. Then you have the music in WAV format on the hard drive and can transcode to any format you want without having to re-rip the CD.
Just a few examples as to why using a stand alone unit or 'auto-ripping' program isn't the best approach:
1. The track markers on a cd aren't always cleanly between songs - the beginning of the next track may actually start at the end of the previous track. If you just rip the track, the end of the song will be cut off and end abruptly.
2. Some songs have multiple parts but are stored as separate tracks. Again, ripping as individual tracks will result in one track starting or ending abruptly. Example (one of MANY): Styx 'Paradise Theater'. The first track is A.D. 1928 and the second track is Paradise Theater. Track 1 ends with the vocal 'Here at the Paradise...' and then goes right into the actual song Paradise Theater as track 2. If you just rip track 2, it will start 'dise...'; conversely track 1 will end 'Here at the Para'. You really need to rip both tracks and append track 2 to track 1 as one single song. Other examples: Threshold/Jet Airliner by Steve Miller, Bringin' On The Heartbreak/Switch 625 by Def Leppard and countless others.
3. Many times the cd is mixed for continuous play. The beginning of the next track will actually start well before the end of the prior track and you can hear both at the same time. Pink Floyd CDs are like that. On Dark Side of the Moon, the beginning of Welcome to the Machine can be heard at least 30 seconds before Shine On You Crazy Diamond ends - they are mixed together. If you wanted to make individual tracks, you really need to apply a long fade to Shine On and you need to take the beginning of Welcome to the Machine from the Shine On track and copy it to the Welcome to the Machine track and fade it in. If you like Dance music, Donna Summer cds are the worst for that type of thing - every single Donna Summer CD has Hot Stuff/Bad Girls mixed together and ripping them as separate tracks results in the song ending abruptly and sounding terrible. You have to join them into one.
Alot of people don't care about these things and yet still complain about downloaded music that exhibits these exact same problems. I rip all my CDs manually and fix them up as needed so I have a pristine perfect WAV file on the hard drive. I then transcode them to mp3/wma/aac or whatever I need and keep the wavs around as a digital archive of my music collection.
