Lou - you raise some good points. for me, i think it's easier (and faster) to just record to my PC, because i eliminate the time it takes to extract the WAV files from the CD. with using a standalone CD recorder or with recording to PC, the transfer itself from analog to digital is still real time. and you still have to separate tracks at some point. (well, i guess you don't, but separate tracks for separate songs seems pretty standard.) so to me, it seems quicker to eliminate the time to use EAC to perform DAE. but i can understand where you're coming from. obviously, each person should use the best method(s) possible for transfers if they even remotely care about the quality, so kudos to you for not using the internal/integrated soundcard in your Dell PC.

if you use a standalone CD recorder, one thing to check out is the S/N ratio of the unit... if it's above about -75 dB, then you're actually adding in audible noise to the recording... which is like adding an analog generation to it. there are some consumer standalone recorders - i'm pretty sure there are Sony models in this respect - that have S/N ratios at -74 dB which is barely acceptable (IMO). of course, if you have something like an HHB 880, then that would work quite well for transferring analog tapes to CDR.

anyway, happy transferring!