Duplicator towers: you gotta love ‘em. CD and DVD duplicator towers make duplicating mass quantities of CDs or DVDs easy, and the best part is that they require no end-user training whatsoever (seriously, a monkey could do it). With the touch of a single button, multiple discs are burned simultaneously (and even asynchronously in some cases), all while you simply wait for your perfect copies to be created.

As recently as just a few years ago, towers were expensive, slow, and fairly unreliable machines. Duplication would come to a standstill due to frequent equipment failures, and it was difficult to meet tight production deadlines with the slower burning speeds of yesterday. Oh, and forget about filling your office with multiple towers; it just wasn’t cost-prohibitive back then.

These days, CD DVD duplicator towers are very fast and affordable duplication solutions. Reliability has increased tremendously, and the fact that more manufacturers have launched their own line of duplicator towers has definitely increased competition (which is always a good thing for consumers). Prices are way down and the quality of the towers available is way up.

While the demand for duplicator towers has sharply risen in recent years from companies of all sizes and industries, a few myths regarding CD DVD duplicator towers have also come up that need to be squashed.

Myth: CD and DVD Duplicator Towers from “Company A” are better than “Company B”
While it’s important to shop around when purchasing a duplicator tower to find the best combination of low prices and great support, most duplicator towers are the exact same. CD and DVD duplicator towers are all made from the same parts, so a tower from Company A has the same drives, controller card, hard drive, USB/Firewire interface, etc. as Company B. The sticker that is placed on the front of the controller card face (where the operational buttons are located) and the actual style/material of the case (steel, aluminum, etc.) are the only parts that differ, and obviously neither one affect performace in any way. Cases and aesthetics are varied only for marketing reasons and to help sell more towers, but companies can’t get away from the fact that the controller cards, burn speeds, and drives are the same.

Myth: I Can Build My Own CD or DVD duplicator Tower and Save Lots of Money
Many customers have looked into building their own duplicator towers and have decided that it’s a good fit. The case, controller, drives, and cables can all be purchased seperately and if you look at the sum of the cost of the parts, it’s less than an assembled duplicator costs out-the-door. Sounds like the way to go, right? Not necessarily. Unless you’re comfortable building computers, putting together a duplicator tower might be a little over your head. Connecting a few IDE cables from a controller card to the drives is no sweat, but once hard drives, USB/Firewire cards, and other accessories are involved the process can overwhelm even the most advanced hardware buff. Luckily for you we already explained how to build duplicator towers in an earlier post. A few more things to consider are the facts that when you build your own tower you have no warranty to rely on and no tech support to turn to when there’s a problem.

As you can see, duplicator towers are similar to computers in that they’re all made up of virtually the same parts (just different brands), and building your own is an available option but often not the most cost-effective solution in the long run. Don’t be fooled by flashy looks or the temptation to save a few bucks by building your own.