In answer to your questions: Yes, no, and it depends. And It just does.

(A friend of mine responded to a letter that I wrote to him after a year's time lag, with that kind of a response..) :-)

I also have Record Now! I've used it for a long time, and it is not nearly as versatile as Easy Media. It doesn't have the great editing controls that Easy Media does. It works fine if you are just burning copies of CDs, but I'd recommend spending the extra money on Easy Media. If there is a short-fall in money for Easy Media, I'd rather cover it than get software that doesn't do the job as well.

Yes, I have Easy Media on my computer and have just done a 14 track CD from old cassettes, as I've mentioned in this thread. I am very excited about the quality. On a couple of recordings, there was distortion at the start of the song, and I was able to fade in and eliminate the distortion and tape hiss. While Easy Media does have other programs for DVDs and photos, they are pretty much free-standing and can be ignored. I spent a couple of months trying to figure out the Cakewalk software I bought to do what Easy Media does and after several weeks of exchanging e-mails with the company and never getting the stupid thing to work, I gave up. With Easy Media, I installed it, fooled around with it without even reading the manual and quickly started recording successully. The manual is excellent and easy to understand (which is a rarity for manuals.) And I am a certified computer Klutz. And yes, I will walk Art through the software by e-mail, or phone if necessary.

As for the 48X speed, each track records at a different speed (don't ask me to explain why, because I have no clue.) The cheap CDs won't record at a high enough speed for some of the tracks. I found this to be true for the Cakewalk program, too. Earlier software that I've used worked fine with the cheap CDs, and Easy Media makes copies fine with the cheapest CDs produced. It's just when you're doing the Master that you need a 48X speed. Spending an extra fifty or seventy five cents for the master CD is not a financial burden. Then, you can make as many copies as you want on cheap CDs.

I just started working on the insert and booklet, and that program is a definite upgrade over Record Now and other earlier software I've owned.

Jerry