Joerg's point may be right-on. I use a Mac and haven't had the problem but there may be a level of noise on my results I don't care about. I'd get professional opinions based on the balance between your budget and your requirements.

No you can't usually stream straight from audio in to digital to CD; the reason is that CD writing equipment works at a fairly high speed and it can get hosed up if the timing of the incoming stream is out of synch. If instead you have a segment of your hard drive set aside for the 650 Megs of .aiff, .wav, .mp3 or simiular files to reside then the tranfer rate is constant and predictably in synch with the CD writer. This may change with advances in technology or more specialized equipment.

Another option, again depending on budget vs. requirmeents, is to contract the work to a fully equipped studio.

A