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| Audio Lovers’ CD Burning Software |
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Software Reviews May 2001 • Vol.12 Issue 5 Page(s) 19-21 in print issue |
Audio Lovers’ CD Burning Software Great Apps For Making Your Own Music Mix CDs | ||
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Every so often, a technology comes along that makes people yearn for a new computer. Along with Year 2000 concerns and gaming, CD-RW (CD-rewriteable) drives have been a prime reason to buy a new PC in the last few years. This is partly due to their potential to burn (write) inexpensive audio CD-Rs (CD-recordables)that can play flawlessly in almost any CD player. Besides big RAM and hard drive space, though, users need a good piece of software to help them turn those musical mixes into CD reality. No two CD-burning utilities have exactly the same features. However, all of the following applications can rip (extract) music tracks from CDs and burn them to CD-R. Without trying to downplay other important features, such as data archiving and packet-writing (drag-and-drop file transfers to CD-RW), we'll review each program from the music lover's perspective. We tested all of the units on a 600MHz Athlon Hewlett-Packard 9600. It has 128MB of PC100 SDRAM, an LG CED-8080B 8X/4X/32X CD-RW drive, and Windows 98 SE.  CD-Maker 2000 Professional Edition $70 boxed version; $50 download NTI (714) 259-9700 http://www.ntius.com NTI (Newtech Infosystems) sent us CD-Maker 2000 Professional Edition 4.2.67. Among other things, it's a forgiving audio CD creator that's pretty accessible to new users. It's easy to rip tracks from CD to MP3 or WAV files in CD-Maker 2000. Once you've chosen the Audio CD option from the welcome screen, simply right-click one of the CD's tracks in the Explorer-like upper pane and choose Convert Audio Format. You can choose the track's name and destination folder, along with its sampling rate (quality setting) of up to 320Kbps (kilobits per second) if it's an MP3. CD-Maker 2000 can access the Gracenote (formerly CDDB) online database to automatically name tracks from many CDs. Note that CD-Maker 2000 doesn't support Microsoft's WMA (Windows Media Audio) format, which some users prefer for better sound quality than MP3 at a given sampling rate. Burning CDs is as easy as ripping. Just drag audio tracks from the upper-right pane to the playlist pane below and click Step 2. CD-Maker 2000 has some default settings that actually decide what's best for the CD you're burning. For example, you can choose to record a CD using the track at once, disc at once, or session at once methods or let CD-Maker choose. Track at once burns audio tracks with more individual focus. It shuts the laser off between each track, leaving a two-second gap between each. It doesn't finalize the disc, meaning it leaves the disc open for a data session(s) afterward. Disc at once records audio tracks one after another (no two-second gap), only shutting off the laser after the whole disc is burned rather than individual tracks. This method works in more CD players than TAO. Also, disc at once finalizes the CD, assuming there will be no data session appended to the music. Session at once writes the audio session without gaps in the same fashion as disc at once. However, it leaves the disc open to more sessions (doesn't finalize). Most if not all audio CD players can only play the first session on a CD, assuming it's audio. What's more, you can record live audio from your microphone or another source directly to CD.  CD-Maker seems to be more robust than the other utilities we tried. We had set it to test our CD burn before really doing it and to retry it at a slower speed if it encountered a buffer underrun error. In a buffer underrun, the computer doesn't supply data quickly enough to the CD-RW drive and the temporary storage cache runs empty, resulting in a flawed disc. Despite a conservative 4X burn speed, CD-Maker locked up during the test. The cool part is that once we pressed CTRL-ALT-DELETE and ended a task that wasn't responding, CD-Maker restarted the testing process at 2X speed. It then created a flawless CD. CD-Maker can also verify that the data on your new CD matches the source files. It's compatible with new CD-RW drives with Burn-Proof or Just-Link technologies, which ostensibly eliminate buffer underruns. All this is great news for novices. We do have a few criticisms. If you rip one song after another, CD-Maker 2000 will assume you want to save them as WAVs each time. Also, it will tell you how many minutes your proposed playlist totals, but it's up to you to do the math on how many minutes would still be free on a 74- or 80-minute CD-R. Meanwhile, the JewelCase Maker utility made it very difficult to put any graphics on an insert. It also claimed to support our ScanJet 4200C scanner through HP PrecisionScan LT, but it wouldn't actually accept an image from it. To top it off, we found no easy way to enter our new CD's track information short of typing it in by hand. We recommend the $50 download of CD-Maker 2000 over the $70 boxed version. The 18-page quick start guide really isn't worth the $20 difference, especially if you back up your downloaded installation file to CD.  Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum $99 ($50 upgrade for version 4 Deluxe users) Roxio (a subsidiary of Adaptec) (866) 280-7694 (408) 259-7694 http://www.roxio.com We normally don't review beta (prerelease) software, but with Roxio's Easy CD Creator's popularity, we made an exception. Although you can use Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum ($99; $79 after rebate) to burn data CDs, photo and video CDs anyone can play on a PC, disaster recovery and backup discs, and CD-RWs, we'll stick to its music capabilities. Roxio knew it could make a much simpler CD-burner for new users, but it didn't want to alienate current users of versions 3 and 4. The result is three separate programs for recording CDs. All three can access an online database for track names. The newest music burner for MP3s, WMAs, and WAVs is called SoundStream 2. This simple, logical application is exactly what a novice needs to get burning or ripping right away. Simply add tracks from a CD, file, or your music library to a playlist and then burn the CD at the speed you want. You'll need to click Finalize after the CD finishes in order to play it later. SoundStream has a 10-band equalizer and all sorts of other sound enhancement features for several types of audio files. In particular, the Spin Doctor utility makes moving LP record or cassette tracks to CD far less trying, with automatic track splitting, "pop" and noise reduction, and much more. The other music-burning applications are Music CD Project for CD-audio discs and Music MP3 Project. The latter lets you put up to 99 MP3s on a CD for use in the few (but multiplying) players and car stereos that can play MP3s from such a disc. Both applications strongly resemble Easy CD Creator 4. One improvement is remaining time and space estimates for both 74- and 80-minute CD-Rs. Also, when you want to rip a track (up to 320Kbps MP3s and 128Kbps WMAs), an Explorer-like save window lets you choose the destination folder, file name, format, and quality setting. You can even adjust start and end points from the same window. Unfortunately, in our beta (build 305), both Music CD Project and Music MP3 Project consistently locked up 3% into a burn session—just enough to toast a CD. This surprised our contact at Roxio, but she said there were still things to fix before the release. SoundStream worked fine, though. Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum comes with an improved CD Label Creator. It's fairly flexible in allowing you to put text or your CD's contents on inserts or even on the CD label, but we had a hard time resizing a large number of song titles to fit the current background theme. Still, CD Label Creator lets you preview fonts before you use them and inserts before you print. Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum is really more of a suite of awesome applications than a single software entity. And it is expensive, but because it has many features other than audio ones, you probably won't need any other software for your CD-RW.  MusicMatch Jukebox 6.0 free; $20 Plus version MusicMatch (858) 385-8360 http://www.musicmatch.com This free music jukebox is all the software you will need to play most discrete and streaming music formats, rip tracks, organize your song collection, and burn mix CDs. However, it is harder to learn and use than the others. MusicMatch 6.0 lets you tailor custom streaming radio stations over the Internet, play CDs, and convert files among MP3s, WAVs, and WMAs (although not from WMA to other formats). You can edit your MP3s' ID3V1 or ID3V2 tags (inaudible, embedded data files) with each song's title, artist, lyrics, notes, and even BMP or JPEG artwork. MusicMatch gives you an overwhelming level of control. For example, you can choose not only to use a hard drive cache, but also where it resides, how large the memory cache should be, and what priority it has in your system. After you've inspected the options in MusicMatch's many settings windows, actual burning is easy. If you're serious about burning CDs, spring for the $20 Plus version ($50 for lifetime upgrades). Besides quicker ripping and much faster burning—up to 12X with the right drive and CD-R—MusicMatch Plus lets you make jewel case inserts, CD labels, and custom settings on a 10-band graphic equalizer. We would have liked more flexibility in the insert maker to type in our own text, however. MusicMatch Plus also lets you print your Music Library list and even set your Desktop wallpaper to reflect any artwork in the MP3 currently playing. MusicMatch is more difficult to use than Easy CD Creator or CD-Maker. Although those programs let you drag songs from your hard drive or CDs directly into a burnable playlist, MusicMatch makes you add songs to its Music Library first. Unless you've adjusted the way it categorizes songs there, you might have to search for the files there and then add them to your playlist. Also, MusicMatch by default names ripped tracks according to their ID tags. It also uses these instead of file names in its Music Library and Playlist, so you'll want to learn how to edit ID tags. Another downside to MusicMatch version 6.00.0270 concerns errors we encountered on two different test systems. These included lockups and strange errors warning us to shut down nonexistent applications "outputting" audio. MusicMatch's tech support tried to help, but the Request Technical Support utility that was supposed to send them log files of our problems didn't work correctly either.  Smart Choice All of these applications had pros and cons. MusicMatch, although the least expensive and most tweakable, frustrated us with its complicated file management and frequent errors. However, it's the most music-oriented program we tested, and its visual features are pretty cool. CD-Maker 2000 was easier to use and more resilient. It also adds several CD-burning features beyond audio, but its lack of WMA support and goony jewel case insert software may turn away some buyers. Still, its $50 download price and "Smart Decision" settings help it net our Smart Choice award. Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum has some amazingly easy-to-use features and a comprehensive suite of burning applications. Although we can overlook this beta version's critical burning errors, trusting that they will be ironed out before release, its $99 price tag stuns us. If price is no object, you don't mind waiting for a rebate, or if you already have version 4 Deluxe, Easy CD Creator 5 is the one to get.  by Marty Sems
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