adaptec toast 4 deluxe - Toast 4 Deluxe cd software - Software Review - Evaluation

Emedia Professional, March, 2000 by Stephen F. Nathans

meet the new toast ...

Users of earlier versions of Toast will find few surprises in the new version. The interface is virtually identical to the familiar look of Toast 3.5 at whatever drive-support upgrade you left it. Toast 3.8, only sold with USB drive bundles from QPS and LaCie, is the spit-and-image of today's Toast as well. Technically, Toast 3.8 (aka "Toast USB") was the first edition of the software to support USB drives; however, since it only came in drive bundles, Toast 4 can be granted the distinction of being the first retail model to help you connect CD-R just as you would a scanner, a printer, or any other low-throughput peripheral. Welcome to the molasses-in-January world of iMac CD-R. Take your shoes off. Set a spell.

As ever, the straightforward Toast GUI gives you easy access to just about any CD recording function you need. All the usual suspects can be accessed by clicking on the upper left-hand box that defaults to "Mac Volume" for hard drive backups and the like. Other options include "Mac Files & Folders," "ISO 9660," "Mac/ISO Hybrid," Audio CD, CD-i, Video CD, and Enhanced Music CD. Discs can also be built from a pre-built disc image (a real advantage when working with shaky USB). Multisession and Multitrack XA recording are also supported.

The key new addition in that menu is "Disc Copy." Here Adaptec answers one of the two questions that have kept users hanging between Toast releases: Will the old Toast CD Copy utility ever be subsumed into Toast, or will Adaptec continue to make users buy it separately? Its inclusion here is good news; however, users are advised to use it cautiously. In testing on a first-generation iMac using an on-board 24X Max CD-ROM drive and a QPS Que! USB recorder, 2X burns invariably failed on all but the most measly datasets. Testing on an old 68K Quadra with a Plextor UltraPlex 32X CD-ROM drive as the source drive, and an 8X PlexWriter 8/20 as the recorder, duping the Toast 4.0 CD using Disc Copy proved no problem at full-throttle 8X speed. Testing was less successful on a 166 PowerPC unit, using the onboard 8X CD-ROM drive and an attached 8X TEAC recorder; the disc failed to copy at any speed faster that 4X. Fortunately, Adaptec gives you two testing options--"Check Speed" and "Simulation Mode"--that will serve you well until you find a speed you can use confidently.

calling dr.spin

Like most current CD-R products aiming to cross over to more consumer terrain, Toast 4.0 features a considerably beefed-up set of features for hobbyist audio recording. The first is relatively subtle--4.0 is the first iteration of the software to recognize increasingly popular 80-minute media. There was a reason 80-minute media failed to catch on in their first incarnation two years back, when they debuted priced about $15 higher than 74-minute CD-R discs: 60 extra MBs wasn't going to sell anybody on minutely heightened data storage.

The only real appeal of the discs was that they were sufficient to copy the seemingly "piracy-proof" 75 to 80-minute audio discs coming out of the Far East, and at a $15 premium the why-buy argument wasn't strong enough for ordinary audio enthusiasts who could live without those one or two extra tracks, and the profit margin for pirates was rendered virtually nil. Today, however, with 80-minute media prices creeping ever-closer to those of their standard-length counterparts (I've seen them under $2 in quantity), they're sure to catch on much more rapidly, and Adaptec is wise to recognize that in Toast 4. And for the record, Toast did indeed capture 78:38 of audio tracks (whose origin shall go unnamed) on a single Smart and Friendly 80-minute CD.