Sound to burn: audio recording tools for CD-R

Emedia Professional, Feb, 1998 by Stephen F. Nathans

Unlike GEAR Audio and CD Spin Doctor, HyCD Music is strictly for audio disc duping and compiling, with direct CD-to-CD copying supported for audio extraction-capable SCSI CD-ROM drives such as Plextor's 4X to 20X drives and Philips' 8X and 16X readers. Tracks may also be extracted and stored on hard drive from single or multiple audio CDs, added to a Playlist, then sequenced to the user's liking with Cut and Paste buttons, and recorded to CD using the software's Record function. HyCD Music is available as a standalone product for $69.95; the full-featured HyCD Publisher lists for $495.

Adaptec's Toast 3.5: Copying, Extraction Now Extras

Toast 3.5, the latest version of the leading Macintosh premastering software developed by Astarte--and now an Adaptec product--is the first edition of the software to incorporate code from another Astarte-developed product, Toast CD-Copy. The copying utility appears in Toast 3.5's new Greatest Hits interface, in which users can drag and drop audio files from source CDs onto CD-R without having to stage the files to hard drive first.

Also included in the Toast 3.5 "Goodies" folder is Toast Audio Extractor 1.0, which provides high-speed digital audio extraction at speeds near those achieved by OMI/Microtest's standard-setting Disc-To-Disk and lets users build and edit hard drive-staged audio disc images with a drag-and-drop GUI. The utility also includes a preview feature and the ability to extract audio into multiple file formats, including AIFF, WAV, and the Macintosh-specific Sound Designer 11 and SoundEdit 16. Toast 3.5 lists for $99.

Smart and Friendly's CDR Disc Jockey: A Jukebox Hero

One interesting tool that integrates CD jukeboxes and towers with audio CD recording is Smart and Friendly's CDR Disc Jockey. Bundled with all Smart and Friendly standalone recorders and featuring support for the company's 8X and 20X CD-R Decks, CDR Disc Jockey gives Windows 95 and NT 4.0 users a point-and-click interface for recording customized compilations from up to four CD-ROMs to CD-R, and saves them the hassle of painstaking disc-by-disc, track-by-track manual organization and engineering of compiled discs. What's more, once the multiple-source track list is set, Disc Jockey performs recording functions in the background, which allows other applications to run simultaneously--a boon for multitask workstations. The product was designed, according to Smart and Friendly president Perry Solomon, in response to repeated end-user requests to take audio recording, an increasingly popular CD-R application, and make its implementation as "easy and convenient" as possible.

Interestingly, CDR Disc Jockey includes a special piracy-prevention mechanism designed to deter users from repeatedly outputting the same compiled disc to CD-R. According Solomon, "The playlist goes away immediately after you make one recording," a feature implemented, he says, "to inhibit the possibility of less-than-legal applications."

CDR Disc Jockey is sold in Smart and Friendly bundles, such as the CDR 2006 Plus, which lists for $399 in its internal model and $499 for the external version.