Sound to burn: audio recording tools for CD-R

Emedia Professional, Feb, 1998 by Stephen F. Nathans

THE UPPER REGISTER: STUDIO-ORIENTED CD-R AUDIO TOOLS

Adaptec not only offers a consumer-oriented CD-R audio tool in Toast 3.5, but also sells recording studio-oriented software with Adaptec Jam, an update of the Toast CD-DA technology that Adaptec purchased from Astarte in early 1997. But Adaptec Jam is only one of a number of tools--and by no means the most sophisticated--that are designed to integrate CD-Recordable technology into professional audio production environments. Pushing a growing high-end audio production market for CD-R are long-standing and recently updated tools such as Hohner Midia's Red Roaster Gold, DigiDesigo's MasterList CD, Sonic Foundry's CD Architect, and Steinberg's WaveLab.

Adaptec Jam: A Now Day for Toad CD-DA

Based on the former Toast CD-DA software originally developed by Astarte, Adaptec Jam is a Macintosh-based product for professional-level audio mastering that combines both the output-to-Red Book CD capabilities available in mainstream premastering tools with higher-end disc-image editing utilities especially suited to audio work. The software includes such features as non-destructive cross-fades between tracks, with a variety of curves for both the fade-in and fade-out, customizable PQ subcode editing to create user-determined index points for and within each track, audio track trimming, and the ability to add UPC/EAN and ISRC coding for professional distribution and copy protection.

Adaptec Jam also includes the Toast Audio Extractor utility of Toast 3.5 for digital audio extraction, and can be used with Toast to create CD Extra stamped multisession discs, which combine distinct audio and multimedia segments on a single CD. Jam also provides disc-at-once recording capabilities for similarly-abled recorders for making audio discs suitable as input sources for replication.

Adaptec Jam lists for $399.

Red Roaster Gold: Sound of a 24-bit Future

Designed for sound engineers using CD-R as the output and mastering medium for their meticulously studiohoned recordings, Red Roaster Gold is a multitrack mastering program capable of the full range of audio editing tasks and of producing recordings at quality levels well beyond the Red Book requirements for audio CD.

Red Roaster Gold is the latest version of Hohner Midia's long-standing high-end audio tool, now marketed by Sek'd America, which subsumed Hohner Midia in 1997. Optimized for DVD mastering and MPEG-2 sound standards, Red Roaster Gold allows audio professionals to record and edit audio in 24-bit float point format with sampling rates up to 96KHz--well beyond CD's standard 44.1KHz. Red Roaster Gold features real-time and offline effects found in Hohner's high-end audio production system, Samplitude 4.0, including de-noising, declicking, de-hissing, FFT filtering, room simulation, and more. Before recording, all tracks can be run through peak-limiting and noise-shaping modules.

Red Roaster Gold lists for $695. Registered owners of earlier Red Roaster versions can upgrade for $249.