Adaptec's Jam for Macintosh

Emedia Professional, July, 1998 by Jeff Partyka

Clearly, the novelty of creating custom audio CDs has attracted plenty of musicians and music fans to CD-R. Audio professionals--such as studio recording engineers, producers, and the like--also have been quick to recognize the potential of CD-R as a handy in-house tool. The good news for them is that CD recording is becoming easier and more affordable all the time and, particularly on Macintosh systems (where it's generally more straightforward than on PCs), putting together a hardware system devoted primarily to audio applications like CD-R no longer needs to drain the brain or the pocketbook. On the software side, the recording product line for the Mac has been dominated by Toast, originally developed by Astarte and now available from Adaptec. Toast's versatility and ease-of-use make it a fine general recording tool, but Adaptec addresses the needs of highly audio-oriented CD-R users far more comprehensively with its latest Mac product, Jam for Macintosh.

Descended from another Astute tool, Toast CD-DA, Jam is a specialized standalone audio product (it's not necessary to have Toast as well, unless you want to make interactive CD Extra discs). It's primarily designed not for the hobbyist or LP archiver, but for the audio professional. It's jam-packed with tweaking tools for the audio CD-making process--all of which work marvelously well--and packaged with Peak LE, a stripped-down version of the Peak high-end audio-editing software from Berkley Integrated Audio Software (BIAS). Within the Jam track list, a user can adjust audio track gain (left and right stereo channels, together or separately), create smooth crossfades, trim the length of a sound file, set up to 99 index points in a single CD track, and more--all nondestructively, without altering the actual sound files. Once a disc is compiled, Jam can generate a fully Red Bookcompatible disc image, a useful feature if the project is being sent to a replication house. Jam supports many popular autoloaders, and the list of supported drives is periodically updated (the newest drivers can be downloaded from Adaptec's Web site).

Most of the testing took place on a Macintosh Centris running Macintosh System 7.5.3, with an external IGB hard drive and a Philips OMNIwriter CD-RW drive. Audio from analog sound sources was transferred using the same external hard drive and a Power Macintosh 6100/66 running Macintosh OS 8, and SoundHack software (a shareware utility available for download at ftp://shoko.calarts.edu/ pub/SoundHack).

JAM SESSIONS

All that's needed to start burning with Jam are a Macintosh computer (with operating system 7.1 or higher and at least 8MB RAM), a CD reader or other sound file source, and a supported CD recorder. Audio files need to be in Sound-Designer II (SDII), AIFF, or WAV format; Jam also supports SDII playlists and split stereo files, as produced by many audio sequencing programs. Just one of a pair of split stereo files need be added to a Jam track list, after which the software will automatically find its partner (or let you know if it's missing). For making compilations or copies from existing CDs, Jam comes with Toast Audio Extractor 1.1. which can save CD tracks to a hard drive as Jam-ready AIFF files. The inclusion of Peak LE completes the bundle. (The Adaptec and BIAS Web sites contain information on the many features of Peak and Peak LE.)

The first step to making a CD with Jam is to gather and prepare the audio files. If other CDs are your source material, Toast Audio Extractor makes that job a cinch--provided your hard drive has enough room (you'll need approximately 700MB of free space). You can even choose to extract a portion of a CD track by selecting a specific segment on the program's graphic interface and hitting the extract button.

Once the sound files are ready, they can be imported into the Jam track list by dragging-and-dropping, or by hitting the "add track" button. Once in the track list, files can be tweaked, edited, and/or crossfaded. Six types of crossfades are available for recorders that support disc-at-once recording. A track can be faded out as another fades in, or two tracks can simply be overlapped without fades. The Jam manual--a well-written and helpful handbook all around--clearly outlines the different types and how to use them.

If you don't want crossfades, Jam lets you select the length of the pauses between tracks (again assuming the recorder can run in disc-at-once mode). The track list also offers check boxes for marking tracks as copy-protected, and for enabling pre-emphasis, which boosts high frequencies in an audio track if needed. IRSC codes for each track can be typed into the track list as well.

Once your disc-to-be is full (a time indicator in the bottom right-hand corner of the track list window shows you how long your work-in-progress is), you can listen to your crossfades or other edits, or the entire track list, by using the sound player feature. Jam uses the Apple Sound Manager for playback; you control it by using the CD-player-like controls at the top of the window, which include a volume lever.