So far, I've found Media Jukebox and Windows Media Player pretty frustrating to work with. I like the interface for Media Jukebox a lot better and have just tried using it, but the songs I copied have gaps and skips in them. What causes that and how can it be solved? I never ran into that problems with the Windows tool. Media Player seems slow is generally annoying to work with.
Nope. The software is free. I just started using it, and it beats the pants off Windows Media Player. It is very user friendly, so far.
iTunes ********ing rocks. You rip all your cds in there and you can drag and drop all the tracks you want onto a playlist which you can then burn. You can move the tracks around in the playlist too. It's dead easy. The new version (4.6?) allows you to print up libraries or playlists, including playlists as an insert for cds. And as mentioned above it's free.
And since it now plays WMA files, there's really no reason not to use iTunes (though I'm not sure it plays encrypted files purchased from Napster etc).
Hey, I just started using it about a week ago. Buck up. or does this mean I'm a dinosaur, too? oh dear god.
I've used both, and compared to Acoustica, iTunes ain't ********. Part of that, though, is because there is nothing worse to me than massive 2 second pauses between songs.
Except it's ridiculously easy to set the length of the pauses. Choose Edit > Preferences. Click the Burning tab at the top of the window. Choose a setting from the Gap Between Songs pop-up menu. You can set it so there's no pause, or have 5-second between songs.
Must be a new feature. i searched all over the place for that on one of the older versions and couldn't find it. Whatever, though. I'm quite happy with Acoustica. I swear to god it makes my CDs burn faster.
I like CDEx. Convert CDs to wav, mp3, avi, whatever. I've created ring tones for my PocketPC phone from my favorite CDs with it. Best of all, it's free.
I concur, for ripping CD's and converting wav's to MP3, there is no better. Plus, the error correction feature is really nice. I've had a handful of CDs that were pitted and scratched and really f'd up, but CDEx has been able to rip a near perfect copy of the offending track so I can back up the album. It will even let you rip partial tracks and allows you to specify which range so you don't have to edit a wav then re-encode.
I'm trying iTunes now and I'm not overly impressed with it. Maybe I didn't click the right button or something, but I can't get it to "see" a new cd without stopping and starting it.
Nancy, It sounds like you haven't imported the tracks. If you use iTunes as a player it's kind of clunky, plus all the good stuff comes from having the tracks in your library.
Yep - put in a new cd and it only sees what was there before. It doesn't update the cd info. That's probably more a fluke with my computer and not iTunes. I did import the tracks. I still don't find the tool all that great. Burning a cd was pretty easy, though. Is there a way in iTunes to create a label for a cd? I looked around last night and didn't see anything. I'm not going to try another tool just yet so I' curious if it's there and I'm just too blind to see it.
For the disc itself or the CD case? It does the latter, and if you have a custom cover design, you can import and print it through iTunes as well. From info.apple.com: Select your library or a playlist, and choose File > Print. Select whether you want to print a CD jewel case insert, or song or album list. Choose a printing theme from the Theme pop-up menu. Themes allow you to change how the information is printed. Click Print.
You probably already have done this, but did you go to edit->preferences->general and set what to do on CD insert? Sorry it hasn't been as easy as we advertised.
Hey skip! Do I sound like a help desk's worst nightmare? I found that last night. I guess I came in with some preconceptions about how to do it. Just be glad I'm willing to accept my feeble Photoshop skills and move on. Anyway, thanks guys. For the next cd burning project, I think I'll try that cdex application. Then, I may be ready to contribute to the Post's next review of this type of software.
Nah, no problem at all. In fact, I didn't know about the case insert printing until you asked about it and I looked around for info. Also, the thing you mentioned before about a newly burned CD not showing up, that does happen to me occasionally. I'll hear the chime, but no sign of the disc. But if I eject, then re-insert, the CD shows up on the left panel. I like Toast's interface better, but in most cases, I have an existing playlist on iTunes so it's easier just to burn from iTunes. Plus, I'm trying to keep my software piracy to a minimum.
The first iTunes track list gave me a lot of stuff like Song Name/The .... I'm trying out some other formats to see if they come out better.
Help. With the newest version of iTunes and the new version of QuickTime, iTunes creates files with a W4A extension and the cdgain software doesn't work for these files. Plus, when I had a playlist that combined MP3s with the W4As, it skipped the MP3s on cd burning and just left dead space. MP3Gain errored on the newly imported files. I tried CDEX, but it says I need to use a different application to burn a CD that works in regular CD players. Is that true?