Topic: Questions about my new Mac

[OldNeumanntapr]

Well,

My old G5 iMac, that had a bad power supply for almost a year, finally died. I was able to replace it with a brand new iMac, thanks to my generous 90-year-old grandmother.

The new computer is a lot better than the old one, which goes without saying, but there are some things I need to figure out.

My old version of Toast Lite, which I liked very much to burn CDs with, is no longer compatible because it was on the Power PC platform, and that apparently is 'no longer supported'. I liked that program because it was simple, relatively basic, and allowed me to add text info to CDs that I burned. Now it looks like I'll have to buy a new, expensive, version of Toast that contains a lot of things that I don't need and probably won't use. I looked into freeware online for CD burning for the Mac, but didn't see anything that looked appealing. Maybe I missed something.

What software are other Mac people using to burn CDs with?

I'm still irritated that these new Macs no longer come with internal optical disc drives! I have to purchase an outboard Superdrive.

I've always disliked iTunes, but I REALLY Hate this new version! iTunes used to let you listen to something without importing it into the library. This new version imports Everything you try to just listen to! I called the Mac store and complained about it and they said, 'Oh that's a new Feature.' I wouldn't call it a feature. I'd call it a bug!

One nice thing about this new Mac is that I was able to upgrade to xACT 2.23, from 1.73. Hopefully that will solve the FLAC issues that I had with the older version. People that I had sent FLACs to that I had encoded said that they were getting errors because the FFPs didn't match. I never did figure out exactly why that was happening.

Thanks,

ONT.

[dnsacks]

1) for cd burning, you might want to try out the free program burn for mac first -- http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html -- I"m not burning too many audio cds, but found this to be a good basic burning program, may help you avoid dropping the $$$ for toast

2) Optical drive, if not too late, you might want to consider returning the superdrive and going with an external blu-ray burner for around the same price.  My buddy's using this $85 samsung - http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SE-506BB-TSBD-External-Blu-ray/dp/B00AO1XFM0

3) playback -- although I've become used to itunes, Vox is a nice simple alternative that plays flac, etc. too -- its available for free on the apple app store

4) format conversion, xact is great, but xld is also worth checking out -- http://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html

[DigiGal]

If you don't like iTunes, give Fidelia a try...

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/techspecs.php

It is a real bummer they dropped built in drives to make a desktop computer thinner.  The card slot is on the back now too instead of the side.  I'm not a fan of the current iMacs hopefully they'll be better down the line by the time a replacement is necessary.

[OldNeumanntapr]

1) for cd burning, you might want to try out the free program burn for mac first -- http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html -- I"m not burning too many audio cds, but found this to be a good basic burning program, may help you avoid dropping the $$$ for toast

Can you add text info? I liked Toast Lite because it let me add both track names and also disc title, i.e.; date and venue info.

Thanks.

ONT.

[dnsacks]

Although I don't personally have experience with whether burn lets you add text info to the cd (as I don't use that feature), the description "Burn offers advanced options like CD-Text and mp3 tag editing to personalize your disc" suggests that it does -- hey, it's a free download, give it a try

[H₂O]

I use Cog for playback on my mac

[page]

I use Cog for playback on my mac

Cog is nice. I've used Songbird before as well, but probably wouldn't pick it up now. There is a third one that is really good, will have to look when I get home.