Topic: Any other frustrated mac users?

[brianp]

"If there is no SBE on a track, it deletes the track and doesn't convert it to FLAC. Plus, what if you just want to track it and burn to CD? Track with CDWav and burn to CD. That's only 2 steps. To burn to CD with the method above you still need to decode the flacs and burn to disc. 5 steps."

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Toast will fix SBE's before it burns to CD so that is a non-issue on a Mac.

[Krispy D]

I do everything on a mac and love it.  it just takes time and a willingness to adjust.  It's like a new language.  even if you know 1000 words you can hardly communicate as well as a three year old!

I'll take that POS g4 off your hands if you want to throw it away...   

[scb]

"If there is no SBE on a track, it deletes the track and doesn't convert it to FLAC. Plus, what if you just want to track it and burn to CD? Track with CDWav and burn to CD. That's only 2 steps. To burn to CD with the method above you still need to decode the flacs and burn to disc. 5 steps."

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Toast will fix SBE's before it burns to CD so that is a non-issue on a Mac.

toast has always fixed sbes when burning

[Patrick]

if i were to write a cdwav equivalent for the mac that outputted directly to flac (allowing the mac to do things in all of ONE step), would that make you happy?

[scb]

it would defintiely take some work.  but it i think it can be done.  but there's a bunch of other stuff i need to get to...

[som]

If there is no SBE on a track, it deletes the track and doesn't convert it to FLAC.

that's just plain wrong. xact doesn't delete  unless you tell it to delete the originals

Yes, that's true. If you don't tell it to delete original files, it will leave the original file, but not encode it. So, you need to figure out which files did not encode, and do those seperately.

What would be cool is if in xACT, you could encode to FLAC with an option to fix SBE's, which is a little different than fixing SBE's with an option to encode to FLAC, know what I mean? "I will encode all of these files to FLAC and fix any SBE's along the way" vs. "I will see if any of these files have SBE errors, and if any do, I will fix the SBE's, and any files I fix I will encode to FLAC."

I do not mean to rag on xACT at all.....it is definitely the best mac software I've found for all this computer music stuff.

on a pc, you split tracks and then encode to flac or shn, right?  on the mac, you split tracks, and the encode to flac/shn can also fix sector boundary errors.  the same 2 steps

As often as not, I split tracks and burn to CD. Not everything I tape gets torrented/traded, and I keep the master DAT as the backup, so I don't always encode. However, if Toast fixes SBE's on the fly, that's good to know.

I had this happen too. I wonder if it has anything to do with some sort of copy protection. In my case it seems like it cut off all tracks that were longer than 3 minutes right at 3 minutes.

Are you guys using fully licensed copies of Toast?

My copy was on the G4 when I bought it, I assume it's fully licensed. I'll check on that. I think I'll also try to burn the CD with I-tunes.

if i were to write a cdwav equivalent for the mac that outputted directly to flac (allowing the mac to do things in all of ONE step), would that make you happy?

It just might!    Say what you want about all the sound editors that can split tracks, that can't match the ease of a tool that is *made* for splitting tracks. it is by far the biggest gap between doing all this stuff on a PC and doing it on a Mac.

So, yeah, that would be wonderful! And even more wonderful to have the option to output as flac or aif/wav. (Doesn't anyone burn CDs anymore?)

[Patrick]

it would defintiely take some work.  but it i think it can be done.  but there's a bunch of other stuff i need to get to...

I'll bet it would take some work.  Although it seems like such a simple program it really executes alot of steps at once.  

I was halfway kidding about the CDWav equivalent for OSX, it would be nice, but I'm not complaining about it not being around or anything  

[cpatch]

So, yeah, that would be wonderful! And even more wonderful to have the option to output as flac or aif/wav. (Doesn't anyone burn CDs anymore?)

You really do owe it to yourself to take a look at Amadeus II on the Mac (http://www.hairersoft.com/Amadeus.html)...for full control of the split points you simply scroll or play through the file, add markers at the split points, and then select the "Split According to Markers..." menu option and choose your file format (including AIFF, Wave, and FLAC).

If you want a more automated approach, there's a "Generate Markers" option that lets you search for gaps between tracks with full control over the minimum length and threshold level for a section to be considered a gap.

Once you have your markers, BTW, there is a "Modify Markers" menu option that allows you to align the positions of the markers to 75Hz to make sure the resulting CD is completely gapless. (You do have to use Toast or iTunes to burn the CD.)

If that doesn't cut it for you, Toast used to come (and may still come) with a helper application called CD Spin Doctor that looked a lot like CDWav. I never spent much time with it or CDWav so I couldn't tell you how similar they were in actual use, but it might be worth looking into.

Craig

[som]

+T's for all of the advice and suggestions....I guess there are a few more tools worth looking into.

[scb]

shouldn't you be at a keller williams show or something?

[Patrick]

No issues on my end 

[ashevillain]

if i were to write a cdwav equivalent for the mac that outputted directly to flac (allowing the mac to do things in all of ONE step), would that make you happy?

yes.

[Massive Dynamic]

You really do owe it to yourself to take a look at Amadeus II on the Mac (http://www.hairersoft.com/Amadeus.html)...for full control of the split points you simply scroll or play through the file, add markers at the split points, and then select the "Split According to Markers..." menu option and choose your file format (including AIFF, Wave, and FLAC).

If you want a more automated approach, there's a "Generate Markers" option that lets you search for gaps between tracks with full control over the minimum length and threshold level for a section to be considered a gap.

Once you have your markers, BTW, there is a "Modify Markers" menu option that allows you to align the positions of the markers to 75Hz to make sure the resulting CD is completely gapless. (You do have to use Toast or iTunes to burn the CD.)

If that doesn't cut it for you, Toast used to come (and may still come) with a helper application called CD Spin Doctor that looked a lot like CDWav. I never spent much time with it or CDWav so I couldn't tell you how similar they were in actual use, but it might be worth looking into.

Craig

Craig, I downloaded the trial version and I've looked at the manual, but haven't had a chance to play with it much. Will it take 24 bit files and dither for redbook CDs? If so, any idea what dither scheme it uses?

[cpatch]

Craig, I downloaded the trial version and I've looked at the manual, but haven't had a chance to play with it much. Will it take 24 bit files and dither for redbook CDs? If so, any idea what dither scheme it uses?

I know it handles 24-bit files (and arbitrary sampling rates) but I have no idea about the dithering...I just started working with 24-bit recently. I do know it supports VST plugins and either comes with one for dithering or there's a free one available. (I have one called "mda dither" installed but I don't remember if it came with the program or I downloaded it later.)

Craig

[som]

This morning I extracted a CD with xACT and then burned it with Toast. Listening to it in the car I found that several tracks just ended in the middle and it went on to the next track!

I had this happen too. I wonder if it has anything to do with some sort of copy protection. In my case it seems like it cut off all tracks that were longer than 3 minutes right at 3 minutes.

Okay, I burned the same extracted disc with ITunes instead of Toast. Now the tracks play all the way through, but turn to silence at the point where they wre cutting off! I listened again to the original disc and the tracks play all the way through with no problem.

Another off thing....the original disc is TAO. It's a CDR copy of a long out-of-print LP. Cheapo brand CDR. There are a couple of songs that segue without a break, which is what alerted me to the fact that it was TAO (there's a two second gap in the middle of the segue). However, when I extracted it, it looks like the TAO gaps were gone! There was no silence at the end or beginning of the two segued tracks. I extracted with xACT.

Tonight I'm going to listen to the tracks on the computer and see if the tracks that cutoff play okay on the computer. I expect that they will have some sort of problem since two burning softwares had problems with them.

I will also try to extract by just dragging the tracks from the CDR into a folder. I assume that this is not a very safe extraction method, correct?