Any other frustrated mac users?

[cpatch]

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?

I've never had a problem with it, although I doubt it does much error checking if that's what you're asking.

Craig

[wbrisette]

I've had the PC packed up since Christmas. It's been 2 1/2 months and I'm ready to pull it out again. I've successfully split tracks with a Peak, but it is a pain compared to CDWav. And the crap with the tracks cutting off after a few minutes.....

I've used Peak since version 2, I've never had a problem with tracks cutting off. With version 5, they have made marking regions a no brainer. Find the spot you want, use cmd-cntrl-shift-R and you're done.

I have never understood why people freak out with the sector boundry thing. Nobody doing professional mastering I know screws around with it (I don't either) and nobody complains that commercial CDs sector boundries are screwed up. I've submitted a few final projects to their owners who had them turned into CDs and we've gotten zero complaints over the years. I've read what the SBE stuff is suppose to do, but I've always thought it was more folklore than science in actual practice. Those who don't believe, me feel free to download any of the stuff I've put up on archive. You won't hear clicking between tracks. It's just not there.

Anyhow, back to Peak, what version are folks using? I find Peak a no brainer when it comes to marking tracks and making CDs without having to set the gap, because the gap is determined by where you set your region markers.

Wayne

[scb]

I have never understood why people freak out with the sector boundry thing. Nobody doing professional mastering I know screws around with it (I don't either) and nobody complains that commercial CDs sector boundries are screwed up.

"commercial" burners might fix them when burning

[wbrisette]

"commercial" burners might fix them when burning

Maybe, I'm not sure what the entire process is when the glass master is made.

Wayne

[scb]

i've only heard the sector boundary problem on 1 cd player that i've owned.  it's definitely not something you'll hear on every player.  but it does exist

[ehren]

First off, I love macs, and have used them for 12 years. If I was using a computer for multi-track recording I'd use a mac. If I was using it for concert recording, I'd also use a mac.

In my situation though, the new computer is serving as a basic daw, but more so, it's simple data management and the pc does this faster and easier than a mac. I'm using the pc as a media server and a very basic editing platform, i.e., cdwave or wavelab>flac>foobar. These programs simply do not have equivalents on the mac, not that I've found. Sure you can use itunes, but it doesn't burn DAO. Sound Studio works ok but it's a cpu hog and it's buggy. Foobar is simply one of the most powerful audio apps I've used, it's a thousand times more powerful than a program like itunes. When I'm done converting my collection I should have around 500gigs of music. The pc is faster and cheaper to manage this kind of data. Keep in mind I'm typing this on my powerbook

The imac is a great machine at a great price, for a mac. I bought my dell through the dell outlet for $500, 3ghz p4 800fsb, 160g drive,  16x duaI layer dvd, 1g ram ect... I could buy a mac-mini for that price but the performance of a mac-mini is complete shit compared to this machine, I bought one for my sister last year and it's slow as hell. All I'm trying to say is that for basic music/data management the pc is a cheaper/better solution for me. I'm still lusting over one of the new mac book pros though!

[MattD]

Foobar is simply one of the most powerful audio apps I've used, it's a thousand times more powerful than a program like itunes.

The lack of a 24-bit CoreAudio capable FLAC player is the only reason my PC still sees use. I wish I knew enough about both the CA and FLAC APIs to write a program that did this.

[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?

Curiouser and curiouser...I just listened to the tracks that don't burn properly and they sound fine on the computer. So xACT did a fine job of extracting, but *two* software programs mess up when burning the *same* two tracks. Weird.


Also, regarding SBE's, I've heard plenty of shows that have little blibs at the track boundary (not two-second TAO gaps, just little blips) and I always assumed that was the effect of SBE's. If it's not (like you're saying Wayne) then what is it?

[scb]

Curiouser and curiouser...I just listened to the tracks that don't burn properly and they sound fine on the computer. So xACT did a fine job of extracting, but *two* software programs mess up when burning the *same* two tracks. Weird.

maybe there's somethign wrong with your burner...

[taper420]

Hey, Spin Doctor is still included with Toast and I was relieved to find its basicaly the mac version of cdwav (but it can handle more formats). I grew up on pc's but love my G4. You will get used to it, it is well worth the transition.

[scb]

The imac is a great machine at a great price, for a mac. I bought my dell through the dell outlet for $500, 3ghz p4 800fsb, 160g drive,  16x duaI layer dvd, 1g ram ect... I could buy a mac-mini for that price but the performance of a mac-mini is complete shit compared to this machine,

but i bet the dell wasn't the size of 4 stacked cd cases...

[cpatch]

I bought my dell through the dell outlet for $500, 3ghz p4 800fsb, 160g drive,  16x duaI layer dvd, 1g ram ect... I could buy a mac-mini for that price but the performance of a mac-mini is complete shit compared to this machine, I bought one for my sister last year and it's slow as hell.

It's a little better as of 30 minutes ago...Apple just updated it to include either a 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo (3x faster) or a 1.67GHz Intel Core Duo (5x faster).

Craig

[ashevillain]

- No CDWav equivalent. Yes, I have managed with great effort to split up shows with Audacity and Peak, but there is nothing as simple and elegant as CDWav. There just isn't. (Oh, and fon't forget to fix those SBE's!)

I just figured something good out the other day about Sound Studio. I can't believe that I'm the 1st but I haven't found it posted yet so here it is:

Sound Studio guide to tracking files without SBE's (I've used version 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 ...I'm not sure if 2.2.4 works the same):

1. 'View' menu: Check 'Grid Shown' and 'Snap to Grid'

2. 'View' menu: 'Edit Grid' > Set 'Offset to first grid line' to 0:00.000 and 'Spacing between lines' to 0:01.000. If you want to you could use 'samples' (instead of h/m/s) in which case you would make 'Spacing between lines' = to a multiple of 75. I find 1 second grid lines to be more useful..especially since my brain already thinks in terms of h/m/s and not samples.

3. Now you can add your markers as usual. Since they will always snap to the nearest grid line and the nearest grid line will always be on a sector boundary there are no SBE's!

4. These changes do not need to be made everytime. They will stay put (unless you trash your prefs).

I've done this about 4-5 times now and it's worked everytime. I'll run the files through xACT and they come back with the "everything seems ok, nothing to fix" message everytime. This fact, combined with my increasing familiarity with Sound Studio, caused me to actually purchase the software! 

ps- pardon me if I've just stumbled upon something that everyone else already knew.

[ehren]

The imac is a great machine at a great price, for a mac. I bought my dell through the dell outlet for $500, 3ghz p4 800fsb, 160g drive,  16x duaI layer dvd, 1g ram ect... I could buy a mac-mini for that price but the performance of a mac-mini is complete shit compared to this machine,

but i bet the dell wasn't the size of 4 stacked cd cases...

This is very true, macs have a lot going for them, no doubt. For the average user a mac mini is great, but I want something I can stack hard drives in, swap out video cards, ect...More of a geek need and I can't afford a flippin G5 or I would have one, without question.