![]() Toast and Jam can burn an audio file of up to 192kHz and 64 bits to a standard audio CD. ITunes can convert the files it supports (44.1kHz and 48kHz AIFF, WAV, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless files) to a format compatible with audio CDs, but it doesn’t know what to do with higher-resolution audio files – files created in professional audio applications with special hardware. Toast and Jam (and Toast with Jam, which includes both applications and additional Toast features) perform other tricks that iTunes can’t. As with Toast, you can pick gaps of different lengths between tracks – although with Jam, these gaps can be of any length (perfect if you want that surprise bonus track to begin 45 seconds after your listener thinks the last track has ended). This allows you to create a more natural-sounding cross-fade, one that’s likelier to cover up the audio hiccup that occurs between tracks. ![]() With Jam, you can not only impose cross-fades on tracks and burn those effects to disc, but also change the cross-fade’s shape and duration. With Tiger and QuickTime 7, you can no longer use Toast or Jam to burn protected AAC files. Although Toast doesn’t include a cross-fade feature, its professional sibling, Jam, does. iTunes’ cross-fade feature affects only playback in iTunes, not burning. To create smooth transitions between iTunes tracks, you need a tool that can cross-fade one track into another (in other words, overlap portions of each track and fade the first track out while fading the second in). It also lets you record tracks with gaps of different lengths between them (the program offers gaps from zero to eight seconds long).Ĭreating a seamless CD from compressed (MP3 or AAC) files in your iTunes library is a different matter, however. DAO maintains the seamless track flow when burning a CD from uncompressed files on your computer, copying from one CD to another, or copying from a disk image to a CD. Toast supports a feature called Disc-At-Once (DAO), which keeps the laser on between the tracks it’s burning. And suppose you want no gap between tracks two and three, but a two-second gap between tracks five and six? iTunes can’t help you. However, this leaves you with long tracks that you can’t navigate easily. If you think you might burn audio CDs from your ripped music, consider joining multiple tracks into one at the time of import (Advanced: Join CD Tracks). But even if you configure iTunes so it doesn’t put a gap between the tracks when you burn them to disc (as you can in iTunes’ Burning preference pane), you’ll still hear a tiny hiccup between songs. One of iTunes’ aggravating quirks is its inability to create discs with seamlessly connected tracks.įor example, the last several tracks of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album flow continuously. If you’d like to create an enhanced audio CD that also includes pictures and text, or if you want to fashion a disc that includes CD-Text (information, such as the album and song title, that appears in the display of compatible players), a tool such as Toast is necessary. You can also mount these images, and they’ll play back in iTunes as if they were physical audio CDs.Īnd when burning audio CDs, iTunes creates a plain-vanilla disc. Toast also gives you the option of saving audio CDs as disk images (instead of copying them directly to blank CDs) – ideal if you have only one burner or if you plan to make multiple copies of a disc. Then click on the Record button and watch as Toast copies your disc. ![]() If you have multiple burners, just choose the drive you want to copy from in the Read From pop-up menu, and choose the drive you want to record with in the pop-up menu that appears at the bottom of the Toast window. But Toast makes duplicating audio CDs easy by letting you copy an audio CD directly from one optical drive to another. And OS X’s Disk Utility won’t let you create an image of an audio disc. You need to rip them as AIFF files (by going to iTunes’ Importing preference pane and changing the Import Using setting to AIFF Encoder) and then burn the resulting files back to a CD-R. With a program such as Roxio’s £42 plus VAT) Toast 6 Titanium, or £85 plus VAT Toast with Jam 6, you can do more with your music and create a greater variety of audio discs.īacking up audio CDs with iTunes is a tedious process. iTunes doesn’t have many advanced features. ITunes is a great tool for ripping, encoding, and managing your music – and it’s free – but even Apple wouldn’t claim that it’s the be-all and end-all for creating audio CDs. ![]() ITunes is fine for listening to music and managing your iPod, but if you need more from your audio and burning applications you’ll need to look elsewhere.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |