Review: Toast 6 Titanium

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: November 6, 2003

Product: CD burning software

Developer: Roxio

Minimum Requirements: Power Mac G3, Mac OS X v10.2, 200MB hard disc space, QuickTime 6, CD or DVD recorder (optional with ToastAnywhere), approximately 2GB for ever 10 minutes of digital video

Retail Price: $99.95

Availability: Out now

Did you all see (or read) High Fidelity, the movie starring John Cusack based on the novel by Nick Hornby? There are scenes in there in which the protagonist goes to great lengths to explain how to make the perfect mix tape. I identified with those scenes, as I used to spend far too much time agonizing over the selection and order of 90 minutes worth of songs. No more than three songs by the same band, and never back to back (unless, of course, the songs were "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions." No ballads until at least track four. No more than thirty seconds of dead space at the end of either side.

No Rick Astley.

These days, things are quite a bit different. I still have a tape deck in the stereo system upstairs, but I rarely use it. I haven't made a mix tape since the 90s. The 90s! Nope, the CD and the iPod have changed all of that for me, as they're where all my mixes go these days. No more sitting over a stereo system shuffling through 45s and 12" singles for a couple hours, I can now complete a mix in about twenty minutes, less if it's going to the iPod. Now, iTunes is perfect for that, of course, but, when it comes to burning CDs, I find iTunes to be...lacking.

Enter Toast 6 Titanium. Toast has been burning CDs for years now, mainly for music and data. But the medium is growing, and Toast is growing right along with it. This is most clearly evident in the program's interface.

Although the options are expanding, the interface is becoming more intuitive. Across the top of the Toast 6 window are four buttons: data, audio, video and copy. Selecting one of these alters the options in Disc Settings Drawer to the left of the main window. These options are presented in two ways: basic and advanced. For instance, when burning a Data CD with the basic options selected, you're asked if you want the CD to be Mac only or Mac/PC hybrid. You can also decide if you want the material to be compressed and/or encrypted (nice to have this built right in so you don't have to do it ahead of time). Now, under the advanced options, you can decide if you want the CD to be Mac only, a Mac/PC hybrid, DVD-ROM (UDF), ISO 9660, a custom hybrid, or a Mac volume. Your options also increase. Along with compressed and/or encrypted, you can select "Copy Desktop Database" and "HFS Standard."

Not sure what all this means? No worries. There's a by-God printed manual (although, they call it a "Getting Started Guide") full of 112 actual pages of explanation. It's laid out in a way that mirrors the program's interface, so it's very simple to hop right into exactly what you want to do. These days, printed manuals almost garner a 5 out of 5 rating on their own.

Getting files into Toast 6 is just as simple. Drag what you want into the window, and you're ready to go. Toast calculates how much memory the files will take up, and a gauge on the bottom right offers a clear visual representation of how much room is left on the disc. With audio CDs, a calculation of the amount of time the songs take up is also presented. With data, the calculation is of memory used. Next to the graphic space indicator, I would like to see a numeric calculation of how much space is being used now matter what type of CD is being burned. Graphics are pretty and all, but numbers are more useful.

Yes, it's easy to use, and Roxio has made Toast 6 Titanium easy to get to, as well. No need to hunt for the application to launch it; if you've got a file that needs burned, simply Control Click and select "Toast It" from the contextual menu. Toast 6 automatically launches, and even makes a calculated guess as to what style CD should be burned. Trying it with a TIFF, Toast 6 defaulted to data. Trying it with an AIFF, Toast opened to audio. Trying it with both brought up data. If you select multiple files and then choose "Toast It," Toast will add them all. Very handy.

The program's just as easy to access from your digital camera or camcorder. With "Plug & Burn," you can simply plug your digital capture device into the computer and have Toast 6 directly import and burn the material to CD in one step. Don't want to burn everything? I'd hope not. Toast 6 will allow you to import the material without burning it so you can lose what you don't want. You can then assign chapters for easier playback access. The Automatic option will make each clip its own chapter. If you have one long clip you'd like to split up, you can have Toast create a new chapter each minute or every two, three, five or ten minutes. It's a somewhat limited feature, yes, but it's better than nothing.

Toast 6 wants to play with your data, as well. For instance, instead of simply allowing you to burn a photo CD, Toast 6 makes it easy to create slide-shows of your photos, complete with pan and zoom effects, fades, etc. Again, this isn't as functional as iMovie with a couple of third-party filters, but I don't see that it's trying to compete. This is for the person who wants to whip up a CD and burn it quickly. Or maybe burn a couple copies. Toast allows you to tell the program how many copies you want to burn before it even starts. One finishes, just pop the next disc in. Again, a nice feature to have if every member of the family gets a disc.

Oh, and then there's that whole back-up thing. Remember back when people only used CDs to save data? So does Roxio, and they've improved that element as well. With Deja-Vu, you can automate Toast 6 Titanium to back up your data. For greater security you can also encrypt the data and even password protect it.

Here's the kicker, though. On our network, we have a system with a fairly slow external CD burner. Another computer has a much faster internal drive. With the new "ToastAnywhere" feature, I can use that networked drive to burn CDs from the computer with the external drive. Roxio says you can do this over the internet, even, but I wasn't able to test that feature.

Sound worthwhile? I haven't even gotten into the improvements to CD Spin Doctor yet, but I'm not going to. Gary Coyne will soon cover that in his article about using Toast 6 Titanium to transfer vinyl LPs to CD. Suffice it to say that...well, are you concerned about the loss of the complete Toast with Jam package? Shed no tears until you read Gary's article.

In the meantime, if you do any kind of CD burning at all, there are no solid reasons why you shouldn't have a copy of Toast 6 Titanium now. The program is nearly flawless. In fact, the only flaw I encountered in a month of testing was a small window anomaly. If a file couldn't be read by Toast, a window would pop up telling me so. When I'd try to close the window, my system would give me an error beep and the window would stay open. If I moved the window even slightly and then tried to close it, no problem.

So, although I miss the days when I'd spend hours hunched over my stereo, popping 45s and LPs on the turntable while trying to come up with the perfect name for my 1983 mix tape, I can't say I'm not thrilled with how easy Roxio has made this process with Toast 6 Titanium. Had it been this easy back then, I might've actually had time to meet a girl for whom I could make a mix tape. Or, maybe not. The girls back then tended to like Rick Astley.

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