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Review: Toast with JamReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Date: May 3, 2002
Now this is what I'm talking about. When it comes to software, I'm not much of a forward thinker. For the most part, I'm not the guy who writes software companies and asks, "How can I do this?" or "Why doesn't your software allow me to do this?" Instead, I'm the guy who reads about new features in software upgrades and thinks, "Yeah, this should've worked this way all along." Not so with CD burning software. Perhaps it's because it's still relatively new in the industry and I've been there with it all along. Perhaps it's because I've never strayed too far from iTunes. It's a dandy little program, but one that's quickly outgrown for functions other than playback. Although Apple would like for you think otherwise, it's not a simple matter of rip, mix, burn. It's actually rip, clip, edit, mix, adjust, drag, check, burn, verify, create, print, stick, listen. I don't rip CDs just to copy them, after all. I rip CDs to mix songs from different bands, compile B-side collections, copy tapes and records, etc. It's very rare when all my songs come from the same source, and it's even more rare when they all come from CD.
But this package isn't just about Toast. As with the stand alone version of Toast 5 Titanium, Toast with Jam comes with CD Spin Doctor. This handy little program allows you easily convert audio from analog sources into digitized audio files. Anyone who started buying music before the year 1986 understands just how important this is. Actually, many of us still understand how important this is. My LP collection continues to grow like the Japanese lady beetle population, thanks mainly to the wealth of used records one can find in Cleveland for 25 cents a pop. Trouble is, I mainly only have time to listen to music in the car and at work...neither of which have a turntable, despite my lobbying. CD Spin Doctor allows you to import entire album sides (and much longer, if you need it to) to your computer in one simple shot. You need only plug the external audio source into your Mac's audio input jack, select the input source with CD Spin Doctor, then hit record. You can adjust the input level from within CD Spin Doctor, and use the built in filters to minimize noise and pop. These tools are controlled with sliders that allow you to control their power. Learning to use them effectively takes a lot tinkering, so make sure you have a good set of headphones (the kind that cover your entire ear, of course) and that the kids are gone for the afternoon. My only complaint with the interface is that the input source has to be selected from the menu bar, not the GUI. It's my stupidity, sure, but I recorded an entire Steve Martin stand-up album through the iBook's built in mic, not realizing I hadn't set the program to read through the iMic audio input. Imagine popping in a CD to hear some good comedy, and instead hearing my wife and myself debating whose turn it was to wash the dishes. Sounds more like another bizarre Andy Kaufman routine than Steve Martin. Regardless, for those of us who are a little dimwitted sometimes, I'd like to see an input button directly on the program's control panel that indicates what is the source. Finally, if you're copying an LP to the computer, CD Spin Doctor allows you to split an entire side into its individual tracks. The method, however, is a bit archaic. You can have the program automatically determine where are the splits between tracks, but I never found this to be very accurate. Quite often, CD Spin Doctor would split a five track album side into ten to fifteen tracks, some of which were merely seconds long...it's like an entire album side of Sgt. Pepper's inner groove. You can manually define the track splits, but this has to be done visually by dragging across the waveform until you see a flat area. These areas generally indicate the silence between songs, but can also be merely a quiet moment or break in the music. It's also not useful for editing concerts where crowd noise doesn't allow for this silence. Not to worry, though. Toast with Jam also comes with BIAS Peak LE VST. This handy but amazingly complex little program. is also the only major piece of this package that doesn't come with a printed manual. Ironic, really, since it's the only one that needs it. I'm used to working with (formerly) Macromedia's SoundEdit, so I was able to work my way through Peak without too much difficulty. Most others, however, will want to print off the PDF manual and learn a bit about the science of audio before digging too deeply in here.
But! Once you've got it registered and installed and have worked your way around a bit, Peak LE offers some great tools to enhance, alter, or fix the audio you're recording. For example, one track in that Steve Martin record had a repetitive skip. Using Peak, I was able to locate the skip and edit it out in a matter of seconds. Much better than re-recording the entire album side. Peak LE also makes it tremendously simple to split that one album side into individual tracks with pinpoint accuracy. With Peak, you can listen to the track while following an indicator along in the waveform. You can use this to highlight and define regions which can be moved to a playlist and burned directly from Peak (through Toast, anyway). Or, if you're really into this whole thing...
At the risk of sounding like Ron Popeil, "But wait...there's more." Roxio isn't content to give you just the software to edit and burn CDs, they want you to be able to make them all pretty and shiny, too. Included in Toast with Jam is a full-featured version of the Magic Mouse Discus label printing program. Discus comes with a large collection of background graphics and clip art images, supports a photo layer for insertion of your own images, can produce curved text, includes a paint program, and supports nearly 25 brands of CD labeling paper. Discus will be useful for consumers, but it can get annoying at times. The bulk of the art included is somewhat dorky, and the paint program isn't diverse enough to allow for a lot of customization. It's a handy program for those who don't want to put much thought into design, but professionals won't find it to be an adequate replacement for the high end graphics and layout programs. "Now how much would you pay?" Before you answer, Roxio's also throwing in iView Media, a handy little program for cataloging your media and sorting it into easy to follow thumbnails and descriptions. You can use iView to generate slideshows, print contact sheets, export to HTML to create a web gallery, and search the thumbnails even if the source file isn't present (on a CD, for example). And, of course, all of this can be burned to CD through Toast. "Now how much would you pay?" Don't answer yet, because you also get a full featured version of Panic's Audion MP3 player (with trial MP3 encoding). I didn't find this program to be all that useful, however...at least not within this package. The visualizer was nice, but Audion's playback features offered nothing beyond iTunes' capabilities, and it's minimal editing features paled compared to those in Peak LE. Even worse, to continue encoding MP3s, you will have to register the program. On the plus side, it does burn directly Toast (iTunes does not, of course), and you can download hundreds of faces to customize the appearance. On it's own, Audion is a great program. In here, it's only benefit is it's ability to easily use Toast to burn your playlists. As much as I hate to repeat myself, now this is what I'm talking about. Roxio's Toast with Jam gives you everything you need...in fact, it gives you more than you need to produce better sounding, higher quality audio CDs, and it makes burning data and video CDs a fairly simple process. More importantly, it's fun to use. This package right here is the reason you bought that Macintosh with the SuperDrive. Now use it.
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Enter
Toast with Jam. You all know about Toast. It's Roxio's
powerful and versatile CD burning tool that extends well
beyond the realm of audio CDs. Toast allows you to burn data
and video CDs and DVDs as well, and does so with gusto.
iMovie files can be burned directly to DVD or video CD, or
you can open a QuickTime movie from your hard drive and
simply dump it out to video CD with drag and drop
simplicity. Toast can convert it to either NTSC (United
State and Japan) or PAL (Europe). You can also select how
you want Toast to fit the image to the screen, as well as
the quality. I converted to video CD the same QuickTime file
I'd used before with iDVD, and although the results weren't
as crisp (the compression was much more apparent), it was
certainly decent enough to pass around...and much cheaper.
In some places, you can get up to 50 CD-Rs for the price of
5 DVD-Rs.
Before I
get into to the benefits of Peak LE, let's talk about
installation. First, although it's a carbon app, you'll have
to install Peak LE twice if you're going to use it in OS X
and in OS 9. If you launch and register the same app in both
operating systems, it'll become useless in one and you'll
have to uninstall and reinstall the program to get it back.
Also, the program must be registered with BIAS in
order to be used for more than 14 days. They were quick in
providing me a serial number, however, and reinstalls
accepted the serial number without difficulty.
Saving
the region defined file in either SoundDesigner II or JAM
Image format allows you to further refine with tracks in
Jam. Jam will recognize the regions and split the file into
its individual tracks. You can then use Jam to adjust cross
fades between tracks (use the presets or customize your
own), individually adjust the gain of each track, set
UPC/EAN and/or ISRC codes, add disc mastering information,
trim tracks, and more. My favorite feature was the amazingly
simple Normalize option. This looks at the tracks
individually or as one single piece, finds the hottest
(loudest) part, and adjusts the sound level of the rest of
the music accordingly. If you pulled your songs in from
different sources, this feature is amazing. Within seconds,
Jam can adjust the gain of each track to insure that all
songs burn at relatively the same level. Perfectionists may
still want to tweak the settings themselves, but that's also
very simple; each track appears in Jam with its own gain
slider. Better yet, all of this is non-destructive. The
changes are saved in the Jam file only, not in the
individual audio tracks, so you can tweak to your heart's
content without fear of messing up the source files.