Reviews

Members can make written request to review software offered to MUGs free by vendors such as Adobe and Aladdin. A list of the offerings is available from President Steve Hafenbredl and at meetings. Members reviews are posted on this page. Members are also required to give a demonstration of the software they receive at a group meeting, then the member can retain the software for their personal use. To aid members writing reviews, we offer the following Guidelines For Writing Software Reviews


Roxio Toast 5 Titanium

Toast 5 Titanium (ROXIO) is a program for use with Power Mac computers to burn CDs from records, tapes or other recording devices and to make copies of CDs.
This software includes:

  1. Background burning-Use other applications in foreground while burning CDs from records, tapes etc..
  2. Video CD preparation-automatically prepares digital video files for video CD format.
  3. New DVD mastering-all features and functions of Toast DVD Roxio’s DVD mastering for Mac brought into Toast 5.
  4. MP3 Disc format-automatically make CDs that are playable in MP3 CD-ROM players.

My computer is a Power Mac 450 MHz G4 with OS 9.2 operating system and 384 MG of RAM The peripheral equipment used was:

  1. Sony Linear tracking Direct Drive/Fully automatic Stereo turntable connected to the input to a:
  2. Onkyo stereo amplifier with Pioneer stereo headphones connected to the CPU;s sound input port
  3. A LaCie 12X10X32X FIREWIRE CD -R/RW burner.


Toast Titanium 5 was easy to install and get running after reading the instruction booklet . It would be, in my opinion, a great help if the software had a short tutorial video included to help you get started using the program.
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Toast Titanium 5 was easy to use to burn a CD from a 33 RPM record. After activating CD spin doctor, the record is played on the turntable and fed to the CPU through the amplifier. The head phones were used to listen to (monitor) the record being played. The Spin Doctor software has a filter screen to allow you to edit:

  1. Noise and pops in the record being played into the CPU,
  2. Increase bass, quality and width of the records sound.
  3. Change sound levels of all or parts to the record.

The filtering must be done after you make an initial copy of the recording. This screen also shows the wave forms of the audio recording. This allows you to define, rearrange, delete or shorten the tracks.

To burn a CD, Toast is opened: ;

  1. In a Toast window, click audio.;
  2. Drag the CD icon from the desktop to the audio window. ;
  3. Check the burning speed,
  4. Record.

The program can also be used to burn:

  1. DVD’S;
  2. DATA CD’S
  3. MP3 CD’S
  4. COPY CD’S
  5. VIDEO CD’S
  6. ISO 9960 CD’S for across platform audience.

If you are interested in preserving or transforming your older audio tapes and records onto CD’s the program is a good economical easy way to accomplish the task. The program sells for approximately $97.00

Review of ROXIO TOAST TITANIUM 5 submitted by Jim Link 7/10/02