[nancyw]

hi: i'm a complete novice at cd-burning, hoping to benefit from some opinions and advice. i want to burn cds that can be played on regular old cd players, and would, of course, like to burn cds of the highest quality possible. am i right to think that to do this, i've got to first convert to aiff format? do people have opinions on what the best software for doing this is? and once i've converted, any advice from there on about producing the best quality cds? thanks for any help you can give. --nancy

[Chuck_star]

You no longer need to decode MP3s to aiff to burn an audio CD. Most new software will do it for you. Toast Deluxe will do this. I belive Toast titanium will do this as well, and it'll let you burn in the background. If you do not want to spend the money on this software. Mpeckers drop decoder is free and works quite well. Or Quicktime will decode as well. Then you can probably use you're existing software to burn the aiff files.
Hope that helps
the quality will depend highly on the original MP3 bit rate, if you ever encode your own mp3s I'll suggest using no less than 190bps for music.

[JeffO]

I have a "lite" version o Toast that came with my Yamaha burner and the only thing I don't like is that I cannot covert mp3 "on the fly". From reading several posts I believe that Toast Deluxe will do this, but here is my problem: I am using system 9.0.4 and I remeber reading somewhere that there may be some problems with Toast Deluxe and 9.0.4. Since everything else is working beuatifully, I am hesitant to change.

Any thoughts?

[Chuck_star]

Toast Deluxe 4.1 works perfectly in 9.0.4
Maybe the problems you read about were with 4.2
enjoy

[JeffO]

Thanks for the info. Do I have a choice to get Toast Deluxe 4.1 or 4.2? Should I wait for Titanium?

Jeff

[caifara]

mp3 to aiff:

by deepniner: http://hem.passagen.se/deep9/mplay/
(the section tools and utilities)
contra: you need to use the player to use the tool

soundapp: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~franke/SoundApp/
gee, I really like this app. The interface isn't really wauw, but the power...

hope you can use this,
caifara

Another option is iTunes. I believe that iTunes has this capability as well.

[homuss]

Jeff0,

If you have a Lite version of Toast (bundled with your burner) and it won't convert MP3's on the fly, go to this address and download the free update which will!

ftp://ftp.roxio.com/roxio/cd_recording_software/aol/Toast_412_OEM_Updater.hqx

This way there is no need to buy Toast Deluxe.

I have OS 9.0.4 and my Toast Software works like a dream.

[JeffO]

Thanks for the info!

Jeff