CD Burning Basics Page 4 — The Software Skinny: If you buy a CD recorder in the United States, Adaptec's Easy CD Creator will most likely be bundled with the unit. There are several other software options, however (see below), and programs like Ahead Software's Nero may be more appealing in some respects. For Mac users, Adaptec's Toast is the most popular choice, but again, other programs are available. To give you an idea of what CD burner software can do, let's have a quick look at Nero and CD Creator, and compare feature sets. Both programs offer wizards for the newbie, which take you step by step through the CD creation process. Both packages also offer single and multiple session burning formats, MP3 ripping, jewel case creators, hard disc backup, video disc creation (VCD), and CDDB support, which allows you to download song titles from the Internet when you insert a disc. Creator comes with several job-specific applications: DirectCD is a packet-writing program that allows you to use a CD as a giant floppy. By dragging and dropping files using Windows Explorer, you can burn them onto a CD. The Spin Doctor application helps clean up data from older tapes and records so you can remove noise from that favorite old Frank Sinatra album. It will also encode standard music CDs to MP3, but it tops out at 56 Kbps, which results in pretty lousy sound quality (but super small files). For more information on encoding, converting audio to wav files, and all things MP3, check out the Webmonkey MP3 Overview. You can also use Creator to convert home movies to a Video CD (VCD), which can be played on a computer and some DVD players. This is one format used to save video to CD. MPEG is a video standard like VCD, and both programs will record MPEG files as a data CD. To do this, you need a video capture card and software that can deliver video in specified formats to use this feature. Another feature allows you to create a CD that plays photo slideshows of your digital pictures. For Mac users, Adaptec's Toast software offers virtually the same feature set as CD Creator. Note: Unfortunately, DirectCD must be uninstalled before you can install Nero and other CDR programs. Nero requires a bit more user savvy, but has some excellent CD burning and MP3 encoding features. For starters, it encodes MP3 files up to 320 Kbps (although you must pay extra for this after a 30-song trial), which yields true CD-quality sound. Nero also boasts variable bit rate encoding, which is a method for creating MP3 files that find the perfect balance between sound quality and file size. Nero also includes some funky features such as a Karaoke filter, which cancels the voice track of music so you can insert your own lyrics when playing Eminem tracks for the toddlers. The program has another filter for blending songs into each other for those freaky-fresh party mixes. Nero also supports Super Video CD, which offers higher resolution than standard VCD format. If you are a Windows user, both of these programs are good for beginners. Review the feature sets to decide which are important to you. If price is the most important consideration, you may want to check out Media Jukebox, a free program that burns audio CDs and encodes to MP3. It offers MP3 encoding at 320 Kbps and organizes and plays a wide variety of audio files. If you plan on using your recorder to backup discs, you may want to look at CDRWin or WinOnCD. For a PC, there are many other good programs, including CD-Maker, GearPro for Windows, and yet more choices at CD Recording Software.com. Mac users should check out the audio section of Versiontracker to find an extensive list of audio software. Once you've decided on which program suits your needs, it's worthwhile to fine tune your machine for optimal performance. To next page of Burning CD's To 3rd page of Burning CD's Back to the Bison HTML Home Page