When I got my first CD burner for my Macintosh Computer back in 2001, I also picked up a copy of Roxio’s Toast Titanium 5 because Mac CD recording abilities were almost nonexistent at the time. It wasn’t long after that CD burners, and then DVD super drives, became standard issue in Macs along with the software necessary to run and take full advantage of such devices. As I upgraded my computers and operating systems, my need for Toast Titanium and its progeny waned, especially with the introduction of iLife. I would still get the occasional email from Roxio highlighting the virtues of Toast Titanium whenever a new version was released and begging me to return to the fold, however if I needed to make a music CD, I launched iTunes, if I needed to make a DVD, I launched iDVD, and if I wanted to make a data disc, I used the Burn Folder in the Finder. So when the opportunity presented itself for me to review Toast 9 Titanium I thought to myself, “What’s the point? I have everything I could possible need for burning CDs and DVDs prepackaged in my Mac.”

And then I thought about it and came up with a list short list of things that really annoyed me when it came to CD and DVD authoring with the Mac, such as attempting to burn multiple data discs using the Finder when working with a very, very large file that’s just not going to fit on one disc. In a nutshell, you can’t. Instead, you have to break the file up and fill and burn each disc separately. This has always struck me as odd because one can burn across multiple data discs in iTunes and iPhoto, but if one wishes to do it in the Finder, then forget it. Also, it would be nice to burn a simple video DVD without all of iDVD’s dancing icons, happy trumpets, and spinning globes, as lovely as those can be.

So I thought it would be interesting to take another look at Toast Titanium, now in its 9th version, and see what new features it has brought to the disc-burning table.

The Toast Titanium Suite

The first thing I should point out is that Toast 9 Titanium is not a simple disc burning program, rather it is a suite of programs with so many features that it would take way too long to review them all here. Therefore, the reader is invited to check out all of features, both new and old, here. In the meantime, I will hit just a smattering of the features I played with.

Spanning Multiple Data Discs

According to Roxio, the “Toast Way” of burning has always been “drag & drop” simple and that’s basically what this program is. Simply drag files and folders and drop them into the Content Area of the Toast Window and watch as the Disc Space Indicator fills up Recording Area. Want to change from CD to DVD? Then just adjust the Disc Type Selection. Have a really big file to record? Then the Project Size Indicator will tell you how many discs you shall need. In the past when you wanted to burn really big files that spanned multiple discs, Toast Titanium would split the files in order to ensure the most efficient use of disc space when burning. Unfortunately, when it was necessary to rejoin the data, the Roxio Restore application was required to stitch the files back together. With Toast 9 Titanium, one can select “Avoid splitting files when spanning.” under Options to avoid this process.

I decided to put these features to the test by burning a bunch of data discs using a 12.6 GB size folder, which contained multiple sub-folders and files of various sizes and type. I selected Data Project under Category Selection and told the program to avoid splitting the files and burn to DVD. The program informed me that it would need 4 blank DVDs. I hit the record button and when prompted, inserted a blank DVD into the drive. After each disc was burned and verified, it was ejected and I was prompted to label the disc and insert a new blank one. When the project was completed, the contents of the discs were logged using the Disc Catalog Maker, thus making it easy for me to search for and find files in the future. Wow, the OS X Finder never did that.

Making a Video DVD

One of my boys’ favorite podcasts is the Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, and I’m always looking for video DVDs that I can author and store in minivan to play in our onboard DVD player. So this time I selected Video Project under Category Selection and then drag and dropped the various Dr. Floyd videos, which consisted of H.264, H.264/AVC, and MPEG-4 video formats. I told the program I wanted a DVD-video and I set-up the Menus Screens to mimic the Tivo Central theme (which I thought was rather cute). The available DVD Menu themes are simple, basic, quick and dirty. The only user-controlled input was the number of buttons I could have, the background color, the font color, and the highlight color. This was a complete 180-degrees from iDVD. Unfortunately, it was much too quick and dirty for my tastes. The program wouldn’t even let me resize the font to make the title fit, so I had to change the title of my DVD. When it was ready to go I hit the Record Button, the program prompted me for a DVD, and it was off to the races. The program compiled the various video formats and burned a DVD, which passed muster for my boys when played back on the minivan’s DVD player.

Digitizing Audio Cassettes

As part of the Toast 9 Titanium suite, CD Spin Doctor 5 will allow you to take all of those old cassette tapes and LPs and digitize them, allowing you to burn them to audio CDs or import them directly into iTunes for playback on an iPod. The program also has the new Audio Fingerprinting Technology, which takes the resulting audio waveform and matches it against the Gracenote database to identify the songs, hopefully saving one the step of having to fill in the song title, album, artist, etc. in the ID3 tags.

When I read about this feature, I just had to tell Tonya since we have a vast catalog of audiocassettes that we would love to digitize. So I hooked my stereo cassette player’s line out to my computer using a Griffin iMic USB Hub in order to digitize the analog audio outside my computer resulting in better audio quality, a tip I learned while listening to Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy. CD Spin Doctor walked me through the easy steps to set-up and start the audio recording of my tape and once again, we were off to the races. When the recording was complete, CD Spin Doctor analyzed the resulting waveform to auto define the tracks; it was about 80% successful at this. Next I told the program to identify the songs using the Audio Fingerprinting Technology. In the demo for the program, it was able to identify the songs converted from a user created mix tape, so I figured it would have no problem identifying commercial recordings. I had it try to identify Paul Simon’s Graceland, The Fixx’s Reach The Beach, The Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good, and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and unfortunately, it wasn’t able to identify a single song correctly, although some of its guesses had me chuckling; I never thought of the Sugarcubes as having a country twang. I even gave it a more modern day mix tape to chew on and it missed at that as well. Oh well, it was an interesting concept in theory, unfortunately not in execution. Next, CD Spin Doctor was able to clean up the recordings using filters to tweak the sound and rid the audio of pops and hisses. Finally, it sent the finished result to iTunes. The resulting sound was all right, considering that the source materials were 10 to 30 year old audiocassettes.

A Few of the Other Interesting Features Included in the Software

Blu-ray Disc Authoring: The ability to record Blu-ray discs, though it cost an additional $19.99 for the plug-in.
High-Definition DVD: Record high definition video with your DVD burner for playback a set top Blu-ray and HD DVD players. This is similar to old feature of making a video CD for playback on a set top DVD player.
Exclusive TiVoToGo and EyeTV Support: Enjoy your favorite TV shows on DVD, Blu-ray Disc or convert it for your iPhone, iPod, or PSP.
Streamer: Stream video from you Mac at home over the internet to your iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac or PC. It can even convert Tivo recordings using TiVoToGo and send you an email when it’s ready for viewing.
Streaming Audio Capture: Capture audio from almost any source, including streaming internet radio.

Overall Impression

Toast 9 Titanium retails for $99.99, compared to Mac OS 10.5 and iLife, which cost $129 and $79, respectively. I love iLife because it’s slick and it allows me to express my creativity in ways that Toast can only imagine to capture. That said, if I want a workhorse to import analog audio and burn a lot of discs, then I’m going to boot-up Toast 9 Titanium. Therefore, I’m going to give Toast 9 Titanium 6 out of 8 Dancing Elephants, because I’m sorry, but the Audio Fingerprinting Technology should have at least nailed Sgt. Pepper’s, I mean c’mon, it’s The Beatles after all.

Parting Thoughts

I listened to the Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good while writing this review… Call me crazy, but nobody wails like Björk.