I'm at the end of my patience and rope with the Roxio products and I'm eagerly searching out a replacement for the things that I regularly do now. I'm seeking a program that's relatively easy to learn/operate and that will do at least the following:

Rip MP3s from CDs

Burn regular and MP3 CDs (including disc-at-once burns and the ability to do some cross-fading)

Burn MP3 DVDs

Sound editing (lightweight edits to MP3 and WAV files including things like fade-ins and fade-outs)

To me, these are pretty simple requests and my sense is that these are bare minimums with most packages.

So what packages out there are the easiest to use, most reliable and produce the fewest coasters? I'm really ready to make the leap far away from the buggy products that Roxio puts out.

Nero.

Chris,

Thanks, but I'm looking for a little more information than that. What does Nero do well? What does it do not so well? Is there a particular version that I should go with? Is there a particular package/suite that I should go with?

Anyone else have any suggestions or just want to fill me in more on Nero?

Walter,

Sorry for the one word answer. Was on my way out the door for work at the time.

As to what Nero does well...it's more a question of what doesn't Nero do well.

I use Nero burning suite 6.something.something (sorry for being vague, I'm not at home to check the version), and have never had a single problem authoring any kind of burnable media. The program is fast, layered with multiple options that give you total control. My first experiences with burning cd's way back when was with Roxio cd creator, as it's what came pre-installed on my system. Best choice I ever made was to delete that dog.

For more info on nero, check here: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_s ... s/nero.cfm

That site is afterdawn.com, and is a wealth of information for burning and authoring cd's and dvd's. If you can't find an answer there, you can't find it anywhere.

Hope this was more helpful.

Oh, and the newest versions seem to be a bit buggy, so stick with an earlier version, I suggest 6.anything.

Walter,
I'm not trying to make this a PC vs. Mac thing, but I wanted to let you know that IF you use a Mac, I have been using Roxio Toast 8 and before that Toast 7 and Roxio Jam for years without problems. There are always a few little bugs that pop up with software performing the tasks you listed, but I've found Toast reasonably stable and reliable. If you are using a Mac I'd be happy to discuss your issues in more detail and see if we can't figure something out.
David

Chris,

Thanks for the follow-up. I wasn't complaining, I just really wanted more information. I did a little digging and you're right, there seems to be a general contentment with Nero 6, but bug complaints about Nero 7. My only concern about diving into Nero 6 would be that it might not be supported long or compatible with things like IE7. (Which seems to react badly with lots of software packages.)

You didn't mention specifically anything regarding actual file manipulation with Nero. How does it do with sound editing, fade-ins, fade-outs, cross-fades and such? (I'm much more interested in the audio stuff than video at this point.)

Hey Walter.

I use IE7, and have no problems with incompatability.

Fades are handled flawlessly in nero, and the interface is simple and intuitive. The editing features in general are solid, and there are more of them then I have needed to use. Of course I am more of a video guy, and when I burn music, I don't tend to edit or mix very much at all. But I have played with the features, and found them to be easy to use even for a novice.

Walter, if you don't mind my asking, was were your issues with Roxio? I've been using it for a few years and while I feel their most recent GUI was a step (or two) backwards, it didn't take too much time or patience to figure out. They also include a lot of programs I found to be completely unnecessary so those weren't installed.

Wow...where do I begin? When I go to rip MP3s, their "Quick Find" feature that reads your hard drive chugs and chugs...over 5 minutes with my PC...then just mysteriously shuts down the entire program. So then you have to start it up again and wait another 5+ minutes. Try disabling the "Quick Find" feature...can't do it on my PC.

When I attempt to create Enhanced CDs, the process hangs without ever completing. I like to make a lot of Enhanced CDs, because when I get something with artwork from the blogs, I like to include the artwork on the CD itself for future work. I now have to do Enhanced CDs on my PC at work, which still uses Roxio 7.

In general, everything was nicely self-contained on 7, but with 9, you have to go a number of places to do one thing. Sure, you can create a disc image in a few places, but if you want to go on to burn a CD from that image, you have to find that feature on the "Creator Classic" tab.

In general, this product, beyond the places where it's just not working, is very, very clunky. There are too many things going on and too many of them aren't working. What I find really frustrating and a bit ridiculous is the fact that people have been complaining to Roxio about the problems with this version for well over 6 months and to the best of my knowledge, there isn't even one patch for any of the problems...yet.

The thing I hated second-to-most about Roxio's software was how invasive it was. It seemed to want to infiltrate Windows much more than a single-purpose utility ought to. That may sound like an odd complaint, but it really bothered me.

The thing I hated most about it, though, was that when I used it to back up some important info from my hard drive before I performed a necessary reformat, the discs ended up being unreadable, and I got zero response from customer service.

I agree with all the positive comments on Nero. I've been using version 6-point-whatever for several years now with excellent results.

Ven...my IT department at work backs up your contention about the Roxio program being invasive. Apparently even when you go through the uninstall process, it leaves junk in your PCs registry. Not a good thing.

While I'm not MP3 aware, I do recommend Nero 6 EXCEPT for 6.6.11.15a (this one version has some of the Nero 7 bugs).

Good news is you should be able to get Nero 6 for next to nothing on ebay. Make sure you get the full version, or else you'll need to get a crack to open some of the features.

Most experienced users consider Nero a huge upgrade from Roxio. I haven't used Roxio since 98 or 99 at the latest.

I know that Nero natively converts mp3 to Wave. Not sure about the other way around. There are free 3rd party plug ins for all the major loss less formats for automatic conversion; just Google for them.

The other thing that MAY not meet your needs is MP3 DVD. Nero will burn data DVD & DVD video + several others, but I have no clue what format an MP3 dvd player needs. If it standard data, you'll be fine.

Nero 6 does not do DVD-A, & to the best of my knowledge won't rip the audio from a regular dvd. It does have a very nice simple & intuitive dvd authoring component that works well the majority of the time; although it's not always thrilled with some avi's. It will not defeat any copyguards or region encoding, but it works fine with anydvd.

Some FREE options:

EAC: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Said to be the most accurate ripper made for those who care about sound quality. Eac has some editing capacity: "Small WAV editor with the following functionality: delete, trim, normalize, pad, glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise reduction, fade in/out, undo (and much more)"

EAC also does mp3 conversion from wav.

While I believe it's no longer free, if you can find an early version of DB Power Amp Music Convertor it will convert wav to mp3, & it used to be free. The version I have is R.9 & again if you can find it, it is free.

I don't know if they still do, but Plextor also used to offer a free mp3 ripper/encoder in their Plex Manager software that is free with any Plextor drive.

If all you're looking to do is make MP3 discs, You could conceivably combine either of the 3 programs above with one of the many freeware burning programs on Google.


My personal Toolbox:
Nero 6
Flac, SHN, & APE encoders (free)
EAC (free)
While rarely used the plextor & db power amp mentioned above
Sly Soft Any DVD
DVD Fab Platinum
DVD Fab Gold (2 & 3)
DVD Shrink (Free)
DVD Decryptor (free, no longer made)
DVD Fab Decryptor (free)
DVD Audio Extractor
& several more I only use occasionally