Rating: 
Summary: NO STARS FOR (BURNT) TOAST WITH JAM
Review: BACKGROUND: I am a professional guitarist/composer (and an attorney). My various efforts have received favorable reviews from THE NEW YORK TIMES (among many other diverse sources). I made the grave mistake of buying TOAST WITH JAM for mastering because Roxio touts it (on the box) as "Professional Audio CD Mastering" for the MAC. (I read somewhere that it is an äward winning program.) FACTS: JAM FAILED TO PERFORM THE MOST BASIC FUNCTION OF SUCCESSFULLY PLACING A PROTOOLS LE SPLIT STEREO FILE IN THE TRACK LIST. I attempted to open up a ProTools LE split stereo file ready to be burned -- no tweaking necessary. It opened the left/right files up as two separate mono files in sequence contrary to the explicit directions on p. 19 of the JAM 5 manual. It would not combine the files to produce a stereo track as the manual said it would. Sighing, I closed the program. ROXIO's RESPONCE: I immediately emailed Roxio; Roxio "help" said that this was a "KNOWN ISSUE" requiring an upload to correct the defect. Problem is they don't have one available for my problem ....but....they said that they're working on it. The program is useless for my purposes. Richard Rabatin
Rating: 
Summary: User experience may vary
Review: I read the reviews of the people who were disappointed with Toast/Jam as a professional grade audio tool. I have no reason to doubt their veracity. But I got it to create killer (excuse the phrase) jams on my Mac. It installed great, I just fire it up, cross-fade, adjust gain, and burn. It does everything I ask of it and I am very happy with the results. If you, like me, want to lay some tunes on friends (in a completely legal way per the RIAA Nazi scum, of course!), this will probably just what you want and need.
Rating: 
Summary: Great software even if it does cost money.
Review: I won a "pc only" cdrw and was a little frustrated due the fact that it was from a mac contest. I got a copy of Toast Titanium and it was able to recognize even this unsupported cdrw and it works great. Best features are backgound burning. You can actually use other applications while your cd burns. The latest update at the Roxio site supports CD text. So the song title will appear in the window of your CD player if you have that feature. The manual is good and explains how to burn a bootable CD and a CD that will be recognized by a PC. You also get CD SpinDoctor in the deal this will let you record tapes, vinyl, or anything else you plug into the audio in with the cord that is included in the box. If you update to the latest version of Toast Titanium you will have to update CD SpinDoctor, too (or it will break). There's a CD label software include as well. Summary: Easy to use, good manual, background burning, CD text support. CD copy button to make copying really easy.
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Summary: Fresh Toast!
Review: I've been an avid user of Adaptec's disc burning software Toast for a little over a year. So I was a bit disappointed when Adaptec decided to let Roxio handle the production of the software. However, when upgrade season came around I still went out and bought myself a full copy of Toast 5. The program received a MAJOR overhaul and it was all for the best. New features include a shiny new interface and background burning. This means that now you can set your CD-RW to burn a CD and then use other software without fear that your machine will lock up or screw up your CD. It also boasts the ability to burn VCDs. There's only one con to the software... Background burning means that now my petty excuses to stop working during burning time are history... It's a superlative addition to your Mac burning needs.
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Summary: Jam sold on False Pretenses:beware!
Review: The primary feature distinguishing Jam from Toast or from any of the other vanilla disk burners is its long-standing ability to meld professional split-stereo files into the track list, i.e. a left and right pair of mono files with .L and .R suffixes. This is the main reason that Jam existed, since it otherwise duplicates practically all the features of Toast. Roxio prominently advertises this feature, and provides directions for implementing it in their documentation. It simply does not work. I now see from a previous message posted here and dated last March that this is not an isolated incident. It is clear that for at least 9 months after this gentleman's review was posted that Roxio has not corrected the problem, nor corrected their claims for the product, nor have they posted any warnings on their site indicating that this key feature is not yet implemented. Instead they lead customers into purchasing the software on the basis of this feature, with total disregard for the responsibility to provide the actual product they advertise. This is called lying.
If it were a matter of a shipment that got out with a small problem that contradicted the manual that would be understandable. But to forgo amending their advertising or website or online manual going on close to a year now is unconscionable. Parlaying misinformation for that long is clearly negligent and deceptive practice.
I would recommend against buying this product, sheerly on principle. There are alternatives that do exactly what it does equally well, and these people don't deserve to be rewarded for bad behaviour. Unfortunately there is no other product that provides this missing feature, at least not in an OS-X compatible version.
Rating:
Summary: Easy as 1, 2, 3!!!!!
Review: This product is almost universally compatible!! The window is resizable, with simple buttons specifying the type of CD you wish to burn. Click audio, data, copy, or other, and the button turns blue. Pop a blank CD-R into your drive, drag your files into the window, hit that big red glowing record button in the corner, and you're cooking. What a simple way to burn CD's.... even off your PC!
Rating:
Summary: Easy as 1, 2, 3!!!!!
Review: This product is almost universally compatible!! The window is resizable, with simple buttons specifying the type of CD you wish to burn. Click audio, data, copy, or other, and the button turns blue. Pop a blank CD-R into your drive, drag your files into the window, hit that big red glowing record button in the corner, and you're cooking. What a simple way to burn CD's.... even off your PC!
Rating:
Summary: The best
Review: This software is compatible with virtually any kind of burner, including burners meant only for PC's. It replaces Apple's burning extensions with Roxio's superior version, which allows programs like iTunes to burn CD's on burners that it wasn't supposed to support. You can master DVD's, VCD's, Hybrid PC-Mac discs, HFS+ hybrid, audio cd's, MP3 cd's, CD-i, ISO 9660, multi-track CD-ROM XA, device copy, disk images, enhanced music CD, mac os extended, the list goes on. Converts iMovies into VCDs to watch on your DVD player. Allow's the creation of disk images for those with only a burner that wish to duplicate disks. It allows amazing cross-platform compatibilty. Overall the greatest burning software ever made.
Rating:
Summary: Feeling Toasty
Review: Toast is a really nice software package, although quirky at times. All the blame can't be placed on Toast. It, like so many other software titles, adds extensions to your Mac which can conflict with so many other extensions. Still, if your Mac is reasonably conflict free, you should be able to burn CDs or DVDs with fervor. The interface is clean, although not intuitive enough. (Click-and-hold a button for options is not an obvious method.) Toast does a very good job of burning Mac data, PC data and hybrid data CDs. Audio burning has also been improved in this version and, Toast can now recognize an audio image file to find track breaks. Previously only Jam was smart enough to recognize individual tracks in an audio image.
Some tips: Increase the memory allocation to the application. Give Toast a large buffer (64K). Try to avoid disk-at-once recording. DAO is good for "live" recordings, where you don't want an audible gap between tracks, but it taxes the system. If you can stand to have gaps between the tracks, track-at-once is more reliable. Use test mode to determine if your system is able to transfer data quickly enough for the speed you've requested for a burn. DAO and high-speed burning require data to be transferred at very high data rates. You may find you need to burn at a slower speed to achieve reliable burns. The "Toast CD Reader" extension is only needed if you intend to use your CD burner to read existing data or audio CDs. If you only want to burn CDs with your burner, you can safely run without the extension.
Background burning is a nice feature, but, if you are using the system for other tasks while burning, you are at risk for data underruns. Also, if your source is MP3 files, remember, MP3s must be converted before actually being written to your new CD. This too can add to the delays in data transfer. If you have the disk space, convert MP3 files to AIFF files before burning and use the AIFF files with Toast for more reliable results.
Rating:
Summary: the best there is
Review: Toast just keeps getting better and better with each version that's released. You really don't have to read any instructions... just dragging and dropping files, disk images or mounted disk drives/partitions onto the Toast interface makes everything intuitive. Burning a CD couldn't really be much easier with the level of control (naming your CD, changing how it will appear when opened, etc.) you get in this application. Creating a CD image on your desktop goes by FAST so if you're on a slow network, you can make an image on your desktop, then burn from that without worrying about user loads on your network. Naturally, this software will also burn/copy PC-only and PC/Mac hybrid discs in addition to Mac-only CDs. This is a professional industry-grade package. For CD burning software, you can't get much better than this product.
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