[grrr223]

I own a Sony 400 disc jukebox CD player and it has CD-text capabilities which I thought was awesome until I took it home and found that of the 130 CDs I own, only 3 have CD-text on them, which sucks. And unforunately, for some god damned reason I can't figure out, there is no CD-text capable CD-burning software for Macintosh. This makes absolutely NO sense to me, the hardware can do it, you'd think that would be the hard part, but there is no software yet. Anyway, I was wondering if any of you have CDs with CD-text on them, I think it would be especially useful on classical CDs where I would probalby be unfamiliar with the songs and movements and it would be great to be able to check without finding the case.

I love my CD player, I'm not saying anything about it's sound quality, I use my Pioneer Elite DV-05 DVD player and I'm about to buy a Denon 370 I think for more intense listening, but the CD-text features will be great once I start burning CDs because the artist and CD-title appear on the Cd player itself on it's LCD display, on a TV if you have one hooked up, and on the LCD remote which is awesome, and if there is CD-text on the CD, all the song names are labeled. This also all allows you to search for CDs by album name, artist, genre, or group, if you have a large CD collection, it's a good deal, they have a 300 disc version with the cool remote and stuff too, but I don't think it displays on a TV.

So, back to my original question, could you please recommend any classical CDs that have CD text on them, thank you

 

[beowulf]

Ya gotta throw away that Mac, there's lots of awesome premastering software for the Wintel world.

If CD-Text is your priority and you can't really burn your own, I suggest you start hunting all classical CDs edited by Sony Classical. Find your favorite themes.

I have around 600 CDs, and I guess only about 5% of those have CD-Text. In fact, you're very unlikely to find CD-Text on CDs that don't have anything to do with Sony.

One of those technologies that just didn't spread much.

 

[MacDEF]

Get a whole new computer system because there is no software that supports CD-text, but hardly any CDs themselves support CD-text? Where's the logic there?

Maybe the reason there's no CD-text software available is because it's a feature that's rarely supported on CDs, so why waste the development time...

 

[beowulf]

Quote:

Originally posted by MacDEF Get a whole new computer system because there is no software that supports CD-text, but hardly any CDs themselves support CD-text? Where's the logic there?

Hey,that's a minor irrelevant aspect. Never waste a chance to pick on a Mac user.

You are right up to a point. A few years ago no readers supported reading of CD-Text codes, and very few writers supported it. Also very few domestic CD-A players supported it except Sony.

But that was years ago. These days any crappy cdrom/cdrw can read/write CD-Text. I'm not sure why labels don't use it and manufacturers of cd players don't use it either....
I suspect it might have something to do with our friends at Sony wanting to charge their usual royalties.

Many software supports it (about ANY decent PC software) because it is used more and more lately by people in their own CDR compilations. Labels don't use it, but the average cdr user does.... it's nice when you're in your car and stuff, helps a lot to find the right track.

 

[Deuce_Bigalow]

I use Cequadrat WinonCD. It came with my Ricoh cd burner and it supports cd text.

When I got my Yamaha 5 disc changer with cd text display i found that of the <50 store bought cd's I own there are about 3 with cd text. I was surprised to find that my new (1998) Slayer cd had cd text.

 

[blr]

I have exactly the same problem. CDP reads CD-text but believe it or not, from more than 200 CDs I own not even one had a CD text on it. Just to try the CD text I had to burn a special CD on my friend's PC (I'm also a Mac user).
grrr223, I can't recommend you any classical Cds with a text, but I wouldn't let this be my guide when bying music. The performance and recoding quality are far much important. However, as beowulf said look into Sony music. Perhaps they list CDtext on their website.

 

[grrr223]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I think I'll check out the Sony CDs, they're pretty good quality in the grand scheme of things right?

And, sorry, no I'm not getting rid of my Macintosh. I do a lot of video editing. For everything that I use my computer for, my computer does as good if not better, and with fewer hassles than any pc I've ever used. (well, except for this CD-text thing). So basically everyone of your stupid reasons why PCs may be "better" than Macs such as compatibility (which isn't even that much better today) or networking are irrelevant to my needs. But we don't need to start this discussion here.

I think I'm going to get an external firewire CD-burner, so while I'm at school it will be pretty easy to just use one of my roommates PCs. The only problem then will be finding a PC with a firewire drive on it, since they all seem content with the 12 meg/sec of USB, while just about every mac (including the $800 imacs) has had 2 firewire ports on it for the 400 meg/sec required if you want to get an hour of DV video tranferred before you grow old.

 

[beowulf]

There are a few firewire drives out there for Wintel boxes.

Check www.cdrinfo.com

 

[grrr223]

I know there are a lot of firewire CD burners for PCs, most of the Sony ones, and a few other brands are compatible with both mac and pc, what I will have a hard time finding is a firewire port even on a pc, most still use scsi or are just now adopting usb which limits a CD-burner to 4 speed.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

what I will have a hard time finding is a firewire port even on a pc, most still use scsi or are just now adopting usb which limits a CD-burner to 4 speed.

Actually, I think you mean parallel, not SCSI... few PCs ever had SCSI unless the user upgraded them. As for USB, 4x is *very* optimistic. I would never trust USB for CD burning. USB is simply not designed for data transfer.

 

[grrr223]

Thanks for the info on USB, no, I do mean scsi, a lot of burnes today use ide, because it's cheaper, but I know a few people with scsi burners.

 

[beowulf]

SCSI is the way to go. I have both SCSI and ATAPI recorders, including an external PlexWriter.

If you have the chance to open PCs, well, you can always carry a few adapter cards in your pockets, firewire and scsi... they're cheap these days

 

[grrr223]

No, SCSI is not the way to go, Firewire with it's 400 meg/sec is the way to go, I can't wait until everything has Firewire on it. Sony's doing a good job putting it just about everything they make, they call it iLink. Well, until I find a PC with a firewire port I won't be able to do CD-TEXT, but I bought a 12/8/32 external firewire Sony CD burner, the thing kicks ass in every area from ease of use to build quality (it feels like a tank).

I think I'm lucky that the slowest it burns is 2X (it just doesn't do 1X) so now I won't be wasting any of my life burning all my CDs at 1X because there's a .002% improvement in sound quality

. If anyone cares, Roxio's Toast 5 Titanium and Apple's iTunes make burning CDs so mindlessly simple that when I came home last night after a few beers I was still able to make CDs

 

[chych]

Quote:

Firewire with it's 400 meg/sec

Nope, its theoretical ceiling is 400 MegaBITS/sec translating into 80 megabytes/sec (which is still pretty fast).

SCSI (yestertech) is still faster with a ceiling of 320 MB/s (Ultrascsi 320), which of course, is ridicously pricey and only useful in RAID arrays ($$)...

IEEE1394's bandwidth should double soon, and I agree, it IS the way to go. I have SCSI on my 15 year old mac... talk about old!