Subject:DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Posted by: dgorman

Date:8/16/2001 4:35:57 PM

I recently bought Source Forge becuase the guy at Guitar Center recommended it as a Pro Audio Tool.

I am a DJ in San Francisco looking to record my sets and do some normalization, and burn it to cd with tracks. Very Simple.

I was shocked when I found out that the Markers in Sound Forge can't delinate Tracks at burn time and I have to spend about 1 hour cutting and pasting a 2.5 GB file on my dual 866 proc box into individual tracks.

1) When can/will markers work for track delination at burn time. There is nothing out there that will do this short of buying Pro Tools for $1500.

2) When can/will Sound Forge support SMP? It will only use one processor even when the affinity is set to both procs.


How does every othe DJ make cd's w/ multiple tracks? Cut and Paste? Bah. Takes way too long to make one cd.

When I contacted Customer Service, the guy said he really didn't know if and when any new releases were coming out, any software that would do what I needed and couldn't point me to any sources of help (not even on their own site) In my opinion this is horrible customer service.

I really don't want to have to return this product.

Regards,
Dan Goramn

Subject:RE: DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:8/16/2001 6:03:33 PM

Sound Forge 4.5 will do what you're asking for. What you really need is their (SF) discontinued software called "CD Architect". With CD Architect you can take a wave file and paste Track markers where ever you please without making any cuts in the Wave file. CD Architect is a plugin which is supported under SF 4.5 and would show up as a menu item, so the 2 programs worked seemlessly together. Sonic foundry discontinued CD architect over a year ago because, they couldn't keep up with having the software support new CDR drives. So now Sound Forge 5.0 doesn't support CD architect and in place they put in the lame CD recording tool that you see. Don't bother complaining about this move of discontinuing CD Architect because it's been a very sore subject that many people on this forum have been bitching about. The software that does do what you're looking for is Wavelab by Steinberg. It's a little more expensive then Sound Forge, but it has a real CD burning program that you can use for mastering included with it. To me it's not as user friendly as Sound Forge and CD architect, but it will do what you're asking for, and many people who have taken the time to learn the program are happy with it. Another option is to buy Nero by Ahead software, which also let's you open up a wave and place CD Tracks on that wave wherever you please. Nero is just a CD recording program and you can't do any audio editing like normalization, so you would have to have this along with Sound Forge. You might want to look on Ebay for CD architect, and pick up a copy. It usually will come bundled together with Sound Forge XP v4.5 and they will work together and that's all you need for what you want to do. The only problem is that if you have a newer CDR drive, then your drive won't be recognized, unless it is MMC Compliant. Wavelab is $399 and Nero goes for $50. So there's some other options, do a little research and see what works best for you. I feel fortunate because I own SF v4.5 and CD architect. People just getting into audio editing and buying software are really missing out on these delightful tools. I've said it in the past that v5.0 was really a down grade from v4.5 and I'm sticking with that until sonic foundry develops something better.

Websites:
WWW.NERO.COM
WWW.STEINBERG.NET

Hope this helps,
Brian Franz

Subject:RE: DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Reply by: dgorman

Date:8/16/2001 6:32:16 PM

Wow. What can I say. Thank you for your help. I will purchase the Nero software as I do like SF but need this cd functionality.

Thanks again for this detailed response and I find this extremely useful.

Thanks Thanks Thanks!!!

Best Regards,
Dan Gorman

Subject:RE: DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Reply by: hifimofo

Date:8/17/2001 5:59:38 PM

I too am trying to do the same thing? Have you figured out how to do it?

All i want to do is to burn a cd with the .wav files that i have. i want to mix or crossfade the songs together. I also want to have track marks on the final product.

HOW DO WE DO THIS??

Subject:RE: DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Reply by: dgorman

Date:8/17/2001 7:19:47 PM

I have turntables (1200's) . I just mix a 2 hr set (with vinyl) and record it on my pc.

Dan

Subject:RE: DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:8/19/2001 11:00:12 AM

Well If you were me and fortunate enough to own every Sonic Foundry Program. You would Mix and crossfade all your wave files using Vegas Video. You would save your mix down to 1 final wave file. Then you would open that in Sound Forge and do whatever mastering tweaks that needed to be done. Then you would save that wave and open it in CD architect and place your Tracks on that wave file wherever you please and then burn it to a redbook master and then ship that to a duplication plant for mass production.

Now if I was you and didn't own all this software. First I would send a message to Sonic Foundry and complain how you can't do this task with their current software and tell them how disappointed you are that they discontinued CD architect. Then I would probably tell them you have been forced to buy Wavelab by Steinberg, because it does all the things that you mentioned. Wavelab has what they call a "audio montage window", where it allows you to mix and crossfade wave files in a multitrack manner, and place CD Track markers also. Once you are completed doing all your mixing, you then can burn this to a CDR.

Personally, "user interface" is the best thing Sonic Foundry products have going for them and probably the reason I use them.

Nero, will not allow you to do much mixing and cross fading, so you might be out of luck using that software for that task.

Good luck,
Brian Franz

Subject:RE: DJ needing to burn a set. Bad Customer Service

Reply by: Shaun

Date:8/24/2001 1:10:51 PM

Here's how I do it:

- record the source material onto the hard drive (if it's an LP or tape, get Dart's FREE Timer Recorder - you can set it to record for a period of time and just walk away)

- Open the WAV file in Sound Forge. Place markers where each song begins, plus one at the end of the file.

- Use "Convert Markers to Regions" on the Special menu under Markers (or is it Regions? - I don't have the product in front of me). This creates a region for each area between two markers.

- Use the Tools menu "Extract Regions" tool to create a WAV file from each region. You'll want to give your regions meaningful names before using this tool.

- Use a CD burner that supports Disk At Once (DAO) recording to keep from having those 2-second gaps between tracks - unless you want them.

There is also a product called CDRWin which uses a text list of track start and length information. If you exported your SF regions list to text, you could probably import the list to CDRWin and not have to divide up the WAV. I haven't tried this, so good luck!