Roxio Toast Titanium 8

I downgraded to Toast 7.1.3 and burned a "test" audio CD. The set-top DVD recorder couldn't recognize it, but then I put it in the DVD/VHS combo and it played the first 11 tracks with no problem. For some reason it saw the last two tracks, but they would not play at all.

The entire disc plays in iTunes flawlessly.

The only real reason I "liked" to use Toast is that I noticed it burns a little faster than most other apps with burning capability --- but as a sidebar I did notice that sometimes the DVDs burned tended to have frozen, pixellated spots occasionally. I thought I put all these headaches behind me dealing with incompatible softwares when I left windoze in the dust eons ago.

Oh well, no Toast for me then -- as I have been fortunate that I've never had any major (Mac) problems ever -- even with upgrading to Leopard on 10/26 at 10:15 am immediately after signing for it 😉

It's not worth it because if Leopard ain't broke, I'm not gonna fix it for some third party app; I guess I can stop burning coasters now.

An update. After running out and spending $30 on two different DVD/CD lens cleaners, it seems things might have improved immensely.

After running the cleaning process numerous times, I quickly burned a test audio CD with Toast 9.

It played completely from beginning to end with *NO problem* in my

(1) Playstation 2
(2) the set top DVD recorder which had been problematic
(3) on the iMac
(4) the firewire DVD drive

I wanted to test it in as many types of equipment, as possible; I didn't pull out the Mini to see how it played in it though.

The other set-top DVD recorder was hopeless and the lens cleaners didn't restore it -- as it only lasted 6 months and stopped reading DVDs, but has no problem playing CDs. Go figure.

I still need to burn a test DVD to see if things are completely back to the way they were. After the thorough cleaning, the main set-top player recognized DVDs that I burned before with no problem again.

So the moral of the story IS: it's always good to keep NEW lens cleaners on hand because they DO wear out eventually, and that's why my main set-top DVD recorder had stopped recognizing burned discs, despite the fact that I had been using another optical cleaner CD weekly.

Sidebar: it's funny that the main one has now lasted 5 years, and that second one I bought 2 years ago quit after 3 months and when the warranty expired -- and after doing lots of research online... I discovered that many people who bought that brand had experienced the SAME problem: stopped working after 3 months and the warranty expires and the company has a "rig" where they want you to pay $69 + shipping for service and it's not guaranteed to be a permanent fix because one person posted that she had done the repair thing 3 times and it was only a temp fix and she'd finally moved on to another brand.

If only that information (bad reviews) was available when I was doing all that research online and I would've just stuck with buying the same brand I bought 5 years ago when I bought the first recorder.

Live and learn, lol. Thanks for the input!

I just burned a DVD+R movie with Toast 9 to complete my final tests. No problems playing in any equipment. Awesome quality and Toast 9 seemed to burn faster than any of the previous versions, so Roxio is on my good side again 🙂

I might try to burn another DVD later in the FW burner for grins, just to see how it compares to be thorough.

As I said, if you author and play lots of digital media, be sure and keep optical lens cleaners on hand to keep your equipment in decent shape with regular cleaning because buying one of these cleaners is better than shelling out money for a new player (especially if it breaks down out of warranty like some do, lol)