{"id":171,"date":"2006-11-15T22:49:13","date_gmt":"2006-11-15T22:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/sakufu\/2006\/11\/15\/evaluation_peri_1\/"},"modified":"2006-11-15T22:49:13","modified_gmt":"2006-11-15T22:49:13","slug":"evaluation_peri_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/2006\/11\/15\/evaluation_peri_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Evaluation period: CD Architect 5.2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know what I want for Christmas: Sony Sound Forge 8.<\/p>\n

Sound Forge comes bundled with another program named CD Architect 5.2, which I’ve been using in the last few days. That sound you hear is me drooling in the manner as Homer Simpson at the mention of the word "donuts".<\/p>\n

CD Architect allows you to prepare a CD master compliant with the Red Book standard, whatever that means. All I know is that it gives me so much more control over how to program a CD track listing than Nero or Roxio.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You do have to read the manual a bit before diving into the interface. It’s not wizard-based like Nero, but when you discover the kinds of things you can do, going back is difficult.<\/p>\n

Before I describe CD Architect, let me first recount how I would burn CDs of my Eponymous 4<\/a> demos.<\/p>\n

First, I would need to clean up the raw mix-downs from Cakewalk in Audacity. I would add two-second silences at the end of the tracks — where I wanted them — and a one-second gap at the start of the file. I did fade-outs and mixed tracks together when I wanted them lead into one another. In short, I would have to prepare the audio source to sound how I wanted to be when I burned it.<\/p>\n

No big deal, right?<\/p>\n

I got the effects I wanted to get, but if I remixed a track, I would need to re-prepare all the source material to achieve the same effects. And that can get time-consuming.<\/p>\n

CD Architect does away with all that. I could take what I called "stand-alone" versions of songs, drag them into the program and mark how I wanted them to fade into each other. I could easily determine which tracks needed two-second gaps and which didn’t. A simple drag of an icon sets how a track fades, and an envelope line allows me to customize further.<\/p>\n

I can even create hidden tracks if I wanted to.<\/p>\n

Once I got the CD line-up just how I like, I can save an image<\/em> of the entire disc to the hard drive, then burn it later.<\/p>\n

It was so easy to create an Eponymous 4 demo with CD Architect, I headed over to Fry’s to pick it up. The last time I went there, it was on the shelf.<\/p>\n

But I restrained myself because CD Architect comes with Sound Forge, one of the most acclaimed audio editing programs out there. I’ve never used Sound Forge, and while Audacity is powerful for its price — i.e., free — it’s probably not as flexible as I would like. The Generate Silence function on Audacity has frustrated me on numerous occasion.<\/p>\n

Sound Forge is a $300 piece of software, but with the same academic discount I used for Windows XP, it’s only a few dollars more than a commercial version of CD Architect by itself. So if I come into a lot of cash this Christmas, I’m getting Sound Forge. (Or I could just be reckless and surrender to instant gratification.)<\/p>\n

CD Architect is powerful and easy-to-use. A lot of products attempt to make that claim, but this program certainly lives up to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CD Architect allows you to prepare a CD master compliant with the Red Book standard, whatever that means. All I know is that it gives me so much more control over how to program a CD track listing than Nero or Roxio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technophilia-aural"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkjq-2L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}