Seriously, What Is Up With Cd Spin Dr!? Lets Make This Happen...

[thig95]

Alright, I know many of these issues have been addressed in previous posts...BUT since the latest 10.0.2 update hasn't seemed to address ANY of the major issues I think we should pool our problems in one place and demand Roxio take action. I've just submitted a trouble ticket to support, but from your feedback it doesn't sound like that will do much.

 

SO Here's a list of things i've ran into in the last 12 hours i've completely wasted trying to use the program under "normal" user conditions and then trying workarounds...

 

(running on brand new macbook pro with latest OS and patches)

 

1) Double Entries of iTunes exported files (yes i know this is well documented) but clearly nothing has been done. 2 files are created, 1 being the .AIFF uncompressed version with ID TAG info (if you did an ident from gracenote) and the 2nd file is your .m4a (or .mp3) that does NOT have any ID TAG info except for the song name and occasionally album name.

 

2) Constant (and i do mean constant) application crash/hang events. Personally I have noticed this most when trying to open consecutive "existing" audio files, and trying to export to iTunes. After about the 3rd or 4th file, the application will terminate unexpectedly. I have also come across this when trying to work with a "captured" audio file having 3-4 tracks. When trying to change the start/end times of the tracks or doing identifications the program will once again quit.

 

3) "Saving" files directly from CDSD will seem to only save the first 40 seconds or less of a 4-5 minute track. When importing into iTunes ID TAG info isn't captured on these saves.

 

4) Auto capture of streaming audio launched from the finder doesn't seem to successfully trigger an export to iTunes. I've only had the process work properly (up until the crash anyways) when launching from the CDSD menu rather than the finder.

 

These are just my observations, i'm sure there are different issues out there...this application is clearly unstable at best. As a software developer myself, I for one am floored to have just shelled out $100 for software that doesn't do half of what it says it should. It's really no wonder people pirate software....but that's an argument for a different day. Please help me compile a list and I will do what I can do escalate with Roxio.

 

Extremely frustrated and dissatisfied Toast 10 user....

 

~Brian

[motowndave]

I just purchased Toast 10. I was able to record album music, but it didn't automatically separate the tracks. I then down loaded the updated version of Toast 10. Now when I go to save the music tracks I have recorded and can play in spin doctor, the system crashes and the music recording is not saved! Applying the filter system to the music recorded was also causing spin doctor to crash. Any help out there?

[thig95]

6.0.2 is what i'm currently using...it's beyond unstable. I've been using it for the last week now, primarily taking .m4a files I have and using CDSD to identify their ID tags. Without a doubt, this program will crash after opening the 2nd or 3rd audio file. I've gotten into the habit of just clicking relaunch to go back into it. Also, the application will crash when you attempt to move the play head through a track, or apply filters as mentioned in the previous reply.

 

Basically, anything you attempt to do to use the functionality in this app seems to cause it to crash. Even trying to save captured audio seems to cause this app to fail. I've found working with longer tracks seems to increase the likelihood of a crash, which leads me to believe there's an underlying problem with accessing memory properly. But that's just a guess...I've saved a crash file which I would be happy to throw up here somewhere if it might help.

 

"I'm unclear what you mean by auto capture of streaming audio launched from the Finder. The Auto capture is launched from the CDSD window that appears at startup. What is launched from the Finder"

 

What I mean by that is, there's an option to start the audio capture from the apple menu bar up top (the finder, where the data/time is volume, etc) assuming you have installed the support software. When you trigger audio capture using that, rather than the menu in CDSD window it doesn't seem to work)

 

And for the record, I emailed tech support back when I posted this (Sunday) and I haven't even gotten a single response from Roxio...guess everyone else was right!

[tsantee]

"I'm unclear what you mean by auto capture of streaming audio launched from the Finder. The Auto capture is launched from the CDSD window that appears at startup. What is launched from the Finder"

 

What I mean by that is, there's an option to start the audio capture from the apple menu bar up top (the finder, where the data/time is volume, etc) assuming you have installed the support software. When you trigger audio capture using that, rather than the menu in CDSD window it doesn't seem to work)

Found it. There is a box in Preferences that enables that menu option. By the way, do you have a CD Spin Doctor widget in your Dashboard? I have one there from an earlier version of Spin Doctor and I'm curious if its presence is connected to some of these problems.

 

I'll try to find time to play around with Spin Doctor over the weekend to see if I can confirm the issues you're having on my system.

 

[thig95]

Thanks for your help! Not currently using a spin dr widget...didn't know there was one!

 

Have you had any of the unstable / crash issues? I've seem to got it really bad. I did have an old version of toast prior to this installation (v7) but i'm pretty confident I got rid of it all before I tried my last reinstall....

[tsantee]

Thanks for your help! Not currently using a spin dr widget...didn't know there was one!

 

Have you had any of the unstable / crash issues? I've seem to got it really bad. I did have an old version of toast prior to this installation (v7) but i'm pretty confident I got rid of it all before I tried my last reinstall....

I haven't used this version of Spin Doctor for a long recording and haven't yet experienced any crashing. However, when Spin Doctor was first converted to an OS X application is was horribly unstable, so crashing is not unheard of in the past. I do recommend first saving your recorded file before doing any work on it. That way you won't have to re-record if it crashes. You may be correct that quitting and relaunching between projects is a safe workflow to reduce the chance of crashes. Are you using an Intel or PPC Mac?

[tsantee]

I'm finding version 6.0.2 to be much improved. It now has a help document as well. I don't know what's up with sending two doubled files to iTunes. It is annoying. The only suggestion I have is to choose Save Active Tracks from the File menu and then drag those to iTunes with iTunes preferences set to automatically encode the files when importing. That way it is easy to trash the saved AIF versions. I don't have any problem with the tracks being the correct length when saved that way.

 

I'm unclear what you mean by auto capture of streaming audio launched from the Finder. The Auto capture is launched from the CDSD window that appears at startup. What is launched from the Finder?