Spin Doctor?

[j_ryall]

I just got Toast 11 and SD after having 8 (lost in a hard drive crash) and I was wondering if I'm missing something or not. I transfer Lps and cassettes to CD.

 

I used to be able to hit command [ or ] and have the tracks sync up to the previous or subsequent track. Not anymore? I love that feature.

 

I used to be able to grab an end of a track and drag it to where I wanted it beyond what's currently visible in the wave form. Not anymore? No dragging? I have to find the time and edit the info to move it? I use a zoomed in view for accuracy.

 

No more "play track" option? I have to put the cursor at the beginning of the track each time? (p.s. the arrows with the lines next to the play button didn't do anything) And when it gets to the end of the track it just keeps playing past it? Why don't we have that option anymore?

 

Sometimes space bar engages play and pause, sometimes it doesn't? That's an industry standard, how can they not get that right?

 

The user guide on this site is for the previous version that I miss so I can't find out if I'm just missing something or if all the best features that drew me to buy 11 are actually gone. Is there any way I can get it back without having to buy another copy? I just bought and registered 11, so why can't I choose which version of SD I use?

 

Also it records in AIFF, can I change that to WAV so I don't have to convert it upon export?

 

Ho hum....

[elkins_guy04]

So, you are suggesting that I purchase Toast 10 because the Spin Doctor software bundled with it is compatible with OS X 10.7.5 and operates exactly as the software bundled with Toast 6??? I've had Toast 11 longer than 30 days. I tried using it when I first received it, but gave up since it didn't function like the edition with which I was familiar. This past week I wanted to edit a Christmas concert in which I participated so members of my ensemble would have CDs of the performance for themselves as well as to use as musical Christmas card gifts. So, I tried Spin Doctor again and again, ended up very frustrated with the new software. Thank you for sharing my frustration.

[tsantee]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but Corel (parent company of Roxio) posted an article about compatibility of Roxio Products with Mountain Lion.

 

According to that article:

• 
  

  Spin Doctor X is not supported on Mac OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

  
  

So now one of the features claimed on the product page doesn't actually work.

 

Isn't that false advertising?

What's false advertising is claiming that Spin Doctor X works.

[stevenjklein]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but Corel (parent company of Roxio) posted an article about compatibility of Roxio Products with Mountain Lion.

 

According to that article:

• Spin Doctor X is not supported on Mac OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

  
  

So now one of the features claimed on the product page doesn't actually work.

 

Isn't that false advertising?

[elkins_guy04]

I must thank you for all your patience and understanding in working me through my problem to create a positive solution. You are very knowledgeable and communicate that knowledge in a clear, understandable manner. Thank you for all your help. It is greatly appreciated. If only all technicians who create manuals for their software could think as clearly and objectively as you, those of us who are computer challenged would have fewer problems.

[tsantee]

when you have the tracks from Spin Doctor in Toast 11 you should be able to preview each one using the playback controls at the bottom of the Toast window. That should indicate what will actually be burned to a disc or saved to a disc image. Instead of clicking the burn button choose Save as Disc Image from the Toast File menu. When that is done you'll have a .sd2f file on your hard drive. Switch to the Toast Convert window with Audio Files as the format. Drag in the .sd2f file. You'll see the tracks all reappear. Now you can export to iTunes.

 

I did what you suggested above and I successfully burned a disc. Two things though puzzled me. 1. When I dragged the .sd2f file to iTune, the titles didn't transfer. I'll have to rewrite them. 2. When I used the built-in recorder on my iMac, the beginnings of each track were cut off. When I used my Samsung CD/DVD burner, all was recorded as edited.

 

This was a long and tedious process trying to get 45 minutes worth of music on a disc. I can't imagine what a 2 hour recital or 3 hour opera will take. Is there someway to convert the initial editing to AFF files rather than editing then converting to tracks to AFF?

Once you get the workflow down it isn't too much hassle. Just be sure to Save as... after marking one track and then start over with the new file that was saved.

 

iTunes treats a .sd2f file as a single track. To get the tracks to iTunes you need to choose Audio Files in the Toast Convert window, add the .sd2f files there and click the Convert button to send to iTunes.

 

I don't know why it mattered which drive you used to burn the disc. At least one of them did work.

[elkins_guy04]

when you have the tracks from Spin Doctor in Toast 11 you should be able to preview each one using the playback controls at the bottom of the Toast window. That should indicate what will actually be burned to a disc or saved to a disc image. Instead of clicking the burn button choose Save as Disc Image from the Toast File menu. When that is done you'll have a .sd2f file on your hard drive. Switch to the Toast Convert window with Audio Files as the format. Drag in the .sd2f file. You'll see the tracks all reappear. Now you can export to iTunes.

 

I did what you suggested above and I successfully burned a disc. Two things though puzzled me. 1. When I dragged the .sd2f file to iTune, the titles didn't transfer. I'll have to rewrite them. 2. When I used the built-in recorder on my iMac, the beginnings of each track were cut off. When I used my Samsung CD/DVD burner, all was recorded as edited.

 

This was a long and tedious process trying to get 45 minutes worth of music on a disc. I can't imagine what a 2 hour recital or 3 hour opera will take. Is there someway to convert the initial editing to AFF files rather than editing then converting to tracks to AFF?

[tsantee]

Okay, I did find a few minutes to experiment with CD Spin Doctor 6.1.2. After marking the tracks and sending them to Toast the tracks all played as being the first song just as you experienced. So in CD Spin Doctor I chose Save as... and saved it with a small change in the file name. The file appearing in the window had the new name but none of the marked tracks. I marked the tracks again and sent to Toast again. This time the tracks arrived correctly. Each one played in Toast according to how they were marked in CD Spin Doctor. Oddly, Toast thought these five tracks totaling less than 40 minutes combined will require burning across three CDs. I chose Save as Disc Image and Toast created three .sd2f files (one for each CD it thought was needed). I dragged those three back to the Toast window and everything finally was right.

 

So I got to the desired end result after encountering a lot of nonsense. I suggest you start by choosing Save as... in CD Spin Doctor after marking the entire audio as a single track. That track will disappear but you should be good to go with this new file. It might even work sending to iTunes, but I've had enough excitement for now.

[tsantee]

Tsantee....I spent several hours today trying to create a disc using Spin Doctor. As mentioned in a previous post, I downloaded Spin Doctor 6.1.2 from the net. As I recall it was a part of the Toast 10 package download. I edited a performance that I recently gave of Christmas music. I broke the sound wave into the 26 songs that it contained and was able to listen to each track in order to get the exact start and stop position for them. I also wrote the song names for the 26 tracks. After editing the entire performance, I exported them to iTunes where I placed them in a playlist and burned them to disc. I was so pleased to have finally accomplished what I wanted to do. I popped the disc into the CD player. The player showed that the disc had 26 tracks. I started track one and found the the applause that proceeded the first song and which I had edited out , yet it was still there. I figured that I must have been clumsy in my editing and would correct that when I made a second disc. I skipped to track two and found that it was a duplicate of track one, as was all 26 tracks on the CD. Since I struck out recording a disc with iTunes, I thought that I would try Toast. I exported the music from Spin doctor to Toast 11 and pressed the red button to burn the music to disc. A small box opened up that read "Preparing Tracks". It started counting down the percentage of tracks that had been "prepared". When it reached 100 %, it started over again...and again...and again. In short, I was unable to accomplish what I started out to do this afternoon...export tracks from Spin Doctor to a media that burns discs. I'm perplexed. I don't know if the latter problem happened because the Spin Doctor was created for Toast 10 and I have toast 11. I can't download Toast 10 without a product number which means purchasing it. I don't know what to do.

I don't have time today to do some experimenting of my own. Hopefully I can get to this tomorrow. In the meanwhile, when you have the tracks from Spin Doctor in Toast 11 you should be able to preview each one using the playback controls at the bottom of the Toast window. That should indicate what will actually be burned to a disc or saved to a disc image. Instead of clicking the burn button choose Save as Disc Image from the Toast File menu. When that is done you'll have a .sd2f file on your hard drive. Switch to the Toast Convert window with Audio Files as the format. Drag in the .sd2f file. You'll see the tracks all reappear. Now you can export to iTunes.

 

I recall discussing the problem you're having with tracks exported directly to iTunes. I thought that was with the new Spin Doctor and not the older CD Spin Doctor but maybe it is with both. It could be due to updates to iTunes. I'll see what I get. I hope there isn't any problem creating the disc image.

 

One more thing: what format is the original audio file? I'm guessing it is .aiff but let me know if it is something else.

[elkins_guy04]

Tsantee....I spent several hours today trying to create a disc using Spin Doctor. As mentioned in a previous post, I downloaded Spin Doctor 6.1.2 from the net. As I recall it was a part of the Toast 10 package download. I edited a performance that I recently gave of Christmas music. I broke the sound wave into the 26 songs that it contained and was able to listen to each track in order to get the exact start and stop position for them. I also wrote the song names for the 26 tracks. After editing the entire performance, I exported them to iTunes where I placed them in a playlist and burned them to disc. I was so pleased to have finally accomplished what I wanted to do. I popped the disc into the CD player. The player showed that the disc had 26 tracks. I started track one and found the the applause that proceeded the first song and which I had edited out , yet it was still there. I figured that I must have been clumsy in my editing and would correct that when I made a second disc. I skipped to track two and found that it was a duplicate of track one, as was all 26 tracks on the CD. Since I struck out recording a disc with iTunes, I thought that I would try Toast. I exported the music from Spin doctor to Toast 11 and pressed the red button to burn the music to disc. A small box opened up that read "Preparing Tracks". It started counting down the percentage of tracks that had been "prepared". When it reached 100 %, it started over again...and again...and again. In short, I was unable to accomplish what I started out to do this afternoon...export tracks from Spin Doctor to a media that burns discs. I'm perplexed. I don't know if the latter problem happened because the Spin Doctor was created for Toast 10 and I have toast 11. I can't download Toast 10 without a product number which means purchasing it. I don't know what to do.

[tsantee]

The only thing I can think of is to double check that the name of the recorded audio file (it's saved name) appears at the top of the CD SpinDoctor window. If it doesn't show the file name then you need to save the entire file and open it again so that the file name appears. When the file name is there then it is safe to mark the tracks.

 

It makes sense to me for you to proceed to send the tracks to Toast or drag them to the desktop (I think that can be done) to export the individual tracks before quitting CD SpinDoctor. When you send them to Toast they appear in Toast's Audio CD window. Once there you can choose Save as Disc Image to create a single .sd2f audio file that has all the tracks marked. You later can add the .sd2f file to Toast's Audio CD window or to the Audio Files section of the Convert window and each of the tracks reappear.

[elkins_guy04]

Tsantee, I downloaded Spin Doctor 6.1.2 off the internet and took a recent recorded file and edited it. I saved after each newly created track. When finished, I closed Spin Doctor then opened it again to see if tracks were indeed saved. They weren't. I have to re-edit the entire hour and a half recording again and hope I don't loose it for a second time. Had it not been around midnight, I would have proceeded to burn it to disc and see if the music was divided into tracks. I'll try again tomorrow. Any suggestions as to what went wrong and how to fix it?

[MacGoddess]

I just tried digitizing an audio cassette tape using Spin Doctor with Toast 11 in Mountain Lion. It seemed to be working fine. I selected all the tracks and typed in the information, then sent them to Toast. Once in Toast, I decided to play a sample of each track and that is when I discovered every track is the same track as track #1. I then exported them to iTunes as MP3s and again they all came in with the different names but are all track #1. When I sample the whole recorded file in Spin Doctor, I hear each track as they should be, but I cannot send the different tracks to iTunes or Toast or even a folder because they all get exported as track #1. This is disgusting.

[tsantee]

I do like Toast 11 better than Toast 10 so it's not a total loss for you. When you get Toast 10 make sure the

So, you are suggesting that I purchase Toast 10 because the Spin Doctor software bundled with it is compatible with OS X 10.7.5 and operates exactly as the software bundled with Toast 6???

Yes, with some added capabilities. Make sure you have version CD SpinDoctor 6.1.2. The version is found by selecting it in the Finder and choosing Get Info. If it is an earlier version download the Toast 10 update at Roxio's Software Updates page. The first time you launch CD SpinDoctor it has to be after you have launched and registered Toast 10.

[tsantee]

Bias-inc had a bizarre authorization system so it is not possible to authorize a new purchase now they are out of business.

 

Yes, I can help you with CD Spin Doctor. You'll recognize it as being very similar to what you had with Toast 6. It just doesn't crash so often. I have links in a pinned Toast 10 forum post to some tutorials that Roxio has published. I'm not certain all the links are still good, but you should check.

 

If you bought Toast 11 as a download from Roxio they have a 30-day refund policy.

[elkins_guy04]

I use Audio Hijack Pro 2 to "capture" live audio streams on the computer, so that function isn't important for Spin Doctor. I would take the streams and edit them before sending them to toast to burn them to disc. If I should purchase Toast 10, may I ask you questions regarding its operation should I not be able to figure it out. Spin Doctor that came with Toast 6 had a manual which enabled me to learn how it functioned. What information came with Toast 11 did not match what I actually saw on my computer screen nor did it seem to function in the same manner as the previous version with which I was familiar.

 

By the way, I found SoundSaver for sell on Amazon.com but a user said that it was useless with the company out of business and unable to authentic the product. (???)

[tsantee]

Thank you Digital Guru for taking time to advise me regarding Spin Doctor. You suggest acquiring an earlier version of Toast. As you read, I am familiar with Spin Doctor that came with Toast 6. Do you have any knowledge of how similar Toast 10 is to Toast 6 in regards to Spin Doctor? Are there older versions that might function the same as Spin Doctor found in Toast 6 that are compatible with my Mac OS X 10.7.5? Before I make another purchase, I'd appreciate your imput on which version to acquire.

I just checked and the CD SpinDoctor 6.1.2 bundled with Toast 10 is working well on my Mac running OS 10.7.5. I didn't check the streaming audio capture. I vaguely recall that installing the new Spin Doctor X disables the extension for the streaming capture in CD Spin Doctor.

[tsantee]

Thank you Digital Guru for taking time to advise me regarding Spin Doctor. You suggest acquiring an earlier version of Toast. As you read, I am familiar with Spin Doctor that came with Toast 6. Do you have any knowledge of how similar Toast 10 is to Toast 6 in regards to Spin Doctor? Are there older versions that might function the same as Spin Doctor found in Toast 6 that are compatible with my Mac OS X 10.7.5? Before I make another purchase, I'd appreciate your imput on which version to acquire.

I'm pretty sure I still have the latest CD Spin Doctor (Roxio dropped the "CD" from the current version's name) on my iMac. I'll give it a go tomorrow and let you know.

 

I think what happened is that CD Spin Doctor was created by a third party rather than Roxio. That developer was pretty lethargic keeping up with changing OS requirements. With Toast 11 they decided to write their own app. It clearly had big intentions. But it was prematurely released to meet the Toast 11 release date and seemed to be about half finished. Roxio quickly released an update so that its core purpose worked but they never touched it again. It could have been excellent and it never got past being an embarrassment.

 

SoundSaver is a jewel. Someone should buy that from Bias-inc and put it back on the market.

[elkins_guy04]

Thank you Digital Guru for taking time to advise me regarding Spin Doctor. You suggest acquiring an earlier version of Toast. As you read, I am familiar with Spin Doctor that came with Toast 6. Do you have any knowledge of how similar Toast 10 is to Toast 6 in regards to Spin Doctor? Are there older versions that might function the same as Spin Doctor found in Toast 6 that are compatible with my Mac OS X 10.7.5? Before I make another purchase, I'd appreciate your imput on which version to acquire.

[tsantee]

I suggest returning Toast 11 and getting Toast 10 instead. It comes with the earlier CD Spin Doctor that still should work.

 

Spin Doctor X is not working to export tracks as marked on my Macs. That makes it essentially useless. There is a slider to zoom in the wave form. Tracks are marked by dragging across the waveform. The space bar doesn't work to activate playback but there was something I figured out. Maybe it was double clicking on the track. I wrote some tips in the Tips & Tricks topic pinned at the top of this forum.

[tsantee]

I'm so sorry that you need to use Spin Doctor. The new version is a nightmare. I can't get anything usable from it any more. There was a time when I could mark tracks and send them to Toast but I tried recently on two different Macs and almost nothing ended up in Toast as marked. When it first came out I wrote some tips in the "Tips & Tricks" thread pinned at the top of this forum. I suggest looking through that.

 

The waveform can be enlarged. There's a slider for doing that. Tracks are marked by clicking and dragging across the waveform. The space bar didn't work for playback but I figured out a workaround but have forgotten it now. Try double clicking on the track.

 

Bias Inc. developed a superior application called Sound Saver but they went out of business. I have Final Vinyl from Griffen Technology and it is working. Have you tried copying the CD Spin Doctor and Toast 6 from a backup for your previous Mac (along with the preferences files). It may not install but maybe it will run if already installed.

[elkins_guy04]

My old iMac crashed in late June so I purchased a new iMac OS X 10.7.5. Toast 6, which I had used on the previous computer, was not compatible with the new computer, so I purchased Toast 11. I use Spin Doctor to edit live operas and opera concerts that I "capture" off the internet. For years I was able to edit concerts into tracks and remove any commentary, radio station news and IDs, extended silence, etc. Full length operas were edited into acts with the various arias, choruses, orchestral pieces within each act given their own tracks. Since July 2012 I've been recording music but I can't figure out how to edit the performances. The new Spin Doctor doesn't seem to work like the version that accompanied Toast 6 nor is it supported on my new computer. Therefore downloading the older version doesn't solve my problem.

 

The old version allowed me to expand the soundwave so that I could find the exact start and finish of a track by swiping a line over the track which defined it and color coded it. The next track had a different color from the track on either side of it. When I pressed "stop", the music stopped until I could create the track. Then I could press "Play" and the music would continue to the next section that needed to be placed in a track. I could find tune the tracks by starting and stopping the soundwave within a track. When a new track was created, a listing would be created below the soundwave where I could type in the title of the track. I can't figure out how to do any of this with the Spin Doctor that accompanies Toast 11.

 

Is there anyone reading this who can give me basic instructions on how to edit music that I've already downloaded using Audio Pro or can you recommend another program that operates as easliy as the older Spin Doctor? Any and all help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[j_ryall]

Personally, I don't think Roxio has anyone working on Spin Doctor and we'll never see another version. I have no inside knowledge about this but it has been so very long since the one update they released....

 

I can even understand that to a certain degree, but why can't they offer a download for 11 buyers of the previous version? Like when everyone hated the new Quicktime so they made provisions to allow people to still use 7.

[tsantee]

As unfortunate as it may be, CD Spin Doctor has not been addressed or updated in the latest Toast 11.1_1072 update.

Personally, I don't think Roxio has anyone working on Spin Doctor and we'll never see another version. I have no inside knowledge about this but it has been so very long since the one update they released....

[BJacks]

As unfortunate as it may be, CD Spin Doctor has not been addressed or updated in the latest Toast 11.1_1072 update.

[prl]

There are couple of topics here about how hopeless people have found Spin Doctor X. There is an update release, but I haven't tried it to see if it fixes any of the problems I had with transferring vinyl to digital.