Bug Fix Almost Fixed

[John Yuelkenbeck]

I had complained about a couple of audio CD issues which Toast used to do with no problem, but had been discontinued with version 11. I was pleasantly surprised when both of those issues were addressed with the recent bug fix release, well, once I got past the "digital signature" problem that is.

 

However, one of the items was only partially fixed. It has to do with being able to review audio tracks. The new version will once again allow you to hold down on the Back (or Forward) triangles to review through the music as opposed to skipping completely to the previous (or next) tracks. But what it doesn't do—and what was critical for me—is allow you to review backward from the beginning of a track into the end of the previous track in order to quickly check your crossfade. For example, I might click on track 12, hit play, then immediately hold down on the Back button so that it will review into the end of track 11 for several seconds, then let go so that I can hear the transition between track 11 and track 12.

 

Previous version of Toast have always worked this way. Close but no cigar, Roxio!

[tsantee]

You probably know the less-convenient workaround of previewing the crossfade by selecting Custom in the crossfade window. Sorry the method you prefer isn't working.

[rarewavemusic]

This post contains parts of a post I shared a year and a half ago regarding the audio playlist functionality.

I use Toast primarily to make cross-faded mix sets and I use it for that a lot and have for many years. In 11.0.2, the RW and FF icons did not work as they did in 10 and became unintuitive.

For example, if you have a 4 song set (and nothing highlighted), you can press play and the first song will start, but the RW and FF icons are grayed out. If you highlight and play the first song, the RW is grayed out, but the FF is active, so if you want to fast rewind through the first song, you have to highlight a subsequent song while the first song is playing so that the RW will be active.

In the same way, when the set gets to the last song and it's highlighted, the FF is grayed out, so if you want to fast forward through it, you have to highlight a previous song while the last song is playing so the FF will be active.

Also, you used to be able to RW and FF continuously through all the songs (great for quickly checking the crossfades as John Yuelkenbeck notes above). Now, you can sometimes RW and FF continuously through the songs EXCEPT never the first and last songs. Sometimes, when you get to an adjacent song, it just stops at the crossfade and the highlighting toggles back and forth between the two songs.

Now, in the update before this last one, even that functionality was broken, and I was ready to give up, but I’m happy to see that at least the previous unintuitive functionality has been restored in the latest update along with copy to clipboard. For that, I thank you. But, we haven’t really made any progress, have we? Also, with version 11, the meters got smaller and grayer, too. Why?

For those of us who like to make “mixtapes” and still want to use version 11 for some of its other features that we like, I’d like to see the audio playlist functionality improved. If the developers were to create a 4 song playlist in version 10 and play with the Previous song (quick click), Rewind (click and hold), Next song (quick click) and Fast Forward (click and hold) for all 4 songs, then RW and FF through the entire set, they’d see exactly what I’m talking about. And they’d see how the meters were bigger and more readable in 10.

Since I depend on the meters, I’d like to see larger, more intuitive meters. I'd also like to see a horizontal play bar similar to iTunes to easily navigate to various parts of the song/set. Finally, an intuitive export playlist with ID tags would make creating text playlists much easier. Thanks for listening.

(2008 iMac with 4GB running 10.8.2)