bit-tech Shopping: Sonic Solutions Toast 9 Titanium

• Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger)
• Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)

• PowerPC G4
• PowerPC G5

Rating: 8

Time with product: 2

Strengths: Blue-ray support, TiVo to go

Weaknesses: Pretty much the same as 8

Summary: As a one time buyer I can definitely recommend this product. And if you're a TiVo owner there are even more reasons. Toast also you the ability to move content from your Tivo to DVD or portable device. Toast of course provides great support to process DVD/CDs.If your a v8 user and are consider upgrading (like myself), the differences are not really worth the price. Unless you get really good pricing and sell your v8.

Rating: 10

Time with product:

Strengths: any type of file that you want on a cd or a dvd - Toast 9 can do it for you. Very easy to use.

Weaknesses: If you are used to PC programs, it might be a bit frustrating to understand everything quickly to work with this program on Mac.

Summary: I was pleasantly surprised that Toast 9 will actually organize, and burn any file you can imagine on a cd or a dvd. For the music lovers, FLAC is included, as well as standard MP3, WAV, etc. For the video, the possibilities are huge; DiVX, mpeg, choosing NTSC or PAL output and anything in between. Of course there is more to Toast 9, like HD options (blu ray and now dead HD-DVD), a whole bunch of templates for the DVD menus and so on. Interface is very easy to use. Thumbs up!

Rating: 8

Time with product: 1 Months

Strengths: Toast 9's interface for features that existed in Toast 8 is better-designed. The gauge showing how much space will be used on a blank disc is now larger and more useful.

Weaknesses: Except for Blu-Ray support, Toast 9 isn't much different than Toast 8.

Summary: It's worth buying if you don't already have it, and it's worth upgrading if you have Toast 7 or older, but I'm not sure it was worth upgrading from Toast 8.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 2 Weeks

Strengths: Many improved and innovative new feature especially for multi- media, audio and video files authoring.

Weaknesses: You need latest Mac OS version. It only works with OS X 10.4.x (Tiger), 10.5.X (Leopard) and above.

Summary: I am a long time ( about 9 years ) user of Roxio Toast and Toast Jam since 1999. I usually burn and author music related stuffs. This version 9 is kind of mixed with Toast jam function. So, I do not need Toast jam any more and I can manage not only audio files but other media files, video, TV and movie, conveniently with one application. Perfect mixes is one of my favorite feature for authoring audio files. That allow you to create sound mixes with DJ-style cross-fades and transitions, output level adjustment, and enhancement filters. Also there are many time saving new things such as capture streaming audio from any source including the Internet, or build a library of audio tracks. As for movie files authoring, Toast 9 come with many new features like convert TIVo and EyeTV shows via internet, or burn HD DVD and Blu-ray on standard DVD.I am very happy with this new toast 9 and it became my best assistance for media files authoring and arrangement.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 2 Weeks

Strengths: Recompresses video, captures streaming audio, and burn Blu-ray movie on standard DVD.

Weaknesses: HD DVD/Blu-ray plugin is extra and program stopped responding a lot before update.

Summary: This is a must have piece of software for your Mac if you do any amount of disc burning. You also get the ability to recompress video so that it will fit on your mobile device. If you listen to internet radio, you can capture that audio too. The coolest feature has to be the ability to burn a Blu-ray formated video on a standard DVD. This is great since Blu-ray burners and blank media are still very expensive. The only real complaints that I have are that you have to pay extra for the HD DVD/Blu-ray plugin. Also the program is buggy out of the box, but that seems to be corrected after the most recent update. One last thing if you want to be able to see all the formats that you can burn, go into preferences and enable legacy formats.