Software Review of:
Easy CD Creator 
4 Deluxe 

I was elated when I visited CompUSA to find they had put Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe (normally $99) on sale for $20 off with a manufacturers coupon for an additional $20 off for the upgrade. Forty dollars off had to be a great deal so I grabbed one and bellied up to the register. When I got home after a really stimulating presentation by Corel at the Alamo PC meeting, I couldn't wait to confirm what a great deal I had made. I jumped on the web and put my 2 favorite bots (www.mysimon.com and www.nextag.com) to work scouring the web for the lowest price. They came up with $75 plus $6 shipping and handling. Pretty close, but I still paid more when you figure the tax. Just to be sure, I entered <www.egghead.com>. Wouldn't you know it, $76 with free S&H. So much for my great deal, I had overpaid $10. Dontchajusthatethat? 

The Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe is an absolute gold mine of applications and bonus bundled programs to copy (burn) audio, data, photos, and video to CD. The installation is effortless and simple. The User's Guide is ample and well done. It requires Windows 95/98/NT4or5; 166 Pentium or faster; 32 MB of RAM; 45 to 270 MB of hard disk space plus over 600 MB of work space; 800X600 display, 256 colors; IE 4.01 or higher; A functioning sound card with speakers; A CD R/RW drive (burner) with blank disks and internet access. The opening screen is clean and straight forward with explanations for each button. When you go online to register, they download and install the latest update to version 4.02. 

Start the program from an icon on the desktop or systray. Click the Audio button (or as I like to call it - music). The audio screen appears. Click on Audio CD to work with music CDs to make a favorites CD or make one copy of one of your music CDs (legal for your private use per The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992). The music companies have gotten very creative in discouraging this and I have had very limited success making an exact copy of my music CDs. One of the great features of Easy CD Creator is the CDDB Internet button. When you insert your music CD in the CD R/RW, it will list the song tracts as Tract 1, etc. Click on the CDDB Internet button and the program connects with <www.cddb.com> (A database of most CDs) and enters all the song titles in the program. Pure unadulterated magic and really helpful when you ask the program to print a disk cover and insert for the jewel case with all the recorded song titles. When you have selected the songs you want to record, click Create CD and the program will start copying your songs to the hard disk (making a CD image). The Sound Editor can be used to modify the sound tracks on the CD image. Then you will be prompted to insert your blank CD R (don't use an RW - the dyes are different and it probably won't play in a music CD player). The exception is Phillips who have just introduced a new line of CD players that will play music RW disks, It will then test, write, verify, and go on forever until you get the Successful Copy message. Unfortunately, that does not guarantee a good copy. The acid test is to play the CD in your music CD player and listen for clicks, fade outs, scrambled tracks, and anything that doesn't sound right. Anything that doesn't belong and you've just made a coaster. If you get a Buffer Under run message - You've just made a coaster (because your system burped and couldn't keep the data coming as fast as the recorder wanted it). When you start writing to the CD, if you have an EIDE interface machine, don't mess with the machine at all - let it do it's thing. Or you can slow the write speed - that seems to make things less touchy, and it takes longer. Just experiment with your setup. If you had the good sense to buy a SCSI interface machine - they are fast and you will be wondering what all this is about. The excitement and frustration is reserved for those of us who thought we could get good results on a $150 sale machine. Not. 

Also on the Audio screen is Spin Doctor, probably, the preferred application to record music to CD. Any music you can plug into your sound card (phonograph, tape, CD player, stereo including radio) or on the hard drive (MP3 or WAV) or a CD played on the CD ROM, Spin Doctor can handle it. Not only set it up to record, it can filter pops, clicks and hiss and add reverb and concert hall effects. You can balance sound levels from different tracts and then preview your efforts before writing it to CD. I know, the opening screen looks really goofy. It's about as simple and straightforward as they come. 

1. Select your music source. 
2. Select where you want the music sent. If you want to message the sounds, click the Options button and make your selection. 
3. Click the Record button and the program records your tunes to hard disk and then to the blank disk. 

Clicking the Internet Music button on the Audio Screen will load the Liquid Music Player for listening and downloading (ripping) music from the web. 

Clicking the Data button on the Main screen will bring up the Data screen. Now we're getting to the really good stuff in this program. Click on the DirectCD button and it's magic time. A Welcome screen will appear explaining the process. Then the Drive Information screen will show your burner. Insert a blank recordable or rewritable disk, click next, and the program will format the disk. Congratulations, you now have an over 500 MB disk drive that acts like any other drive. Access it with Windows Explorer or any program that will read other drives on your system to drag and drop, delete, copy or right click and use Send To. When you delete a file, the program does not give you the space back. On a rewritable disk, it is necessary to wipe the entire disk to regain the space. Bummer! DirectCD will start with Windows and wait for a formatted or blank disk to be loaded in the burner. Then it springs to life. Load a blank disk and it will ask if you want it formatted. Load a formatted CD and it is in the background, doing it's thing. I really like DirectCD. If you do much scanning or need to off load your hard drive, it doesn't get any better than this. Try it, and it will spoil you. It's worth getting a CDRW drive just to use this feature. The rest is just gravy. The only downside is don't expect anyone without the capability to handle multi session CDs to read these disks. 

Click on the Data CD button on the Data screen and the Easy CD Creator screen appears. Look familiar? Yep, the flagship program works with audio and data. It's simple to drag and drop or click the add button, copying the file to the CD layout window. When you have all the files you want to copy to a CD, click the Create CD button. Set the option of closing the CD if you want to read it on any CD ROM or leave it open to add more files later. 

Back to the Data screen, click on System Backup CD. This program, Take Two is new in Easy CD Creator 4. If you could make an exact copy of your hard drive to one or more CDs, then when disaster strikes, use the emergency bootable CD to get up and running again, and your worries about hard drive failure and data loss would be history. That's what Take Two does. 

Back to the Main screen, click the CD Copier button. The CD Copier screen will appear. If you only have the CD burner installed, it should be listed in the Copy From and Record To windows. If you have an additional CD ROM installed, it should be listed in the Copy From window. Click the Advanced Tab and set: The recording speed; Test to determine if the program is happy with the setup (after the first few times, use Test and Copy or Copy). Select Copy Source CD to Hard Drive First and verify the location of the Temp file with about 600 MB for a full source CD. Click the Copy button and don't touch the computer - just let it chug away. It takes quite awhile. Do not try to copy a Microsoft disk. Strange, unexplained things will happen to your computer. They assure me it is not the operating system. The bios will suddenly forget the serial ports so you can't go online to get help or the last time, both my CD R/RW and CD ROM disappeared from Windows 95. It took a new motherboard, Windows 98SE and several hours on the phone with Microsoft to get my system back. That's also when I found out about the unpublished 350 MHZ speed limit in Windows 95 ver A. Aint it fun? 

Back to the Main screen. Click the Jewel Case Creator button. Yep, the package includes software to print jewel case inserts and disk covers. Also, a little bug prompts you thru a simple and straight forward program that works great. A little plastic thing is included to put the disk covers on the disks. It works. Now I make really neat looking coasters. 

Back to the Main screen, click on the Photo and Video button. The Photo and Video screen appears. Click the Photo Album button and Photo Relay pops up. This is a neat little program to create slide shows, web albums and video postcards. I haven't tried this yet, but I'm looking forward to creating a video postcard when I get a DV camera. 

Back to the Photo and Video screen, click on the Video CD button and the Video CD Creator Wizard appears to walk you thru creating a video CD. I am not into digital video yet, but this looks like a good way to edit and store video in MPEG format on a CD. 

Also bundled with this package are two really nice abbreviated programs. MGI PhotoSuite II SE to retouch and transform photos and MGI VideoWave II SE to edit video clips. I think they figure you will get hooked on the short version and fork over $80 for the latest complete version of both. MGI demonstrated the latest version of the programs to the Alamo PCUG last June 14^th, a really good demonstration. 

Finally, The Bottom Line. This is one humongous package of software. I couldn't wait to load it and burn some CDs. My first two music CDs were, you guessed it, COASTERS. But, good looking coasters with their neat covers announcing my failures to the world. I guess the learning curve is a tad steeper than I anticipated. I don't blame Easy CD Creator for my failures. This is great software, but it can't overcome IRQ conflicts or incompatible hardware. The following is downloaded from <www.adaptec.com>, the Tech Specs section about Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe: 

Coaster proof? You think? I'll let you know. Next time - Nero and CD Writer Utilities 2000. Burn them coasters!