When good software goes bad.

For years Nero was the number 1 software for burning but I never got into it. I decided yesterday to give the latest version a try. After half an hour and only getting 25% of it installed I decided to give up on it as it must clearly need only the most powerful of systems to work. I'm going to stick to slow but sure Ashampoo Burning Studio. It's not the fastest but it works, uses minimal HDD space and you don't need the not invented Pentium Octo Core 2 THz processor with liquid Nitrogen cooling and a 50TB HDD to run it.

Also it took over 1 hour this morning to get rid of the remnants of Nero 9 and it screwed up Burning Studio as well do that's some more reasons why I'm never going to use Nero again.

I'm the same. Always used to use Nero as it came free with burners and worked extremely well.

Then they started placing automatic links on my desktop, and popups to upgrade. Now it's just a mess.

I use CDBurner XP:

http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

and ImgBurn:

http://www.imgburn.com/

Two very good freeware programs, but obviously may not be as good as commercial offerings. They cover all my needs however - plus I like donation based software. It somehow feels better to donate than buy.

I'm currently using Nero 5, which I downloaded a few years ago and it works wonderfully. Harrison sent me a newer version a while ago, but I lost the CD.

My preference for CD/DVD recording software is Toast, but that is for Macs only.

I've been an avid user of Nero for years.
I've always thought Nero was the best thing since sliced bread. However, the latest versions (Nero 8.x.x) are very buggy to say the least.
On my PC (which is a rather powerful system, and runs WinXP) I find that sometimes Nero crashes with an error stating that a Visual C++ Runtime error has occured.
Other software I use has started doing this too (Sony SonicStage for my Sony NetMD and Sony MP3 Player) does the same, but this all started once I installed Nero 8.

The worst culprit in the Nero suite for crashing like this, is the Nero WaveEditor, which crashes upon opening a file most of the time.

I'm now looking for alternatives, I've tried CDBurnerXP, but it doesn't burn MP3s on to AudioCD, I have to convert them to WAVs instead (and that was the latest version off their website)

I'm still using Nero 7 Ultra and haven't upgraded to 8 or the new 9 because of the instability issues I've read about. Version 7 still works perfectly and contains all of the features I need. Why bother upgrading?

7 also loads very quickly and uses a minimal memory footprint.

Why do manufacturers always insist of trying to use all of the resources available to current power systems? For something like a burning application it isn't needed. And look at M$ Office 2007 as another example. I was using 2003 for a long time and really liked it. The whole 2003 suite installed on a system in about 10 minutes, needed no reboots and worked perfectly. Applications loaded in a couple of seconds at most too. But I then upgraded to 2007 recently. I do like the improvements, but it look over an hour to install the whole 2007 suite! And the applications are quite slow to load too.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I'm still using Nero 7 Ultra and haven't upgraded to 8 or the new 9 because of the instability issues I've read about. Version 7 still works perfectly and contains all of the features I need. Why bother upgrading?

7 also loads very quickly and uses a minimal memory footprint.

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I upgraded because the Nero WaveEditor that's part of Nero didn't work on my system, and I use it quite a bit.
Because of the problems I'm having with Nero 8, I doubt I'm gonna get the new Nero 9. It's left a bad impression with me now.

I've even started resorting to using several utilities: I use Audacity now for my audio editing and recording needs, and (I know it's a bad idea) I've been using Windows Media Player to burn Audio CDs.

Please someone recommend me a decent CD burning package that can actually burn MP3s on to CDs as Audio like Nero, Easy CD Creator, WinOnCD, NTI CD Maker and plenty other commerical products can.
Also, it must be able to burn ISOs.

Ashampoo Burning Studio 8 burns almost everything including Blu Ray's. For video burning you may need a video codec set but just get k-Lite codec pack. If you require a keyfile there are planty of torrents out there but just try the trial version first and see if you like it.

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Originally Posted by Buleste

Ashampoo Burning Studio 8 burns almost everything including Blu Ray's. For video burning you may need a video codec set but just get k-Lite codec pack. If you require a keyfile there are planty of torrents out there but just try the trial version first and see if you like it.

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Well, I have K-Lite Mega Codec Pack installed on my PC, so video stuff souldn't be a problem.
I'll give it a try, and let you know my findings.
I did try DiscJuggler once, but I found that so horrid to use (the interface is so unfriendly and unintuitive)

Discjuggler is an amazing program and one of my favourites. However I do agree that it is quite complex. It has the cool option of being able to control multiple writers at once, making duplicating much easier. I used to have a 6 disc writer setup and using DJ to burn to all drives at once. Great for quickly duplicating corporate presentation CDs.

For audio editing I tend to use Sony SoundForge for most basic audio editing. But for the best you can't beat Adobe Audition. That is very powerful with so many features I've not even touched about 95% of them. I've used both since they originally came out, and Soundforge for years before Sony bought it, as it always came as part of the Macromedia Director bundles. But with the latest version of Adobe CS4, Adobe's Soundbooth audio editing program can now be used with multiple tracks making it more useful.

For an extra 30 days free trial on Ashampoo Burning Studio 8 enter in BRS8A0-100014-0004F2 as a key after the first 10 days has run out.

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Originally Posted by woody.cool

I'm now looking for alternatives, I've tried CDBurnerXP, but it doesn't burn MP3s on to AudioCD, I have to convert them to WAVs instead (and that was the latest version off their website)

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It does burn MP3's directly to waves for a normal audio CD - I just did such a CD for my brother only last week. It's also in the features list:

http://www.cdburnerxp.se/en/features

Perhaps it's a bug in the latest release. It does take a little time to get used to the different layout too. IMGBurn is a great app for ISO's and, erm *cough*, console images.

I'll give some of these suggestions above a try however. I'm always willing to try out new software. Thanks for the advice everyone. :)

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Originally Posted by Bloodwych

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Originally Posted by woody.cool

I'm now looking for alternatives, I've tried CDBurnerXP, but it doesn't burn MP3s on to AudioCD, I have to convert them to WAVs instead (and that was the latest version off their website)

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It does burn MP3's directly to waves for a normal audio CD - I just did such a CD for my brother only last week. It's also in the features list

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Don't know why it didn't work for me! Strange.