MultiCD is a utility for playing audio CDs and recording sounds from them using one or more CD ROM drives connected to a Macintosh computer or compatible. Specifically it allows you to:
- easily deal with multiple CD ROM drives and switch between them on the fly.
- create a sound file of the audio between two points on a CD, with fairly precise and repeatable control
over the start and stop points
- make a recording from an audio CD using either digital or analog access to the CD ROM drive.
If you want a quick summary of how to use MultiCD, read on. If you want more information:
- The folder "MultiCD Documentation" contains a more complete user guide. Double click or drag the
file "MultiCD Help - Start Here" to your favourite web browser for a detailed description of MultiCD.
- Online help is provided while MultiCD is running by going to the help menu and selecting MultiCD Help
or by typing command-?
- MultiCD supports balloon help, to turn it on select Show Balloons in the help menu
START UP
To run the program just double click on the MultiCD icon.
If you are playing CDs through your computer it is a good idea to set the sound input used by each CD ROM drive the first time you run MultiCD. To do this go to the Playthrough menu in MultiCD and select the desired sound source in the Analog Input submenu. If you have several CD ROM drives, use the Switch Drive button in the MultiCD Controller dialog to select each drive in turn and repeat this process. These settings will be saved and restored the next time you play a CD on that drive.
OPTIONAL: If you want to record and play sounds using differential (diff) compression you should drag the corresponding decompressor to your System Folder and restart your Mac. Depending on the version of the Sound manager and QuickTime you have you may also need to install an A law decompressor if you want play and record A law sounds. The file "About Decompressors" provides more details on the what these compressor/decompressors do and how to install them.
PLAYING CDs
When MultiCD starts up it presents you with a dialog containing buttons for most of the standard CD player functions like Play, Pause, Stop and skip forward/back by a track (>>| and |<<). Somewhat less standard buttons allow you to switch to another CD drive, eject the disk or save a time stamp to a location on the CD (A and B).
You can loop repeatedly over a section of the CD by defining a start point (A) and stop point (B) then click on Loop AB.
Similarly, you can define start and stop points then record the sound between them by clicking Record AB.
For most CD ROM drives you can use the Play Mode menu to choose to play the tracks in numerical order (track 1 followed by 2, 3, 4 ...), random order or a programmed play list where you define which tracks to play and in which order (using the "Edit current track sequence" item in the Play Mode menu).
You can select a track to play on the CD by typing the one or two digit track number or dragging a track from the CD to the Play button in the MultiCD Controller dialog. To move from track to track use the >>| and |<< buttons in the dialog or left arrow, right arrow, < or > on the keyboard.
If track names have been defined for the CD clicking on the first line in the display will toggle between showing the track number and the track name.
DIGITAL PLAY
If you have an external CD300, CD600 or more recent CD ROM drive you can play sound through the internal Mac speaker by selecting digital play from the Playthrough menu. If your Mac supports 16 bit sounds you will get better sound quality if you select 16 bit stereo operation from the Preferences before turning on digital play. Digital play is a bit quirky and consumes a lot of processor time and memory so it may not work very well or at all on your particular Mac.
SETTING THE TIME
When there is an audio CD in the drive the current location on the disk is shown in the display in terms of minutes, seconds and optionally frames (1/75th sec). Clicking above a digit in the time increments the value and clicking below decrements the digit. The cursor changes to a + or - to show when you are in the appropriate areas.
Clicking to the left of the time toggles between the time from the start of the disk and time from the start of the track. Clicking to the right of the time toggles the display of frames in the time on and off.
RECORDING FROM CDs
1) In the MultiCD Controller dialog select the start (A) and stop (B) times
2) Click the Record AB button
3) Select the sound options. Suggestions: 16 bits, mono (with left and right channels),
5) Click OK then be patient, it will take a few seconds or even minutes to read and process the data
6) A dialog is displayed to let you play the recorded sound, return to the record dialog or return to the
play dialog
For recording at 11025 samples per second or lower you will get better sound quality if you click on More Options and select a "middle" anti alias filter.
In order to play back sounds using the "diff", "mu Law", "A law" or IMA4 compressors you need to install the corresponding decompressors. The document "About Decompressors" provides more details on this.
If you don't already have a program to play AIFF, wave or AU sounds you may want to consider getting a copy of "Fast Sound Player" a companion application that provides a bare bones player for snd, QuickTime, AIFF, wave and AU. You should be able to find a copy the same place you found MultiCD.
NOTE: do not play 16 bit recordings on computers that don't support 16 bit playback in hardware and do not have Sound Manager version 3.0 or later installed. Attempting to play 16 bit sounds through 8 bit hardware could damage your speaker or hearing.
SETTING PREFERENCES
You can turn various warning messages on or off, determine which CD is chosen by default at startup and control how digital play is performed by selecting the Preferences... item in the File menu. By default both these preferences and any options you select in the play and record dialogs are saved when you quit MultiCD and reapplied the next time you run the program. A preference is provided to not save these settings when you quit in which case default preferences and options will be applied at startup.
MEMORY REQUIREMENTS
MultiCD is configured with a preferred memory size that allows it to do analog play and record from CD and display online help (450 kilobytes for 68K, 250 kilobytes for PPC with virtual memory on) . You can reduce the memory size by about 50 kilobytes if you don't plan to record from CD.
Digital play requires a larger memory allocation, 1.2 megabytes for 68K and 1.0 megabytes for PPC with virtual memory on.
MultiCD is copyright Alex Newcombe, 1994-98, portions are copyright Apple Computer, 1989-94
This software is free in the sense that no payment is expected for it but the author (Alex Newcombe) reserves all rights to the software written by him.
Permission is NOT granted for modification of this program in any fashion without the prior written permission of Alex Newcombe. Any distribution of this software must include unmodified versions of MultiCD, the decompressor extensions (Alaw and diff) and all documentation (this file, all contents of the MultiCD documentation folder and About Decompressors).
Contacting the author: eanewcombe@aol.com
Please let me know how you like it and if you have suggestions for improvements.
