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by Don Engstrom
A while back we did a review of a program
called TitleTrack which is a vast improvement over Apple's
built in "Apple CD Audio Player." Click
here to read the full review, otherwise suffice
it to say that TitleTrack is an indispensable program
for the audiophile. Shortly after we released our first
review we were contacted by the author of TitleTrack
to see if we would like to check out a developer's release
of his upcoming program TitleTrack Jukebox. TitleTrack
Jukebox (or TTJB) is built around the same premise of
the original TitleTrack program, load your CD's and
download the title and track information from an online
database. TitleTrack Jukebox takes this concept to the
next level. With TTJB and a small hardware adapter you
can use your Mac to control one or several Sony CD changers.
Getting Started:
For our tests I borrowed a 200 CD changer
and loaded 40+ CD's from my soundtrack collection. The
Slink-e
adapter connects to your Mac's serial port and to
the back of the Sony changer. Only Sony changers are
supported, but you can daisy chain up to 12 of them
together for a total capacity of 2,400 CD's! On first
startup the program crashed with a type 10 error. Giving
TTJB a little more memory made it happy and I was off
and running. The first order of business was to load
information on all of the CD's in the changer. As a
long time user of TitleTrack, I had already downloaded
data for most of my CD collection. Since TitleTrack
Jukebox uses the same data file for the changer as TitleTrack,
this process went quickly. If you are starting from
scratch, downloading information for 200 CD's from the
online database will take a while. This is a one time
process though as the information is recorded to your
hard drive for subsequent use. Once you have gone through
this preliminary setup the fun really starts.
Play Lists:
The next order of business is to generate
a play list. Play lists can range from one or two songs
to several months of non-stop music. Drag and drop support
is extensive throughout the program, so if you see a
CD title or a track title, chances are you can drag
it to your play list. From the changer list you can
drag a CD to load all of its tracks or drag individual
tracks one at a time. Shift and option clicking are
also supported for contiguous or non-contiguous selections.
The changer list can be sorted by artist, title, location
or category, making it easy to generate play lists based
on any of these criteria. Once you have a play list
you can opt to shuffle it randomly or (assuming you
didn't add them in the order you want) you can drag
titles to rearrange their play order. If you have more
than one changer hooked up you can select the "stagger"
button to arrange the list so consecutive tracks are
pulled from alternating machines. This eliminates delays
between songs that occur while CD's are loading. The
bottom of the player window keeps a running tally of
of tracks on your play list as well as the total run
time. I quickly generated a random play list of 500+
tracks and over 24 hours of music to listen to while
I worked on the review! Once you have a play list set
up the way you want you can save it to your drive for
later use. These files can be shared with friends who
also have the program. Any tracks from missing CD's
at their end will simply be skipped.
If you don't feel like selecting tracks
for your play list you can have TTJB do it for you based
on several criteria. People with extensive CD collections
will appreciate the ability to generate play lists of
tracks they haven't heard in x days/weeks/months, a
great way to rediscover lost favorites. If you are planning
a romantic evening you can use the powerful catalogue
search (not shown) to generate a list of all tracks
containing the word "love" although I doubt
the "Love Suite" from PeeWee's Big Adventure
would put anyone in the mood!
A Work In Progress:
Although there is a lot to like about
TitleTrack Jukebox, it is evident that it is still a
program in development. I did, for example, experience
a few crashes beyond the first one. Also for some strange
reason a couple of CD's disappeared off the changer
list although their track information remained on the
play list. In a few rare cases the first few seconds
of the next song on a CD would play before the
request for the next song on the play list was
received by the changer. With some CD's having long
pauses between tracks and others having little or no
pause, I can see how this could happen but hopefully
this glitch will be worked out by release time. There
are also areas of the program that will benefit from
the interface improvements the author assures me are
in the works. The "changer list" for example,
should be broken into columns that can be sorted. Jumping
to a specific track on the play list is also a little
awkward, requiring you to drag the track to the top
of the play list and hit the "next track"
button on the player. Double clicking, as you do in
the original TitleTrack program, would be much more
intuitive.
Conclusions:
I was quite happy and content with my
original TitleTrack program
until I got my hands on the Sony changer and TitleTrack
Jukebox. I only loaded a small portion of my CD collection
into the changer and spent several highly enjoyable
hours generating different play lists based on composer,
genre etc. With one or, even better, two changers loaded
with your entire collection you could really go to town.
I was loath to return the changer and return to the
rather drab one-CD-at-a-time world. This program is
a diamond in the rough and I'm sure will polish up nicely
by release time. If you have a compatible
Sony changer you will undoubtedly want this program
when it becomes available. You can send a message to
jukebox@titletrack.com
to be updated on the program's development. If you don't
have a changer you might want to check out TitleTrack
which downloads title and track information off the
net and at least allows you to create a custom play
order for each CD.
Don is the editor of MacSpeedZone and
MacReviewZone and, sadly, is back to playing CD's one
at a time...
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