by Don Engstrom

We generally don't review shareware here at MacReviewZone but there is a first time for everything. TitleTrack is a CD player that replaces Apples free but primitive player and goes well beyond simply playing CDs. I'll admit that the first time I saw and used Apple's CD player I was impressed. "This is great," I thought to myself, "you can type in the name of the CD and all the tracks and the player will remember them next time you play the CD!" I then looked over at my collection of 200+ CDs and my enthusiasm started to wane as I did the math. 200 CDs meant 200 titles plus (at a modest estimate of 10 cuts per CD) 2,000 track titles to type in! That is a lot of time spent typing....

TitleTrack spares you the effort of entering title and track information manually by accessing an online database containing information for thousands of CDs and downloading this information to your drive for future reference. I was amazed at how extensive the online database is. I was able to download information for some relatively recent and obscure Irish folk groups that I was sure would not be listed. It quickly became a challenge to find a CD that was not listed and I only found a few, mostly local bands. The comprehensive nature of the online CD database can probably be attributed to the fact that TitleTrack and other similar programs allow you to manually fill out information on missing CDs and submit them to the database.

There are a couple of ways to get data from your CD collection entered. The first is to start Title Track and pop a CD in. If TT doesn't find the data for that CD

locally it will log on to the CD database and scan it for the CD. 90% of the time it will find the information it is after but in the rare cases it doesn't TT will give you the option of entering the information manually. This approach works well if you are online most of the time or don't mind going online to look up each new CD. A far better approach is to use the batch lookup option. This feature, new to version 2, allows you to load several CDs in succession to be searched in one shot. Once you have loaded all the CDs you want to look up just hit the "Look Up CDs" button and wait. The process takes a while as the online Database must be huge but it is a onetime task per CD and once you have the information downloaded the fun really begins...

TitleTrack gathers information not only on the names of the CD and its tracks, but also about what category the CD is in and any liner notes that are available. Once you have all of your CD collection entered in you can add custom information for each CD including links to related web sites. You could, for example, include a link to an online concert schedule, or fan page for the currently playing band. Each time you play the CD this information is just a click away.

As you have probably noticed from our illustrations, TitleTrack also allows you to paste a graphic of your CD cover for display. If you don't have a scanner or don't want to scan all of your CD covers, there are several sites that sell CDs that also have cover shots. I'll let you struggle with the ethics of swiping graphics from CDs you already own but as long as you do what I do and buy a few CDs each time you visit I don't think anyone would mind ; -)

Gripes: I only have a couple as this is a truly great program. I have already covered the CD List window issue. The main limitation of the program is that you are not able to edit or create new categories for your CDs. The CDDB database by necessity limits the number of categories it offers which is understandable. Once the data is downloaded, however, I would like to be able to break down their broad categories into more specific ones. For example the "Folk" category could be divided into Irish, Eastern, etc. As it stands you are limited to the current 10 broad categories TitleTrack offers. Lastly, there is a bug that causes TT to return several error messages when it is quit via shutdown or restart commands. Performance doesn't seem to be affected and there is no problem quitting from within the program.

The shareware version limits the number of CDs you can store information on but will give you a good feel for the program and it's extensive set of features. I didn't even get around to telling you about the shuffle and custom order play options but I'll let you explore on your own from here. TitleTrack is the first shareware we ever registered and we consider it money well spent.

Don co-authors two popular Mac based web sites. He listens to Old Blind Dogs full volume as he works and is still hoping for that "Reunion Tour."