| Product: |
Nero Burning ROM 5.x in general |
| Date: |
16.10.01 (963 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Quick and easy burning, Burn any type of CD imaginable
Disadvantages: Direct packet writing doesn't work with CDRs, Harder to grasp than Adaptec
Ahead Nero is CD writing software that is growing in popularity. But is it as good as it’s major rival Adaptec? Read on and I’ll give you my view of that.
About 4 months ago I finally got round to upgrading my PC. Along with that of course went all my old hardware upgrades, which while top of the range at the time were looking somewhat dated. In particular, out went my trusty old 8x SCSI Hewlett Packard CD rewriter in favour of the brand spanking new 12 speed burnproof writer bundled with the new Evesham PC.
The bundled Adaptec software that came with my old HP had become my best friend, especially the Packet writing software, DirectCD, which I used constantly, leaving a CDR in the drive permanently (or until it filled up at least) to write directly to the CD like an extra drive. Perfect for digital camera images, and MP3 writes that were quite capable of filling my 8GB hard drive in double quick time.
Unfortunately, my version of the Adaptec software did not support the new CD writer, so I was left with the Ahead Nero bundle that was supplied with the new one.
On loading the new software, the first thing I noticed was that Ahead’s packet writing software, InCD, only supports CDRW. This was a vast disappointment, as I generally only use CDRs, being cheap and “throwawayable”. This is a terrible omission by Ahead, for software that is in all other respects perfect.
After my initial disappointment however, and on delving a little further into the features, it became apparent that the Ahead software was very powerful indeed. I realised that with the enormous capacity of my new hard drive, the very reason for using packet writing previously was not so much of an issue. I could leave all my files on the hard drive and then transfer them in bulk to CDR in one hit.
As far as burning CD’s is concerned, Ahead’s software is the equal of Adaptecs in many respects, but beats it
hands down in terms of compiling audio CD’s. This can be done direct from MP3 format, without having to first convert them to WAV format. Just compile a list of music files direct from the CD or MP3s, and hit the burn button. The software does the rest, including prompting you to change the CD source when necessary.
Another brilliant addition to the software is the Wave/MP3 editing software, which gives many options to change and enhance your music quickly and with the minimum of fuss. Examples are Dehiss, (which does exactly what it says on the tin), stereo widening enhancements, shortening tracks by increasing the speed slightly without a noticeable change in tone, and the ability to insert a fade out into the tracks, very useful if your MP3’s end abruptly or you are ripping from a Mix CD with no definable end to each track. There are so many different options to tweak the music, in fact more than you’re ever likely to need, however the result is always the same - professional sounding music at virtually no cost in terms of extra software.
All the usual CD writing features you would expect, such as multi-session writing and disk at once writing are handled deftly, although as with most software of this type, it falls down when making “backups” of your CD ROM games etc. (Coz everyone makes “backups” don’t they?)
The user interface is a little harder to get used to than Adaptec’s. For example the list of directories on your hard drive is on the right, with the blank CD directory placed on the left, which to my mind goes against convention (example Windows Explorer). All in all though, it’s not too difficult to get the hang of, and the use of the obligatory wizard makes it a bit simpler.
Upgrades appear to be easily available too. I managed to upgrade immediately from Nero 5.0 to 5.5, just by visiting the website. The upgrade file immediately recognised the previous ve
rsion was valid and installed the newer version with no fuss.
As for support, this appears to be very comprehensive online, although the company is based in Germany so I don’t know how that would affect matters if you had to contact them by phone. Very expensive I would imagine. Fortunately, that’s not been an issue for me as the software has performed flawlessly.
I’ve only just scratched the surface of the potential of this software, which ahas a wealth of features that I do not understand or wish to! However, all in all I would definitely recommend the software to anyone that asked, particularly for the music editing package with is quite remarkable. Adaptec gets a slight edge in ease of use, but this is a minor grumble. A major grumble is of course reserved for the fact that the packet writing software is CDRW only. This is inexcusable. But in the end the benefits outweigh the problems this causes.
Summary:
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