MDD Combo CD and Toast

[Charles Turner]

Here's an unexpected problem with Toast 5.2.1 and the Phillips CDD5101 
combo CD/DVD drive in my MDD G4 dual 867 system.

When Toast burns an audio CD, only the first eight tracks can be played 
back on a conventional (not a computer) audio CD player. When trying to 
play tracks 9 or beyond, the audio player seems just to wander and 
never find the track.

Searching around with Google I found a comment that the CDD5101 has 
problems with "disk at once" (DAO) mode. I couldn't figure out how to 
turn DAO mode off in Toast. The preference setting "prefer DAO" can be 
unchecked but Toast still says it's using DAO when it actually burns 
the CD.

However, when iTunes burns this same audio CD the resulting disk is 
perfectly compatible with the audio CD player. I've tried this 
experiment under OS9.2 and under Panther with the same results: 
Toast=bad, iTunes=good.

This same Toast, same system, when using my external Firewire CD-RW 
(Yahama drive) creates a good disk.

I noticed that the sound of the CD drive spinning is different when 
burning with Toast versus iTunes. With iTunes I hear the drive speed up 
and slow down a number of times. Maybe this indicates that iTunes is 
using track-at-once (TAO).

Apple Care may not want to hear about my problem with Toast since 
iTunes works OK.

The Phillips www support site has firmware updates for this drive, but 
wouldn't you know, they are only packaged for PC installation (.exe). I 
couldn't find any mention of firmware updates for this drive on Apple's 
support www.


-ct