SilverTL

Ok, I paid $75 for discwelder bronze at guitar center. Here are my results:

The software did NOT work with my Lite on 851s dvd+/-rw drive even though the gear drivers support them. I contacted technical support at minnetonka software and they are still looking into it so...

I returned the lite on and picked up a tdk 880n. I got 99 tracks on a dvd-r disc and voila worked like a charm, the tl reads it as 'DVDA' - sweet. I have burned 5 discs now, and each one worked great.

I tried burning fuji and tdk dvd+r discs and they DO NOT work. the els system accepts them, then blinks 'DISC' a few times and spits 'em out. I know I saw some thread of someone burning 1 track onto a dvd+r and making it work, but i tried a few times and NONE of them worked, so...

I contacted minnetonka audio since they helped panasonic in developing the els system and they confirmed that dvd-r is the only format that the els system will recognize.

hope this helps.

oblio98

Good info. Are you doing 16bit/44KHz or 24bit/48KHz wav files?

SilverTL

16bit/44KHz

and i forgot to mention that the burn process was about 35 minutes

Hal

Wow.. thanks - I've been looking for a thread like this.

TLGator

SilverTL - Thanks for the info! I have that same Lite-On drive, so I guess I'll hold off getting the software for now.

greenseed

Well apparently the +R/RW disc's are out of the question based on comments here, however has anyone tried -RW disc's? Also what type of -R (or -RW) media are you using?

Thanks.

MyTizzeL

thanks for the info. i bought 25 dvd+r's before the software came out and now i have to go get some -r's. does anyone know where i can pickup discwelder bronze for the best price. or if someone is really nice zip it for me : ). thanks.

SilverTL

maxell dvd-r

I have about 10 discs now, almost TOO much music on a disc. Usually with a cd, you pretty much know the order of songs relatively quickly but with the 99 tunes on a dvd, that's about 5 hours of music or so and the quality is surprisingly good, non dvd-a good, but good nonetheless.

incidently, the brand new tdk 880n stopped burning on me (defective unit) so I returned it for a plextor 709a.

so far so good for the plextor...

greenseed

I've recently picked up a NEC ND2500A to replace my pioneer A04 unit (which would never burn -R's beyond 1X). I ripped Kill Bill with it burning the complete movie in 15 minutes (not the ripping portion) using DVDxCopy 4.0.3.8.

I have the money to purchase Discwelder Bronze, but the interface looks so cheesy that I'm unwilling to buy it. I'm looking into other ways to create DVD-A's. Might be a bit more complicated, but untill a cheap product comes out that has a useful GUI, I'm holding off.

moreace

software is USELESS
can't use mp3s

SilverTL

the gui interface is as easy as it gets, like any burning software it shows an explorer view, click and drag or double click to add it the track layout. there are issues with certain items, like i can't drag more than one item at a time but more the most part,it was a piece of cake.

and bronze is CHEAP and it works!

BTW, i was using memorex (not maxell) dvd-r

greenseed

By "cheesy" I'm merely defining my thoughts on the look and feel of this product. The icons are very poorly designed, although that’s just a visual item. The only other big negative is what you mentioned about not being able to grab a bunch of items as opposed to one by one.

I have no doubt that the product works well, I just feel that for $99.00 the product should be a little better. That being said, there’s not a whole lot of competition out there.

For what it’s worth, I came across this little gem:

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/193049.php

And decided to give it a whirl. In the end, I successfully created a DVD-R Video (Audio) DVD which works great in my home DVD system, but since its not a true DVD-A, fails to play in the TL. Just looking for a cheap way out.

BTW, Thanks for the media feedback. I need to get more so I guess I’ll be buying both DVD-R (for the TL) if I ever get Discwelder and DVD+R for Videos.

svtmike

I've used -RW media quite a bit for test discs. It works fine. I've used Memorex, Maxell, and TDK and all work for -R.

Mike

svtmike

It's an extremely simple matter to convert .mp3s to .WAV first.

Mike

greenseed

Thanks for the feedback on the media SVTMike.

SilverTL, could you send the link or search item you used to locate Discwelder Bronze on the Guitar Center website. I searched for about 10-15 minutes without locating the software. The cheapest I saw upto this point was about 80-85 bucks.

Thanks, Brian

greenseed

BTW, Easy CD Extractor works great for any audio conversion. Its here: http://www.poikosoft.com/ and free.

But to each his own, as these are a dime a dozen.

All of my media is in Mpeg4 (AAC) storage right now, howerver with Easy CD Extractor, would be very easy to rip any audio CD into .wav and have a much better audio file than to just downconvert my compressed AAC files.

Lore

You can also use Winamp to convert the MP3s to WAV. Simply hit CTRL+P for the preferences, go to Output (under plugins), select "Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in", click on Configure, select your destination directory, and "play" the songs that you have on your playlist.

svtmike

Winamp's way is too much work. Install dBPowerAmp with shell extensions. Then, select the files to convert, right click, "Convert to..." and pick Wave.

Mike

SilverTL

I actually walked into a guitar center, they don't stock it and had to be special ordered, it took about a week and they charged me $75. I will say that, although the software hasn't created any coasters, it has locked up on me a couple of times, no big deal but definitely an issue. I, too, went down your path and tried EVRYTHING to rip, burn songs to dvd and make the tl read them, but to no avail. after spending, god knows how many hours doing this, i walked into the guitar center and paid for it (I would have paid $99 for it, need to support small software companies)

glad i did, but it sure does take a long time to weed through which songs I want to convert from mp3, this by FAR is the most time consuming part of this process.

greenseed

Thanks again SilverTL. In the end, I'm sure I'll break down and buy it. I'm in the process of weeding through and ordering compatible media.

Just curious, has anyone used any Ritek "G04" DVD-R media in the TL. It seems to rate rather well for most DVD-R burners (including mine) in as far as compatability.

KeithL

For your A04, did you upgrade the firmware, I had same issue until I updated the firmware.

As for Bronze, I got it and boy I feel violated. Nothing else that is affordable exisits, and Bronze is very low end and not very flexible. You CAN NOT save the album as an ISO, your CAN NOT drag more than one song at a time onto the new album and when it does nto fit on screen it scrolls down forcing you to scroll back up to drop the next song! WOW it blows, but there is nothing else in a reasonable price.

Being along term Nero user I wrote them an e-mail sugegsting they add simple 2 channel DVD-A support to Nero, even at a fee I would jump all over it! Maybe if enough people write Nero sales they will consider it!

greenseed

KeithL,

Actually, my plan was to hold out until Nero had support for DVD-A. They've been getting a head of the game lately with the features they've been adding to Nero. I just cant believe that threes only a very small handful of software developers creating software that will master DVD-A media. Maybe I'll write them a note as well -- good idea.

When I loaded the demo of Discwelder Bronze and was not happy. I've seen various shareware packages that present themselves and function like seriously developed software. Discwelder Bronze does not look like well developed software to me. I'm sure it functions, but needs very basic user features.

I don’t mind paying for good software. DVDXcopy is good software @ 99.00. Has many features and does the job well with flexibility.

Anyhow, as for the A04, I updated to the latest firmware some time back which supposedly would allow it to function @ 2X, but I never was able to achieve 2X.

The NEC unit I have now seems to be much more flexible with media, burns way faster, and even initializes (and identifies) media much faster. Some guy named Herrie hacks the NEC firmware to unlock some of the clamped down features such and allowing it to work with more media.

SilverTL

try doulble click on the title you're adding, it will not scroll back up. But that doesn't mean it's a polished, finished product.
the only problem is that there aren't ANY other software vendors doing DVD-A at a REASONABLE cost.

I have nero 6 ultra, waiting might mean, well waiting a long time. I now have 10 dvd-r discs. 990 songs is a ton, even on extended road trips. at this rate, i'm thinking about ditching XM when my 3 months are up.

greenseed

SilverTL,

Agreed on your comment regarding other vendors. Perhaps on the Nero comment (or any other product for that matter)!

I'm still on the fence for now with it. I'd really love to have DVD-A discs with all those song on them though.

Lore

Perhaps, but not everyone will have the MP3s they want to convert to WAV in one folder. It's much easier to pick and choose the songs for your playlist from different drives, directories, etc, and then decode them to WAV.

KeithL

Agreed, I will suffer with Bronze for now, but if we all keep e-mailing Nero then maybe they will add it eventually. And you know if they add it, it will be much better interface than Bronze and probably much cheaper!!

sourpatchkid

The software has to create an image file first, then it burns? Nero please help us. Burning 99 songs on the fly without an image file being created would be so much simpler and quicker!

SilverTL

i tried burning the .aob image files with nero - no go. nero won't recognize these files.

KeithL

sales@nero.com

Send them e-mails, I did, if enough of us ask they will add it. It can not be that hard for them to do 2 channel 16/44.1 DVD-A fairly quick, don't really need 5.1 for now.

svtmike

You can do it from a search window too.

Mike

Donte99TL

Good info guys....

screaming

Only 99 tracks to a disc? My, that's a whole lot of wasted space..

I tried out the bronze version, and I formed the same opinion as most of the people here: It's pretty unpolished. And since I only get to burn 99 songs to a disc, I'll end up carrying 4 discs around with me just for my 80s collection! That defeats the purpose of not just burning them all on regular CDs.

For the money/trouble, I'd rather go the MP3Car route and spend my time and energy jacking into the XM wires and then get my entire MP3 collection in my car.

-Steve

svtmike

So you're listening to a collection of 400 45-second songs from the eighties?

screaming

Since upsampling the rips from my CD collection would be a pointless and wasteful (read: dumb) thing to do, I would still burn tracks onto the DVD using the red book specification of 2 channels with 16 bits each and a sampling rate of 44kHz. That makes about 396 song of 11 minutes each. Since discWelder Bronze has the 99-song limitation per disc, that makes 4 discs of 99 songs each at 11 minutes.

Why anyone would want to listen to that much Duran Duran, Wham, INXS and Rockwell is beyond me... but hey, at least I'll look cool when I grow my mullet.

-Steve

-Steve

Greg G

I believe the limit is 99 songs per group not per disc. The TL can play multiple groups by pushing two buttons at the same time. See the following thread for details:

http://www.acura-tl.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85909

-Greg

screaming

Hmm. According to Craig Holets at Minnetonka Audio Software in reply to an email I sent him:

I have yet to try it because I'm not shelling out $99 to 'test' it, but Lore doesn't seem to think it can.. Does anyone know any different?

-Steve

zeezz

i remember reading on the minnetonka website that bronze can only burn one group, and not multiple groups... you have to buy the more expensive packages to burn more than one group.

Lore

Hi Steve,

What I said and what Craig said are two different subjects and are not conflicting pieces of information. It's true, you can get up to about 7 hours of cd-quality music on the disc, but you cannot separate them into groups. That's the part that I said - I've burnt 4 discs with 99 tracks on them each, but they are all in Group 1.

NOX 3.2

Can DiscWelder Bronze burn 5.1 DVD-A with music coming from DVD-Videos ?

Pankul

SO it 2005 now .. has anyone heard of a Better software to make DVD-A discs...

I have Loads of Music Video DVDs (mostly Indian DVD of songs) all 5.1 and I am dying to make an DVD-A discs of all those wonderful sounding songs in 5.1

I have successfully been able to make an AC3 file out of all the DVD-Video VOB file. Tried to make a DTS audio CD ... but not that smart idea as I can only fit like 2 songs in a CD

Cant wait for a Software to take AC3 file and make it DVD-A