Editors' review
Sony CD Architect enhances your audio tracks to meet Red Book specifications. This professional quality app hosts a bevy of features that you can use to fine-tune your audio and add fresh new effects. In fact, there are so many features and options that it can be overwhelming.
Pros
Comprehensive: Sony CD Architect unleashes a plethora of features, including ripple editing, allowing you to edit multiple events simultaneously, and autosave crash recovery, which saves a backup of your file every five minutes.
Easy to customize: The Playlist, Tracklist, Trimmer, Mixer, and Media Pool windows are all fully customizable. You can select which buttons will be visible on each of them.
Quick all-around: At only 29.22MB, this app takes only a couple of minutes to download and install. The overall speed of the program won't disappoint you, either. For example, burning a standard 12-track CD took us only three minutes.
Cons
Clunky interface: The ungainly interface, consisting of a jumble of grayscale toolbars and tiny buttons strewn across the screen, lacks the bright and clean design used by most modern apps. To be fair, the design is so jumbled because there are just too many features to fit on a single screen.
Pricey: While for 30 days you can use it for free, you then have to pay $112.95.
Bottom Line
With its many features and good performance, Sony CD Architect proves to be more than just a program for throwing together a party mix, although it can do that too. This software will satisfy your inner audiophile, providing you with all the features you will ever need to tweak your audio to perfection.
Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Sony CD Architect 5.2d build 240
Publisher's Description
Produce professional audio CDs to Red Book specification with CD Architect 5 software. Newly updated version 5.2 includes CD text reading and writing, and updated drive support. Perform full PQ code editing, trim events from full-length media and add as new tracks, import regions from Sound Forge software as tracks, master audio by applying over 20 real-time DirectX effects to events and the master output, and perform disc-at-once CD burning.CD Architect software provides the most precise audio CD mastering and burning tools available. Arrange your CD Architect project using simple drag-and-drop operations. Produce complex crossfades and DJ-style megamixes. Generate multiple takes of a song to use in your project before burning. Create live-style CDs with audio in the time between tracks, apply volume envelopes and event ASR envelopes even create hidden tracks. CD Architect software supports a long list of drives, including many FireWire and USB devices.
Version 5.2.153 adds CD Text support.
