Hmmm.... Let me see here....

I don't see how a software company will recommend someone elses product
in the way that in the end may hurt them. We all LOVE CDA and want a
new version. Most of us will be more than willing to pay the price for a new
version. But instead of saying that they'll come up with a new version that 1- works
with SF 5.0 and 2- has support for new burners (SCSI, IDE, USB, etc.) in a few months,
they tend to send us over to competitors sites.

Does that sound like the business plan of a software company??
Why don't you listen to your customers! WE WANT A NEW VERSION OF
CD ARCHITECT! (I would even pre-order a copy today if you told me
that one was in the works!!)

That's my rant for this week... Check back in next week, where I rant
again for not having an updated copy of CDA. News at 11:00.

Peace!

I completely agree with dcomo. What's the deal with all this?!??!

Ok, fine...if SF is not going to bring back CDA, they should at least add the CDA features to SF5 or something. That's all everyone who loves CDA is asking for.

Wake up SF, and realize that you have killed the ULTIMATE, and BEST Audio CD burning program ever made!!

I can't believe that SF is not interested in bringing back CDA, ESPECIALLY considering how many people have went through the trouble of submitting to this forum. How much could it possibly cost to, if nothing else, make drivers for new CDR's?

I see many people SCREAMING for SF to bring back a valuable piece of software, only to be recommended by a SF employee to go to OTHER companies to look for replacements.

I have no intention, either, of upgrading my Sound Forge because I don't want to lose use of my CDA. And, sadly, I can't upgrade to a faster CDR because of lack of support from SF.

With any successful business, customer service makes or breaks the business. I see your loyal customers posting here, PLEADING for SF to bring back CDA, or at least provide drivers for the new CDR's. It's just a matter of writing code, isn't it?

Okay, I've said my peace... will check back soon!

It's a matter of a lot more than "simply" writing code. There's a lot of R&D that has to go into supporting individual drives. There is the MMC compatible status of many drives, but that still doesn't mean that they all work exactly the same, otherwise, we'd never need to support drives, as you could just select "SCSI MMC Compatible" and that'd be it. Try it; it doesn't always work, and when it does, it often doesn't correctly support all of our features. For this reason, we had to write support per drive, and we listed drives we specifically supported.

For people who need a solution immediately, we'd like to think we're being helpful by recommending other products that can perform similar tasks. We're not trying to get rid of anyone; it's simply that we don't have the solution that you need currently. I agree that CD Architect was a great program, and is still useful.

Again, for those who want to see some future for advanced CD burning solutions in Sonic Foundry's product lineup, you're going to get much more done posting to our Product Suggestions page. I urge you to do that if you want to see something like CD Architect from us in the future.

I must ask...and I know I should post this to the Product Suggestion page (and maybe the SF forum), but this relates to the question (and answer) that are in this forum topic.

I realize that SF5 is built on a different engine (which is why CDA will not work from inside it), but SF5 seems to recognize drives without any problem (it saw both of mine). Does Sonic Foundry have to write driver updates to support the newer drives in SF? If not, why couldn't a future CDA-type product use the same technology?

Good question. The reason is that CD Architect needed very thorough access to drives in order to facilitate its thorough features. With Forge 5, as well as our other current products that burn to CD, we burn "track at once," which is very easy to support across a wide variety of drives. Of course, there are still drives we have to work to support even for this, but there's nowhere near as much R&D and coding that goes into this method of CD burning.

That makes sense since CDA only burns disc-at-once. Thanks Lance, although I was hoping for a different answer... ;)

Maybe it's time to start a list of "officially unsupported but useable drives" for CDA? This could be useful for those still looking to get CDA but don't see the newer drives on the official list?

This is something I don't think we can do, BUT, it'd be very cool if a user invited other CDA users to submit experiences with unsupported drives, then post them to another site. There's free space galore to be had out there for such an endeavor.

I've set up a page to track which of the current crop of CD burners are fully compatible with CD Architect via the "MMC compatible" option. To view the current list, or to make a contribution, visit my page at http://theacf.com/cda/

The more people contribute, the more useful the list will be so please, if you are successfully using an "officially unsupported" drive with CD Architect, please let me know. Additional information is available at http://theacf.com/cda/

Thanks! Regards, Brent

Here's the rub. CDA is unique and powerful enough that even if you said something like "Requires fully ATAPI or SCSI MMC Compatible drive" on the box, people would still buy CDA in piles, and you'd never have to support individual drives again. Leave it to the drive manufacturers to follow the spec, and keep updating a great program. We are all very understanding people here. I think we'd all support a move like that. You really don't have to fix other people's mistakes.

-S

Look...it appears pretty certain by now that the real reasons behind the murder of CDA are not technical, but are being driven by some behind-the-scenes corporate politics.

Were this not the case, SF would be quite happy to place the specs. for creating driver files in the public domain, with the proviso that support would only be provided for drivers supplied by them.

I hereby challenge SF to issue the specification of the .CDD files that contain the drive-specific data.

I Agree With You, 'couse if they were a litle more inteligent, or the problem is "support for newer drives) SF Would be selling ;] the product still!!, besides this im a happy owner of the 12 10 40 cdrw cxreative has, and it works PERFECTLY, CD Architect Is The Best Ever Burning App.

MAGIX has "Music Studio generation 6 DeLuxe" which I have been using for a week now. Only $60-$70 and is VERY similar to CDA, in fact is better in some regards, except for one thing: There is no "ripple edit" in the timeline nor an easy way to switch tracks in a vertical list, as CDA allows... but you CAN switch tracks (awkwardly) and see the waveform and zoom in, etc. You can even change the keyboard commands... SUPPORTS many drives and is WIN 2000 and ME compatible. It is a lite version of a $700 software. Available for demo download at MAGIX.com. or at Best Buy etc.