emtgray,

I've never actually used masterlist, but you've asked some great
questions. Before I answer them, I should be upfront about a what I
consider XO Wave's two biggest CD Mastering limitations:

* XO Wave can't handle some CD Text characters. These are just the
accented charaters that most CD Text readers ignore anyway, but it's
something to be aware of. This is due to Apple bug 4995799.

* It's not possible to create an extended pregap on track 1. This
prevents users from adding a "secret song" to track one. This is due
to Apple bug 4329057 so if you know anyone at apple -- lobby them!

Alright, I've answered your other questions inline:

On Jan 9, 2008, at 12:22 AM, emtgray wrote:

> My current burning software (Digidesign's ancient but still wonderful
> MasterList CD, which I use in preference to Peak Pro 5 which I also
> own) has the following features:
>
> 1. It supports direct CD burning from 24-bit split-stereo or
> interleaved source files, with a choice of dither applied at the burn,
> leaving the source files untouched.
>

XO Wave can work with source files of any bitdepth up to 32, as well
as floating point, without having to convert them. I'm not sure who
created the myth that you can't mix bitdepths in a workstation, but
you can and XO Wave lets you. Several rules are followed in XO Wave:
- Source files are never touched, except if need to convert the format
at import, in which case the files are copied, so the originals are
left in tact.
- Internal precision is maintained throughout the process until final
bit reduction, with is selectable as either dithered or not. In XO
Wave Pro, internal precision is selectable as either 32-pit floating
point or 64-bit floating point. If you use Audio Units, internal
precision may be reduced to 32-bit, since that's what they typically
use.

I don't know about masterlist, but there are some workstations out
there that do bit-reduce intermediates, for example a certain popular
workstation bit-reduces when processing fades. Every workstation that
I know of bit-reduces when normalizing. XO Wave does not.

For more on precision, see http://www.xowave.com/doc/tech-note/resolution.shtml
> 2. When loading a split-stereo or interleaved audio file into your CD
> item list, you can select the whole file or a Pro-Tools-defined region
> in it as the item to load.
>
Just to clear something up, XO Wave will feel more like a workstation
than a playlist-based program. It has a region list, not a CD items
list. It has tracks with full-blown channel strips for effects,
automation and so on, not playlists. This confuses some users at first
because they then think they have to manually place CD markers which
is a pain, but, in fact the Memory Locations Manager lets you
automatically create them: http://www.xowave.com/doc/window/memory.shtml

XO Wave does not directly support split stereo files. I haven't seen
that in a workflow in a long time. You could work with two tracks and
hard-pan them left and right, but I'll be the first to admit that
would be a pain, since XO Wave doesn't group tracks the way that Pro
Tools does (or at least used to). Since XO Wave Has stereo tracks and
supports stereo files, there's usually no need.

Anyway, once your files are imported, they appear in the region bin.
You can then drag and drop them onto a track. If you grab multiple
files, it will ask you if you want to import them sequentially on the
same track, with space in between them, and with or without new CD
Track markers and so on.
> 3.You can mix split-stereo and interleaved files in the same CD.
>
As I said, no support for interleaved, other than to hard pan. But you
can mix stereo and mono, multiple sources (eg stems) and so on. I'd be
surprised if there wasn't a free drag and drop utility out there for
converting split-stereo to interleaved.
> 4. You can define a crossfade type and length between each pair of
> audio items.
>
Yes: curve, start and end time, etc. All in real-time. Fades will blow
you away:

http://www.xowave.com/doc/window/fade.shtml
> 5. It produces a text file track listing with CD-frame-accurate track
> start and end times and track length, and total time.
>
The Memory Locations window produces an HTML table with such
information. Most people use SMPT Time (30FPS ND) for that.
> 6. It sets track start and end offsets to a user-selectable value
> (default: 15 CD frames) automatically.
>
The time between the track marker and the start of the audio is called
"padding" in XO Wave. I can't recall the exact value, I think it is a
less conservative 10 frames (about 1/8 second). It is not user-
selectable, but a great deal of testing went into this value. CD Track
markers are very easy to adjust manually.
> Does OX Wave do these things too? I downloaded the manual, but
> couldn't tell. If so, I'll give it a try. If not, please include these
> features in a future release.
>

Are you sure you downloaded me main documentation and not just, for
example, the "cheat sheet"? The main documentation is well over 100
pages. Anyway, I hope this helps!

bjorn

-----------------------------
Bjorn Roche
XO Wave
Digital Audio Production and Post-Production Software
http://www.xowave.com
http://blog.bjornroche.com
http://myspace.com/xowave