Professional Tool with Consumer Price Tag

For the price of the top consumer CD burning applications, CD Architect gives you so much more - it comes with its own DirectX mastering plug-ins, plus it allows you to use your own. You can control volume envelopes, trim audio clips, perform cross-fades, and MUCH more. The power and flexibility of this application are quite impressive, especially for the price. My favorite aspect of this application is that it combines the two steps of mastering and burning the CD into a single application and interface without sacrificing power or flexibility. Installation was a breeze and the test CD's I cranked out played correctly on other machines.

All this power and flexibility comes with a learning curve. The customizable interface is not overly cluttered, but it was difficult for me to get basic functions to work as expected. I had problems figuring out how to label the CD, label tracks, and trim tracks - in fact, I still can't do it exactly right. The included manual is thin but complete, and nicely indexed, but I would not call it a "Quick Start Guide". In fact, I paged through 30 pages on how CD's are made, the history of CD technology, and other arcane tidbits before reaching "Getting Started" on page 31. A short "CD Architect for Dummies" with a walk-through of basic functions with default settings would have made the difference between 4.5 and 5 stars for me.

Get this application if you want quality and power for a consumer price, but leave yourself time to learn the application, rather than ordering it in when you are working under a tight deadline (like I was).

Awesome!!!, BUT......

Simply an awesome CD Mastering Software. My main complaints are
1 - NO VST Support (Shame on Sony) :( :( :( :(
2 - Does NOT indicate the track number as is being burned (Minimal)

Otherwise you Simply Can't go Wrong with this Software :) :) :) :)
Try it out and burn like a Pro !!

Powerful and somewhat intuitive

CD Architect 5 does everything I need it to do - ISRC codes, crossfades, CD Text - it has a bit of a learning curve (it's not exactly intuitive at least for me) but it's very powerful.

almost there, one giant shortcoming

you must know that you cannot use vst plugins with CDA. hugely disappointing when you compare their dx plug-ins to the far superior Waves line. Otherwise, very stable & reliable software if all you need to do is set fades, gaps & write text to your master CD. Try the demo version first!