Until recently I was able to export my finished music from Digital
Performer (as Sound Design II interleaved stereo files) and bring them
into iTunes and burn CDs. But recently -- after upgrades to both
programs -- I get very strange behavior.

iTunes is happy to open my SoundDesign files, list them, and play them
over my computer's speakers. But when I try to burn a playlist, it
waits until I've already clicked the "Burn" button, then de-selects all
of the Sound Design II files and leaves them off the disk. After much
experimentation (and wasted CD-Rs) I've found that a work around is to
select the files in the playlist and choose "convert to Apple
Lossless." This has the unhelpful behavior of creating new files with
identical names in the Library, but leaving the unusable SoundDesign II
files in the play list. So I have to look through the entire music
library on my computer (which does not allow one to sort by format or
by creation date) and choose each song in my playlist again, pop up the
"Info" menu on the duplicate names, delete the one that's a SoundDesign
II file, and move the good files to the playlist. Now I can burn a CD.
Extremely tedious.

While iTunes has a preference that can be set to import files using the
Apple Lossless format, the Import command no longer allows one to
select SoundDesign II files.

Is there some preference that I've got set wrong, or is iTunes simply
no longer a useful tool for burning audio CDs from audio files you've
made yourself?

Rodney

On Oct 15, 2005, commented:

This has the unhelpful behavior of creating new files with
identical names in the Library, but leaving the unusable SoundDesign II
files in the play list.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Under the Edit menu, select "Show Duplicate Songs." By using the Bit Rate or
Size column, you can quickly and easily figure out which is the SDII file and
which is the Lossless file, and just eliminate the one you don't want.





Is there some preference that I've got set wrong, or is iTunes simply
no longer a useful tool for burning audio CDs from audio files you've
made yourself?
------------------------------snip------------------------------

I don't think iTunes is what I would call a "professional" tool for creating
Audio CDs. I think there are far better alternatives out there. Peak 5 is
one of them, but I think you have more choices on the Windows platform (even
though I'm primarily a Mac user).

That having been said, I think the SDII format is a dead end. You'd be wise
to not use it anymore, and instead use WAV files or BWF (broadcast WAV) files
instead. You'll find WAV files work just fine in iTunes, and those can be
burned directly to a CD.

--MFW