newbie questions

I'm new to Mac and have found experience positive but I'm having trouble finding software for some things I do frequently. Questions:

1. What do people use to manage downloads from usenet for the alt.binaries. I've found nothing yet that compares with Newsbin Pro on MS.

2. I download concerts and like to edit out the dead air. On MS Soundforge is excellent. What do Mac users use to edit audio files?

3. Is there any way to burn wav files on Mac or can you only burn aiff files?

4. If you create your own cd how do you create a jewel case for it? I've had no luck finding a jewel case creator for Mac.

Help on any of these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thx for the patience with the newbie.

hortense said:

I'm new to Mac and have found experience positive but I'm having trouble finding software for some things I do frequently. Questions:

1. What do people use to manage downloads from usenet for the alt.binaries. I've found nothing yet that compares with Newsbin Pro on MS.

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This I'm not sure about. I haven't done usenet since the early '90s. Might try Mozilla Thunderbird, but that's probably not what you're looking for.

2. I download concerts and like to edit out the dead air. On MS Soundforge is excellent. What do Mac users use to edit audio files?

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Most Mac users would probably use GarageBand, but I use Audacity. I record streams with Audio Hijack Pro and then use Audacity to break out the individual songs.

3. Is there any way to burn wav files on Mac or can you only burn aiff files?

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I find them functionally equivalent. iTunes is what I use to burn CDs whether they be in .wav or .aiff.

4. If you create your own cd how do you create a jewel case for it? I've had no luck finding a jewel case creator for Mac.

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Again, iTunes. I use it to make jewel case inserts with the album art of whatever songs are on the mix CD I make. It's a bit limited, but I like it. Actually what I'll typically do is use iTunes to make a jewel case insert, with a montage of the album art of the songs, then use the "Print to PDF" function to save said file into a .pdf. Then I'll load that up into Photoshop and crop out exactly what I want, save that to a .PSD, then use that to print a label on the CD itself. I have a printer that prints directly to CD, and the software that came with it allows me to use a Photoshop PSD file to print that label directly on it.

Thx for the help. Don't know why I couldn't burn wav files but works now. Also, agree audacity is the best I've seen so far, problem for me with it was more related to the wav issue.. I've not yet figured out the jewel case question but I'll take another look at itunes. thx again.

Put the songs you are going to burn into a playlist. While in that playlist, select file->print. You'll see options to create a jewel case insert. As I said, they are somewhat limited and perhaps not quite what you want, but it is one option.

I use Unison for newsgroups. Never used Newsbin Pro so I dont know what features it has, but Unison works well for me.