"what it is about Fuerio that they like about it"
I'll try to keep it relatively short.
I'm running Win98se, NEC dvd-rom, Plextor 12/10/32A cd-rw. The Plextor came bundled with ECDC4. It worked fine and was actually pretty stable. I upgraded to ECDC5 Platinum (US$100) to get the crossfading feature. This version was a little less stable, but overall, it worked well on my system. Back in April, I did a re-install of Win98. I then re-installed ECDC5 Plat and it would cause the NEC dvd-rom to stop working. I uninstalled ECDC and the drive worked again. Installed ECDC again, drive stopped working again. I applied all the Windows and ECDC patches available as well as made sure I had current drivers for all my hardware...still no work. So, I started using ECDC4 again, and everything was fine. Just a note, this was all right before Roxio started their user-to-user help forum and also I was well past the 90 day tech support limit Roxio has, so contacting them for any help would have cost $35.00.
I then decided to try Nero. I installed it and played around with it for a couple of days, but the user interface didn't really click with me. Also, I didn't really feel like forking over another $69.00 for burning software. So, back to ECDC4.
Then I was at a software store one day and they had boxed copies of Feurio! for $19.99. I had been reading a lot of good things on Hydrogen Audio forums about it, so I decided to give it a try...and the price was right.
It's kind of funny that one of the reasons I didn't like Nero was the user interface, because I would
not describe Feurio's interface as either intuitive or user friendly. However, once you get it all figured out, it is really pretty cool. The CD Manager lets you keep track of and work with multiple burning projects. It can maintain an editable database of all your cds. It can rip and encode using LAME. It will decode MP3s on the fly while burning. It has a sound editor that has a great
non-destructive volume leveling option. You can also non-destructively alter the amplitude of individual tracks in a project. The sound editor will non-destructively split large wav files into multiple tracks (which is a great feature for ripping vinyl). The CD Covereditor has some great features, especially for Various Artist CDs, but can be a little difficult to use.
I guess this would be a good time to point out that Feurio!
only burns audio cds. No data or MP3 cds. From the Feurio! FAQ:
Question: Can I also use Feurio! to burn MP3 CDs?
Answer: For this to happen a format for mp3 CDs would have to be generally accepted - at the moment unfortunately every vendor is "doing his own thing". As soon as a generally valid format for mp3 CDs exists, this will be included in Feurio!.
Question: Can I also use Feurio!® to create /copy data CDs?
Answer: CREATION of data CDs with Feurio! is not possible as a) this would not work well with the concept of Feurio! and b) this would mean that Feurio! would be blown up to a program which would be far too large. This would also involve extremely high development costs which would mean Feurio! would have to become more expensive. Operating it would probably also become more difficult.Another cool feature is that Feurio! can burn to more that one drive simultaneously if you are using Win2000 and have multiple burners installed on your system.
As far as burn quality, I've never had a problem with any disc I've burned with Feurio!, but I've yet to have any problems with any discs I made with ECDC either. From what I can tell, though, Feurio! is very compliant with the Redbook standard.
Also, Feurio! does NOT install ANY drivers, system expansions, system files or other such things. No file is copied into the system folder or any other changes carried out. For example, when I uninstalled Nero, it took my ASPI layer with it and it took me two days to get everything working again.
So, to summarize, I like Feurio! mainly for its project management features. I currently have about 10 different audio cd projects setup in varying stages of readiness. I can add or delete tracks to each project easily, change parameters globally for each project or for individual tracks. Also, I am confident that it is burning cds that meet Redbook specs.
Links:
Feurio!Feurio! FeaturesFeurio! FAQHydrogen Audio forums