External optical drive options for Mac

[Adam Inglis]

Any Mac users still accessing their CD/DVD audio libraries?
What hardware and software do you recommend?
Eons ago there was a thing called Toast, which was so intuitive... I recall I could quickly zoom in on the audio on disc, audition it, and snip just the bit I wanted without ripping the whole track. This is not something I've had to use for over ten years, but now there is a need....

[MOF]

I have a MBP 17” that allows me to use optical discs and toast. I recently bought a classical album download for my Dad in FLAC form, converted it to WAVs and then burnt to CD using Toast.
Toast is still available I see and I don’t see why an external optical drive won’t work.

[muzines]

I replaced the optical drive in my MBP with an SSD, and mounted the optical drive in an external USB enclosure.

I rarely need to access optical media these days, but when I do, it works fine. Toast is still a thing if you need it, although there are other options too depending on what you need to write.

[Adam Inglis]

Many thanks people.
I've just realised I'm confusing my breakfast foods - it was Jam not Toast!
My purposes are for quickly scanning sample libraries and ripping bits from disc. If there aren't any caveats I'll just grab a Superdrive equivalent, but the SW front end can obviously make a big difference to this task.

[Adam Inglis]

Jam doesn't seem to exist in its original guise but this appears to do similar
https://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html

[BigRedX]

I just bought a suitably sized hard drive and then copied all my sample CDs as AIFFs to it. Accessing from a hard drive is far quicker than from CD and if you can afford a suitable SSD it will be faster still. If I need just a segment of one of the sample tracks I load it into my DAW and trim to size before re-saving. It's quick enough for me. The CDs can then be stored somewhere safe as a last-resort back up.

TBH I don't think I have ever used Jam for anything other than burning Red Book standard CDs and even then it was replaced by Waveburner as soon as that became available.

[Adam Inglis]

Goodness me you are organised! I can't see that happening here!!
And unfortunately that Wavepad thingy doesn't have the functionality of lifting little bits out of audio tracks unless they've been ripped already. Ho hum

[BigRedX]

My organisation was born out of necessity. I had been using my sample CDs as and when they were required, and often after an intensive programming/composing session I would be surrounded by discarded discs and their jewel cases as I searched for the right sample(s). One day I backed my chair over one of these discs destroying it completely. By the end of the following week I had everything transferred onto a hard drive and the discs safely in storage.