Any Web search for “disc burning software” yields NCH Express Burn as one of, if not the top result—whether you use Google, Bing, or even Blekko! The company clearly has got its SEO right, but how about its disc-burning software? While the app can do the job, and does some things admirably and quickly, for its price—$39.95 for the Plus edition and $59.95 for the Plus Video editing–I expect more from a disc-burning and authoring software package.

Setup

Many a link on NCH Express Burn’s  webpage will trigger downloading the trial edition of the software, which is available in both Windows and Mac versions. The trial version includes all the program’s movie disc authoring tools and Blu-ray compatibility in addition to simple file burning. But to own all this functionality, you’ll have to buy the Express Burn Plus Video edition. For ten bucks less, you could get Ashampoo’s better-designed and more-capable $49.99 Burning Studio 11 , and for a little more you could get the far friendlier CyberLink Power2Go ($69.95, 3.5 stars).

Interface
Express Burn's interface looks dated, and there’s one very strange thing about it: It appears grouped with Internet Explorer windows in the taskbar, so apparently it uses IE as its shell app, rather than having its own window, as most programs do. This would explain its very small installer file—a mere 777KB. The installer tries to get you to install a lot of other irrelevant things such as toolbars. It doesn't add an option in the AutoPlay menus that pop up when you insert blank media, which isn't helpful. And forget about niceties like a mini-interface and desktop gadget like you get with Ashampoo Burning Studio.

Music
Express Burn can create audio CDs, MP3 CDs, create audio compilation discs, or copy (i.e. "rip") existing music CDs. All this functionality is accessible from the Audio tab on the program's main interface page. One thing I liked about NCH was that I could insert a whole folder of songs at once, while Ashampoo required me to insert the actual song files. Another thing I liked was that it converted m4a files for the MP3 disc. I could also set normalization, to prevent some tracks from being too loud. But it wasn't clear where I could set the bitrate for my burned songs.

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Processing my 111 test songs went quickly, but there was one problem: I couldn't create an MP3 DVD, only an MP3 CD. This probably isn't that huge an issue for most people, though, since most car and home CD players can handle CDs but not DVDs. There was still another problem during the music-disc-creation process: The program hadn't warned me that I'd added more songs than would fit on a standard CD.

Ripping a CD, Buena Vista Social Club, took NCH Express Burn a snappy 2:01 minutes, compared with 2:02 minutes for Ashampoo Burning Studio and 2:03 minutes for CyberLink Poewr2Go. So this is clearly a hardware-limited function, but at least it's good to see that the software isn't introducing any delays. I couldn't readily choose the bitrate in NCH as I could in the other apps. Burning the ripped music to another CD took 6:30 minutes. Unhelpfully, track titles were not added automatically, as they were in the competition. Another problem was that after ripping, I didn't know where to look for the music files, so NCH's tool is more about copying to another CD than having the music ripped to your PC. Percent-complete and remaining-estimated-time were shown along with the track number currently being burned.