AUDIO CLEANING
LAB 2005, Magix
Vinyl records and cassettes have not aged well in the digital era, leaving many computer owners looking for a simple way to convert them into MP3 or another digital format. Many wind up cobbling together different programs, free or otherwise, to get the job done, but Magix's Audio Cleaning Lab 2005 offers an almost all-in-one solution -- get an audio cable (not included in the box), plug a tape deck or record player into your computer's audio-input jack and start the music playing. This software can then record it digitally, automatically detect song breaks to split the results into multiple song files, clean up noises like clicks, hisses and rumbles, make further edits, and save the results to your computer or burn them to an audio CD.
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The program, sensibly enough, lets you get started with a set of basic simple cleaning tools that offer few options but also demand minimal studying. Its automated wizards did surprisingly well at removing junk from recordings without slicing off too much of the music -- a basic cassette-to-MP3 rip went off fine. Audio Cleaning Lab also includes a set of more powerful options for experts that allow you to, for instance, apply individual noise-reduction and resampling effects and edit the volume of a track moment by moment.
But the deeper you go past its entry-level features, the harder this program gets. For example, the beginner-friendly modules' simple slider controls are replaced in its expert modes by onscreen dials that are incredibly awkward to adjust with a mouse. Memo to the developers: Just because some people are picky about the way their music sounds doesn't mean they're also computing masochists.
Throughout, Magix's quirky interface (to phrase this as generously as possible) constantly gets in the way. For example, you can't select part of a sound wave for editing with the simple click-and-hold procedure you'd use in any other program. And Magix's window, incapable of being resized dynamically like any other program's, can only snap between a cramped default size and full-screen mode. Worst of all, input volume -- one of the most basic settings in this kind of program -- isn't controlled by the program, instead requiring a trip to Windows' own, poorly designed volume controls.
A minimal printed manual, marred by typos, undefined terms and outright mistakes, won't help anybody get the hang of things, although a more extensive on-screen manual installed with the program remedies most of these oversights. And the program crashed, or came close to it, too often.
This program badly needs an update, but one that fixes this many problems may take a while. Maybe that's why Magix appended next year to Audio Cleaning Lab's name. -- Daniel Greenberg
Win 95 or newer, $40 ($30 to download at www.magix.com)
SUDEKI,
