Cakewalk Pyro Audio Creator

by Cakewalk

Product Features

• 1-click recording: capture musical performances, meetings, vinyl records, cassettes, podcasts, Internet broadcasts, and more Professional 2-track audio editing: cut, trim, paste, hiss & pop removal, adjust volumes, crossfades, apply FX, and more Encode, convert, and save audio to popular formats like MP3, WMA, WAV, and AIFF Convert audio to formats that can be used with iTunes, iPod, Zune, and other digital audio players Digitize, clean, and organize your record and cassette collection Rip your

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• ASIN: B000WEQVDY
• Item model number: 10-CWAC1.00-10C
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 26, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,597 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Pyro Audio Creator is an excellent choice to permanently capture your sound. Pyro combines all the essential audio tools needed in today's digital age. With the Audio Creator's virtual toolbox, you are just a click away from recording and editing; burning and ripping CDs; converting and cleaning albums to CD or MP3; encoding, tagging and organizing your sound library; and even publishing to the internet. And don't be fooled by the low price. Pyro is made by Cakewalk, engineers of some of the world's most popular music creation software used daily by Grammy winning musicians and producers. You're getting your money's worth and more. The following is a brief breakdown of some of the features in Pyro Audio Creator that you'll use most. Ripper Digitize your entire CD collection using the Ripper tool. Just put in a CD, pick an audio format, and Ripper takes care of the rest. Once you have converted your CD to a digital format, you can use the other great tools in Audio Creator to manage your newly digitized collection. Ripped files can be used on portable devices. Burner The Burner is one of the easiest CD burning tools you will ever use. With just a few clicks, you can create a track list and start burning CDs. Easily drag and drop files from anywhere in your computer right into the Burner tool. Visual feedback tells you how much time and space you have remaining on the blank CD. Burn audio CDs for friends and family or just back up files to a data CD for safekeeping. Editor Never lose that special moment of inspiration with the Editor tool. Just click 'record' and capture important ideas, meetings, performances, podcasts, Internet broadcasts -- even digitize and clean your record or cassette collection. Edit audio using a powerful 2-track view based on critically-acclaimed SONAR technology: apply effects, crossfades, trims, hiss and pop removal, and more. When you are done, save it to popular formats like MP3, WMA, WVA, and more. Tagger With the number of digital audio

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save Money - Buy a Program that Works!, April 26, 2008

By 

W. Hobgood "B. Hobgood" (Cedar Park, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cakewalk Pyro Audio Creator (CD-ROM)

I don't usually write reviews and when I do they are usually short ones. I'm generally pretty satisfied with stuff I buy because I research before purchase. Back in 2004, I started using an audio program called Cakewalk Pyro 2003. It was a pretty awesome program that allowed me to do exactly what I wanted to do - switch from analog cassette recording to digital PC to CD recording and still make "blended" recordings. By "blended" I actually mean crossfading...which is overlapping the audio at the beginning and end of each track. I did it for years with two CD players, an audio mixer and a cassette deck. By the way, I bought my first PC in 1991 and am on my ninth one now. I know what I'm doing.

Pyro 2003 allowed me to do the same thing on my PC and then burn the project to a CD...yielding a very pleasant, professional series of songs, overlapped with the next succeeding one with no break in the music. Then I bought a new PC with Windows Vista. Pyro 2003 wouldn't work on it and Cakewalk had no other "Pyro" program that would work on Vista. Then late last year (unknown to me) Cakewalk released "Pyro Audio Creator"; their new program that does audio editing (among other things) and though it is supposed to work with XP, it is specifically "recommended for Vista". I discovered it online and rushed out to buy it.

After installation, the first thing you see is a "bug sheet" that pops up telling you all the problems this program still has. I reviewed it but figured it would still work for me. First problem...no audio. After reinstalling, still no audio. Found two patches at Cakewalk's website for "version 1.0" of this program but nowhere, anywhere on anything does it say what version this program is. Plus, in order to download the patches, you have to "register" the program. Once registered, you can't return it or sell it to anybody else. Oh well. So I went ahead and installed the two patches. GREAT....have audio now.

I read the online instructions and tried to create my first Pyro "project". Pyro 2003 was a neat program that you could figure out easily and had a great interface. Things work like you expected them to. But this one, Pyro Audio Creator, is way too complex and is supposed do things only people in a pro sound studio would want to do...and I guarantee you they wouldn't be doing it with a $40.00 program. To move around in this program and set up your audio tracks is way, way too cumbersome, takes way too many clicks and (get this) with Vista (the "recommended" operating system) drag and drop in not functional. By now I'm not happy.

After playing with my project, I go to burn it to CD, but guess what...there is no option to do that like in Pyro 2003. I have to save it (I guess) and go to the "burning" part of the program to burn it. I save it, which takes about 5 minutes, and then I go to the burn section and can't find my project now because it didn't tell me where it saved it. I have to do a hard drive search to find it.

By now I've spend about 5 hours trying to get this overpriced roll of toilet paper to work so I decided to take a break and watch a movie with my son. I turned the monitor off but left the PC running. Two hours later I return for more gnashing of teeth and discover my PC has entered Vista's new "Auto Repair mode" in an attempt to save the operating system from death. Auto repair finally stops and the PC reboots. My wallpaper is different and, guess what, Pyro Audio Creator is completely gone. Windows uninstalled it. Vista must be pretty smart - it recognizes garbage and gets rid of it automatically. I wonder what else I've lost but just haven't discovered yet.

Bottom Line: No refunds allowed, email tech support only (yeah that will work) and I'm out not only the 40 bucks plus tax but I still don't have a program to do my music. Cakewalk can contact me and give me a refund or I'm going to plaster this review everywhere I can on the internet. Awful program, awful program with known bugs, awful program that doesn't work, awful program that endangers your computer. This is a "Don't Buy"!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Works pretty good for me with Vista SP1, November 27, 2008

By 

fran "franner" (KC,MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cakewalk Pyro Audio Creator (CD-ROM)

I read the gentleman's review that said that his Vista OS computer recovered and eliminated this so-called garbage. I'm not sure what was going on with his machine but my experience has been uneventful and mildly challenging. My partner tells me that I'm particularly patient and tenacious so keep that in mind if you read this review.

My prior experience was with Pyro 2004 which I was using on an XP box. The Pyro 2004 user interface was pretty easy to understand since it incorporated it's own explorer for adding files to a project. Pyro Audio Creator has a new user interface that allows drag and drop using Windows explorer and the various modules of the tool bar. Cakewalk offers videos and the help system to bring a user up to speed with the new user interface. I used Pyro Audio Creator this October to record radio broadcasts of the Presidential debates so I could share them with my partner. This was easily accomplished without any difficulty.

I realize I could use a program like Audacity (a free program) but I liked the easier interface and tools that Pyro 2004 offered for recording a vinyl album and easily splitting it into different tracks and saving them as different files. This is possible with Audacity but not quite as easily.

I bought a new computer with the Vista OS SP1 this summer and I looked on Cakewalk's website and found that Pyro 2004 doesn't work with the new OS. I purchased Pyro Audio Creator and found the user interface to be drastically different. I even started thinking that Pyro Audio Creator left out some functionality that was important to me in Pyro 2004 but then I spent a little time with the help files and learned more about how to use the program. Now, I see it as quite a good purchase for my Vista box.

I think if you are a pod caster you'll find this program more than adequate at handling your recording and editing chores. For Vista users it is an excellent choice.

I think with a program that costs about as much as a couple of sacks of groceries, telephone support would be a little difficult for any company to supply. Like many other companies selling audio hardware or software the product forums wind up being where much of the product support is served to the customer. The product forums require some effort to find answers to your particular problem. They can be a good place to research a product. I also have Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio XL6 and read the forums for that software before purchasing just so I could have an idea about what to expect in the way of problems and solutions. Audio driver issues can be tricky with audio recording software programs. In many of the Cakewalk forums it seems they bring up ASIO4ALL (free ASIO driver software). Some of the forum members are quite dedicated and helpful.

Just today since I have some time to learn about Pyro Audio Creator, I learned that the program has some key features available from the system tray icon. That seems a novel way to avoid a menu on the toolbar interface. So it was there that I learned there is an update available now for my installed version. I haven't applied the update for this program yet since it seems to work fine as it came from Cakewalk.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Actually not bad if you have patience, March 6, 2010

By 

Rick H (NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cakewalk Pyro Audio Creator (CD-ROM)

I bought this mainly looking for replacement software for Roxio V.6 program I had been using a long time. In the Roxio program, a major feature that I loved was the crossfading. However, that older version of Easy CD Creator didn't really have normalizing so I was hoping that Pyro would contain the best of both worlds. Well, yes, you can crossfade & normalize in the editor module of the program but it's pretty time-consuming and much more cumbersome than the Roxio method of having the track titles laid out - in Pyro, you have to do this in an editor view. One other major problem I had was it took me a few days and a couple of software update downloads before I got the program to recognize my burner. The version I bought was 1.0.2 and I finally discovered - through no help from Cakewalk support - that I needed to download the 1.5 patch and then it finally recognized my burner. Man, I was messing around with the IMAPI setting in my computer, the System Admin tools, and nearly pulling my hair out before I tried the latest download. But, having said all that, it does appear to be a basically good program for the recording engineer in you and if you have the time to spend with it. It's just not what I was looking for but it may prove to be a great program for you.
UPDATE: Since getting used to this program and learning how to do the things with it I wanted it to do, I'm actually kind of getting hooked on it. So, if you do decide to buy Pyro Audio Creator, just be sure to download the latest patch for 1.5 for it to work properly with XP. Someone said that support was non-existent, I've found that to not be the case. Their email support will get back to you in a few days after you contact them. So, I can now say I do recommend this program for it's features & value.