Magix Audio Cleaning Lab

by Magix Entertainment

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 12 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005B5CD
• Item model number: 613300
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 28, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,329 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #88 in Software > Video & Music > Software > Music Creation & Sequencing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Bring your old music library to life again with Audio Cleaning Lab by Magix. Audio Cleaning Lab allows you to import music recordings or other audio files like MP3s or WAVs into the audio cleaning lab. You can work on a playlist or one song at a time. Quickly remove sound imperfections like a hiss, crackle, or pop. Add new sound effects like EQ, reverb, and echo. Then save your files to WAV, MPEG, or WMA file format. Export MP3 files to the Qdesign demo encoder (20 free runs).

Audio Cleaning Lab features help wizards for all program components. Digitally remaster audio with the Cleaning Wizard, Sound Optimizer Wizard, Track Creation Wizard, and the Burn Wizard. Use 16 professional sound effects: declicker, decrackler, stereo FX, compression, 10-band EQ, reverb, and more. You can even filter out vocals using the karaoke function. When you're finished manipulating your audio, simply arrange the songs in any order you want on the editable playlist. Then burn your CD and enjoy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enhance Old and New Recordings!, January 28, 2002

By 

David Bennett (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magix Audio Cleaning Lab (CD-ROM)

Magix Cleaning Lab is software that I would call amazing. I have restored many songs I thought would never see the digital light of day. Now they are played in my car with vibrant sound! Essentially one has the option of cleaning music in four ways.
1. De-click (to remove those click sounds from old records)
2. De-crackle (same source as above)
3. De-noise (from cassette noise, hissing, etc)
4. De-hiss (tape hiss among other types of hiss)

Among these one can choose varying levels of correction. Some recordings require stronger levels, others weaker. As the original recording quality worsens, the ability of the cleaner worsens too. Sometimes the cleaner, when used at stronger levels, creates a different type of sound than before. For instance, the original sound might contain a tambourine, but once cleaned strongly, it sounds more synthesized. The program has a "wizard" that will take you through the cleaning process in the best order. Using the wizard, you can hear the original and preview it cleaned. At the end you get to hear the original and the perfectly cleaned songs. The difference is amazing.

Now, after you have cleaned it, you can feel just like a top-level audio engineer, who has the audio in graphic form right in front of him. There are four sound effects, all which can be utilized while the track is playing. They are

1. Stereo FX (Here you can adjust the level of stereo surround, or bring it to mono. You can change the volume of individual channels too).
2. Compressor (strengthen the sound and make instruments come in clearer, increase the gain, etc)
3. Equalizer (Change the sound with the graphic equalizer, presets included)
4. Direct X controls (add on any Direct X effects)
5. Normalize Object Volume (this is not on the display, but can be done by right clicking on the sound graphic and selecting this option. This makes quieter songs louder.)

I have used the sound effects not only for records, but also for digital recordings. After sending them through Cleaning Lab, they sound much clearer and fresher than before. Typically I export the songs that I clean to MP3 format, at 160 kbit/s or higher, and set the option to "high quality," (this is done on the "export audio" window, by clicking "format settings") to get the crispest sound.

Okay, now for the negatives. It won't burn on my CD burner. It just won't recognize external CD-RW units. It will recognize most internal ones though. Also, in order to export your cleaned recordings to MP3 format, you must pay for an upgrade (wavs, MPEGS, WMA files are free). I paid 9.99 US dollars, and it allowed me to export to MP3 on all the Magix products I own. I haven't used every recording feature. Typically I record each song individually using the audio-in jack. If you record this way (from the headphone jack on your stereo system into your line-in jack on your computer), you will need an inexpensive cable. Also, Magix offers a patch for this product, so download it before you use Cleaning Lab. Overall I am very impressed, and honestly have a lot of fun restoring old songs, and enhancing newer ones! I definitely suggest this product.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Way Beyond the Competition, February 1, 2002

By 

Dennis (Los Altos, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magix Audio Cleaning Lab (CD-ROM)

I have long wanted to transfer some old tapes and LP's to CD, but finding decent software was hard. I could have taken the obvious path and bought Easy CD Creator, but I have Windows XP and refused to buy their package until it was XP compatible. (As of this writing, Roxio still requires that you buy the old edition and download a free updater that is none too easy to use.) I think Nero has some sound processing, but I refused to buy that product until their InCD component (equivalent to Roxio's DirectCD) was available for XP.

I use packet-writing software like DirectCD to do my backups. Since neither Roxio nor Ahead were finished for XP, I bought SimpliCD from Oak Technology. I use it mostly for its packet writing, but its other CD burning features are quite nice as well. I recommend it, and it's cheaper than either Easy CD Creator or Nero.

Back on subject...I was still lacking software to do recording and audio processing prior to burning. SimpliCD doesn't have that. I spent countless hours researching products on the web. I downloaded those that seemed reasonable in price, effectiveness, and simplicity. I did sample recordings and fixed some difficult audio. Some products were okay, but none were great. Diamond Cut 32 proved itself capable, but wasn't the easiest thing to use. Audio Cleaning Lab had a plausible demo, although to limited to tell if it would really do the job. I finally bought a copy and am glad I did.

Neither the web site nor the box promise that the software will run on Windows XP, although I read some owner comments on the web that sounded like it would work. I figured it wouldn't be able to burn CDs for three reasons: Windows XP wasn't supported, my CD writer wasn't listed on their web site as supported, their support forum says that it won't work with DirectCD or other packet-writing CD software installed. Okay, I would export the sound files and burn them with SimpliCD.

To my surprise, ACL burns CD's on my system perfectly! I guess the SimpliCD software does not conflict in the same way DirectCD or InCD do, and the XP and hardware compatibility problems didn't exist.

That brings me to the core of the program: getting sound ready for a CD. ACL is just head and shoulders above everything else I looked at. It takes in sound by either recording or loading .wav, .mp3, .wma, or other audio. You can them assemble those pieces on the master track. You can then cut up the pieces into sub-objects and work on them individually. You can place track markers (automatic track recognition is the best I've used), reorder cuts, do cross fades, trim cuts, etc. You can give each track a name which is shown on the sound wave for convenient reference.

None of this actually affects the original files, nor does it create new audio files! It only creates a set of instructions that are used to play back the original material as specified.

You can then apply the various sound processing tools to remove defects and do various types of enhancements. These are as effective as any others I tried. The processing can be applied to individual snippets you have marked or to the entire assembly.

When the project is perfect, you can burn it to CD. The names of the tracks you gave are even burned as CD text. Or you can export the project to .wav, .mp3, or .wma files. If you've named the tracks, the files will have the names you gave instead of just numbers as most products do. (Note that the product include a license to produce only 20 MP3 files. If you want to make a lot of MP3's, you'll have to buy a license for another $20 or something.) Then you can burn those files with other software, if you prefer.

I found the user interface visually appealing and very easy to use with a little practice. This thing is great.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best of its Class, May 15, 2001

By 

"la_cabra_danzante" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magix Audio Cleaning Lab (CD-ROM)

This package has two very significant strengths: 1) very effective noise reduction for its price; 2) extremely thoughtful features that greatly speed the restoration/CD mastering process. I had searched high and low for a product with these features and was surprised when I found this just a couple of days after its commercial release. First of all, the noise reduction is much better than any of the shareware and many of the commercial alternatives you will find. The only thing better that I have used is Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction, which is excellent but costs $300. Second, the operation is set up in the form of a project (much like Sonic Foundry's Vegas Audio/Video) where you apply effects in a nondestructive environment. The program affords a great deal of flexibility in the way you can apply the effects to all or portions of a track (using the same "object" concept as Sonic Foundry). It also has extensive track management features. You can move segments of a single wave file that you have defined as distinct tracks as though they were really separate files when you lay out your CD. Real-time simultaneous monitoring of most effects and one direct-x plug in is possible. When I first started a restoration project my primary concern was quality. However, I quickly realized that with a sizable project there is a practical limit to how much you can optimize. This software provides a very efficient means to play with different parameters, save your settings, export to CD, audition. You can then go back and change any parameter without having to start over the whole process. It is extremely efficient. The only negatives are an annoying user interface that won't maximize to fill your screen and several misspelled words in the documentation that came through the translation from the language in which it was originally written. Also, it appears that it was not developed as a "Windows" program and does not seem to use standard "Windows" interface code. That said, it has been very stable and I haven't yet detected any bugs. All in all, Magix has filled a huge void in this category. I would like to try Steinberg's Clean! package but they don't make a demo available and they provide very little product information on their website. What I have read about its noise reduction leads me to believe that it probably is not more effective than this package.