Audio Cleaning Lab 2004

by Magix Entertainment

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000092P2X
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 1, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,358 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #57 in Software > Video & Music > Software > Sound Editing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Restore music from LPs, cassettes & MP3's and burn them onto CD. Create crystal-clear music from your vinyl, cassettes, CD or Internet MP3s -quickly and automatically with MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 2004.

Quickly & Easily:

• Clean LPs
• Restore tapes
• Convert digital music
• Burn it all to CDs

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works Very Well, October 9, 2003

By 

Stephen Gowin (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Audio Cleaning Lab 2004 (CD-ROM)

When I decided to convert, for archival purposes, my collection of LP's and cassettes to CD format, I started doing a lot of research trying to find the best program for the job. I looked at several other programs (ranging in price from free to several hundred dollars) that try to do the same job as ACL (Audio Cleaning Lab) and found them wanting.

One of the features I like best that I couldn't find in any other program, is ACL's ability to perform real time transformations. Virtually all of the filters (such as it's click removal or dehissing filters) can be applied in real time. This means that you don't have to wait from several seconds to several minutes to find out if the changes you made got you the desired result. I can't emphasize enough how much easier it is to clean up a recording with feedback in real time. Want to see if the declicker filter would make the album sound better? Simply start to play the recording, turn on the filter, and hear the results. Adjust the slider associated with the filter and you get immediate feedback as to what your actions are doing. Other programs make you adjust the filter, then wait while it applies the filter to the entire recording. Very annoying.

If you don't want to go to the trouble of manually fixing an old record or cassette, ACL has a cleaning wizard that automatically looks at the recording and adjusts the filters for you. I've found that the program is as good or better than the adjustments I make manually.

I also like the Denoiser filter. This filter is great for cleaning a record that has a lot of background noise, such as a bad cassette recording with a lot of hiss. You simply select a portion of the recording that doesn't have any music, like a section between tracks, and ACL will filter out the noise it hears from the rest of the tracks. Really amazing.

Any of the effects can be applied to either the full recording or to individual tracks, which is good if you want to create a compilation that includes recordings from several different sources.

Also, ACL will mark each track automatically so you don't have to manually find them. This feature works very well except on unnusual albums like a classical or live recording where one track can blend into another.

The only things I don't like about ACL is that you have to purchase (for $14.99) a mp3 converter if you want to burn more than 20 mp3s. But since you can save your music as a wav file which a can be read by any of the free mp3 converters, this isn't a big deal. I finally purchased the mp3 converter built in to ACL just to eliminate those extra steps.

In conclusion, the program is easy to use, works perfectly in Windows XP and Windows 98, and burns CD's without any problems on my machine. The interface is clean and the program is very easy to use, even for someone who knows little about audio engineering, but has enough controls for the more advanced tweaker. I would highly recommend it if you intended to clean a lot of records, but ACL is probably overkill if you just want to rip mp3s from your CDs.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Does a great job on transferring records and tapes to CD's, July 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Audio Cleaning Lab 2004 (CD-ROM)

The program is great for recording records & tapes to cd's or install the music as .wav files on your computer. It takes a little experimenting to master all of the features the program has to offer. The filter choices gets rid of most of the clicks, crackling and noise that you normally find on old records but depending on the condition of the record you can't get rid of them all. You really need to throughly clean the records before recording. I have been successful in editing and cutting out the bad clicks that won't filter out. For the low price it's a great tool for enhancing and transferring your cherished music to CD's or copy to your MP3 recorder. MAGIX is owned by a company in Germany but has a Product support office in the U.S.

Cons: As most companies, the support is offered thru the web site and is weak.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars XP Compatibility, August 22, 2003

By 

Joseph Proctor (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Audio Cleaning Lab 2004 (CD-ROM)

The program works as advertised except for the CD burning function which will not work under Windows XP. I logged this problem with the Magix support group on July 11, 2003 and have yet to get a response. To burn a CD I have to export the audio file and then use Windows Media Player....a bit clumsy!!