Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0

by Magix Entertainment

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000069CD3
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 7, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,631 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #70 in Software > Video & Music > Software > Music Creation & Sequencing
  • #87 in Software > Video & Music > Software > Sound Editing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

For those looking for an inexpensive and easy way to clean old recordings from records or cassettes and then convert them to a digital format, your search is over. Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 not only cleans and converts recordings, but also lets you add effects with tools such as a compressor, a brilliance enhancer, reverb, or echo.

Upon initial launch of the software you are given the option of watching two videos that take you through the major features and tools, and introduce you to the interface. The interface is well laid out, easy to understand, and puts everything you'll need right in front of you, except for the music, of course.

Importing material to work with is simple, although you'll need an RCA cable for connecting a stereo to your PC's sound card. Once connected, you can start recording music to the hard drive. Everything about the process is straightforward, but Magix has included a booklet with tutorials for each type of recording, plus instructions on how best to use the cleaning tools.

For vinyl records, the most helpful tools were the decrackler, declicker, and denoiser, and for cassettes there's a dehisser. A cleaning wizard can take you through the options if you're unsure what to tweak. However, since all changes happen in real time, it's just as easy to play around with the settings and see what works best. The software worked well with vinyl and cassette tape, at the very least quieting all extraneous noise. But while the software was able to clean those, it had little effect on the digital bleeps that appear on poorer-quality MP3s. After your tracks are clean, take advantage of the several mastering effects to further improve the sound. When you have the sound you want, you can burn your project to a CD or save the project on your hard drive as an MPEG, WMA, or WAV file. MP3s can also be made, but only 20 of them. If you want to encode more, you're going to need to pay for an upgrade.

Audio Cleaning Lab does exactly what it claims to do. While it won't digitally remaster your vinyl and cassettes, it will remove some pretty undesirable noises and allow you to enjoy your collection with improved quality. --Joshua Goldman

Amazon.com Review

Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 offers an easy-to-use and inexpensive way to convert music on records and cassettes to a digital format. It also allows you to add mastering effects to your recordings to further enhance their quality. You can then save your recordings to your hard drive or burn them to CD.

Once you launch the software you will find a user-friendly interface with large, self-explanatory buttons. At this point you are given the option of watching videos that walk you through the simple process of importing, cleaning, adding effects, and exporting your files.

You can import audio by recording it to your hard drive through your PC's sound card (you will need an RCA cable to connect your stereo to your PC), by getting tracks from CDs placed in your CD-ROM drive, or by using digital audio stored on your computer. Once the audio is imported, Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 offers a whole range of cleaning and effects tools.

When you have your recordings sounding the way you want them, you can arrange them however you wish and save them to your hard drive as MPEG, WMA, or WAV files, or burn them to CD. You can also save files as MP3s; however, you can only make 20 of these. If you want more you will need to purchase an upgrade.

Overall, Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 is a very simple way of cleaning and storing audio from CDs, LPs, and cassettes. The changes it makes are significant, although the noise on very poor recordings cannot be eliminated. Aside from the miserly offering of only 20 recordings in MP3 format, this software is excellent value for the money, and a must-have to improve the life of those old recordings. --Jarrod Rendle

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 is a Great Audio Enhancement Program!, September 30, 2002

By 

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

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 (CD-ROM)

Magix Cleaning Lab 3.0 is great software. I have restored many songs I thought would never see the digital light of day. Now they are played with vibrant sound! Essentially one has the option of cleaning music in four ways.
1. De-click (to remove 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, 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 multiple 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. Brilliance/EQ (Change the sound with a graphic equalizer, and preset equalizer settings)
3. Multi-Max (Increase the loudness, presence, of a file, and it acts as a limiter)
4. Direct X controls (add on any Direct X effect)
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.)
6. Acoustics-Simulator (new to 3.0, this gives the music echo and reverb, to make it sound like its been recorded in a hall, cathedral, tunnel, etc)

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. I also noticed that using the acoustics simulator often causes a cracking sound to appear on the recording because when adding its effects, it makes the music much louder. 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 about 15 US dollars. Finally, the help files are sometimes not translated too well from their German originals.

I haven't used every recording feature. Usually I record each song individually using the audio-in jack. If you record this way (from the headphone jack on your stereo to your computer line-in jack), you will need a cheap cable. Magix periodically offers patches for products, so check their web site from time to time to ensure best performance.

Version 3.0 does not seem to me to offer a huge number of features over the previous version. The interface is slightly easier to navigate, and there are certainly more features and more cleaning/mastering options. Overall I am very impressed with 3.0, but not much more than the previous version. I have a lot of fun restoring old songs, and enhancing newer ones! I definitely suggest this product.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Tool for Cleaning Old Audio, October 30, 2002

By 

J. A. Aylard "jaylard" (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 (CD-ROM)

I have used Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 on two projects so far: to clean and digitally master a noisy, twenty-year-old recording of an interview with my great aunt; and to transfer an album (also twenty years old) from cassette to CD. My verdict: Audio Cleaning Lab is an excellent tool, albeit with a few quirks and one notable flaw.

The quality of the original interview recording -- made on a cheap, portable cassette recorder -- was awful. Some of it was virtually inaudible. Although Audio Cleaning Lab couldn't polish it enough to make it sound like a studio-quality recording, it did eliminate considerable hiss and hum, allowing barely audible portions to become understandable. It also turned the flat mono into a more-expansive sounding stereo signal. The final recording did exhibit a subtle electronic quality, but overall it was much improved.

The album, from an off-beat group called Daniel Amos, was a label-produced cassette. Of course, twenty years ago most recording companies used some of the cheapest-quality cassettes available for this purpose, so sound quality and durability were not the best. Even so, I eliminated virtually all tape hiss and brightened the somewhat flat sound quality. The result is a high-quality digital recording comparable to a present-day, commercially produced compact disc.

There are a few quirks with Audio Cleaning Lab: produced by a German company, occasionally the English instructions are curiously worded, though almost always readily understandable. Some of the tools, such as the cutting tool, are a little difficult to work with.

And the biggest flaw: its CD-burning functionality is incompatible with Adaptec/Roxio's DirectCD and other packet-writing applications, which are installed on many systems with CD burners. The workaround: either uninstall DirectCD or create all files as WAVs and then master them to CD in another application, such as Roxio's Easy CD Creator. Not a very satisfactory workaround.

All in all, an excellent application with some room for improvement -- and room for a patch that will allow it to burn CDs _without_ uninstalling packet-writing software.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good basic software - bad company, November 28, 2002

By 

A. Ragosta (Santa Clara, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 (CD-ROM)

Audio Cleaning Lab does a good, but basic, job of recording and cleaning up old LPs (the reason I bought it). If you're willing to accept the builtin wizards recommendations for the cleaning functions, it's also quite easy and intuitive.

Editing, on the other hand, was less intuitive and at times tedious. The two most basic editing functions - cropping at either end and fade in/out - are OK, but manually touching up a cut is not.

The quality of the files produced seems good.

Now for the bad... despite being plastered all over the ads and the box that MP3s can be read AND WRITTEN, you can only save 20 files before you're forced to pay for an upgrade. Of course, you can save as .WAVs and use the free utility CDEx to do the conversions, this is inconvenient and I'm suspicious you may lose a little quality. I find this behavior despicable and can NOT recommend software by a company that treats its customers like this.