Rating: 
Summary: Superior to Roxio
Review: After having a bad time with Roxio EZ Creator 5, I went to the Pyro 2003 and had a pleasant surprise. It works! It might not be as fast or in some cases as easy as the Roxio was, but at least the damn thing works.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing Interface
Review: All the reviews indicated that this software was easy to use. I found the opposite. Maybe I'll get used to Pyro but I doubt it.
I should have bought something else.
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome. Just love it!
Review: As a support person for over 200 PC's, I got sick and tired of the enduser's complaining about Roxio EZCD 5.
The only thing EZ about it was how "easy" it was to cause me
more grief.
Upgrading to EZCD "Platinum edition" fixed most of the enduser's complaints.
But the EZCD that came with the CDRW drives was supposed to "save us money". [Meaning that we bought a certain cdrw drive which provided a copy of EZCD, supposedly saving us the price of buying a cdrw software burner package.Instead we had to buy upgrades, meaning the Platinum edition, which isn't cheap].Having seen the problems with EZ, I bought Pyro for my own use.
I have used Pyro 1 and now Pyro 2003. The only thing I did not like about Pyro (which is an issue with the maker of pyro, Cakewalk) was their upgrade polcy.
A lot of companies will let you upgrade to the latest version, at a reduced price.
The price for previous owners was basically the retail price.
No decent pricebreaks for previous owners.
Rating:
Summary: Solid and reliable burning software
Review: Cakewalk Pyro is the other half of my home recording duo, the other half being Cakewalk SONAR. Having spent a good year with Roxio's CD Creator, I decided to give Pyro a try since I was using Cakewalk's multitrack recording software already. Users of Roxio will find the controls on Pyro to be more straightforward, the interface more intuitive, and the reliability much higher. As other reviewers have said, not one CD burned with Pyro failed to burn properly. And the real-time track layout is a definite plus for this program. Features are fairly simple with no real ability to edit waveforms other than cropping and fading, both of which occur at increasingly large intervals depending on the length of the file being edited. One way past this is to take a given file, break it up into smaller pieces and then reassemble them in the track layout. Re-integration of this kind is flawless and is a creative way around the few limitations the program has. Cakewalk has been around for a long time and continues to improve the quality of its music software. With any luck, some of the features we editors had hoped for will be available in a future updated version of Pyro. All things considered, thought this may not be the most feature-packed burning program, it is by far the most reliable and user-friendly. Pick it up if you've been looking for a better burning program than what comes with Windows XP (which, by the way, the program works flawlessly on.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Improvement
Review: Compared to first version of Pyro, the 2003 version is way out front, in fact almost unrecognizable. It takes a little getting used to but the editing capability is terrific. The only problem is that when you learn enough to edit downloads and live performances you want more editing capacity than Pyro 2003 provides. The basic program allows volume leveling, cropping, fading in and out, overlapping tracks, and splitting tracks and that's it. In order to do more editing one should look at Sound Forge XP Studio, unless your a professional and need Sound Forge Professional or Pro Tools.
For everyday home editing I'm very happy with Cakewalk 2003. Maybe even in their next version they will put some more editing tools in.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Improvement
Review: Compared to first version of Pyro, the 2003 version is way out front, in fact almost unrecognizable. It takes a little getting used to but the editing capability is terrific. The only problem is that when you learn enough to edit downloads and live performances you want more editing capacity than Pyro 2003 provides. The basic program allows volume leveling, cropping, fading in and out, overlapping tracks, and splitting tracks and that's it. In order to do more editing one should look at Sound Forge XP Studio, unless your a professional and need Sound Forge Professional or Pro Tools.
For everyday home editing I'm very happy with Cakewalk 2003. Maybe even in their next version they will put some more editing tools in.
Rating: 
Summary: won't do much
Review: I found the interface confusing and hard to understand as compared to roxio and even windows media player. I was buring some music to cd and the program won't allow you to name tracks!
Another problem is data cd burning, you can not erase a cd-rw disk. I sent an email to customer support and they confirmed the program does not offer the track naming feature and said "we know the erase feature is an important feature and we're working on it for our next revision. Just use the disk erase that came with your computer." Well, so now I use windows media player to burn audio cds, and winxp to erase disks, i'm wondering what exactly I am going to use this program for. Basic data cd burning I get with roxio that came with my xp program. I suggest writing customer service if you have specific needs to see if their program will do it. There web site is no help.
Rating:
Summary: Nice features but so slooooooow it's useless
Review: I got Pyro 2003 to try to make converting LPs to MP3 a little simpler. I thought rather than use one tool to capture audio, another to convert to MP3, and yet another to clean up LP noise, Pyro seemed a good choice. PC mag write up sealed the deal. Although it does all that is advertised, the software is so god-awful slow in saving any file - even without changing file format - that I have reverted to multiple software packages. And no, I can't blame my hardware, 1.5 gz P4. Pryo does offer a nice way to clean up audio noise. It lets you listen to just the noise being removed isolated from all other sound. This really helps when the control labels and graphs are meaningless. Again, saving the results of any cleanup are so slow that I'd rather live with the noise until a better solution comes along. My copy of Pyro 2003 will be destined for e-bay.
Rating: 
Summary: Works well but only a basic feature-set
Review: I picked this up primarily to create mp3's off my old albums and cassettes. It works very well for this function, easily allowing the music to be recorded with different options. The ability to auto-remove pops (albums) and hums (cassettes) is very nice as is the audio enhancer where you can bump up the bass or midrange to make it sound better. Once you have the music loaded up your set of tools is quite limited. There is a terrific graphical method of cutting of the ends and fading in/out but thats about it. You do not have the ability to select a portion of the song and do anything like add echo or make it louder. You cannot cut and paste very easily, so for example, if you want to cut 5 seconds of silence out of the middle of a song the manual says to do so you need to load it up twice, use the fader and remove the front half, save it and then load the original, remove the back half, save it, then load both pieces and then cross-fade. If your planning to do much of anything with the songs after thay have been imported a different tool may be a better choice. I dropped it a star because I think cutting and pasting and selecting portions of music is a basic function that ought to be there. The drag and drop audio cd creation works very well, very intuitive and easy to use and worked flawwless on my computer. But its quite a bit slower than other tools I've used. A audio cd of 15 mp3 songs takes about 15-20 minutes to burn (even at 24x) which is not horrible but should be noted. A similar cd burned with other software takes about 5 minutes. I dropped it a star because of the speed. All in all a good tool for the basics of getting music into a computer, whether its coming from audio cd or analog format and then burning "best-of's"
Rating:
Summary: Works WAY better than Roxio
Review: I was sick of the multiple "coasters" (unusable disks) created by Roxio Easy CD Creator 5. I needed some reliable software that would also allow me to do some basic audio editing (add fades, adjust volume, and make simple cuts to audio tracks). I did several searches online for software comparisons and came up with very little helpful information. Finally I just went to the store & picked up something that looked good: Cakewalk Pyro 2003. And I have to say, I'm impressed! Aside from a bit of a learning curve for the uninitiated (in order to burn an audio CD to play in regular stereos, you must first put your tracks in wav format, a fact that isn't readily obvious to those used to Roxio's setup), this software works, and it works well. So far I've burned about 7 CDs, audio and data, with no flaws and a much easier time setting up the disc to burn than with Roxio. (You don't have to babysit the burning process - since you rip the tracks first, then tell the software what to burn, you don't have to sit there and switch CDs for an hour.) The CD quality produced is flawless, though I've basically been mixing my current CD collection onto other CDs, so I can't speak for those attempting to put their LP collection on CD. I'd highly recommend this software for those who want to expand the capabilities of the CD burning software that came with their computers. This software works well, is fairly easy to learn, and produces great quality discs. The price is reasonable, and you definitely get your money's worth.
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