Rating: 
Summary: Enhance Old and New Recordings!
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: It takes a lot of practice to master this program.
Review: Once you get the hang of it, though, the program is powerful. Be prepared to waste several CD's and a lot of time practicing.
Some pitfalls of this program:
1. Difficult to install. The program insists on installing DirectX 6.2, even when you have a later version of DirectX. This causes the program to lock up. Once it locks up, you must reboot, then the program will not run nor will it uninstall. (The secret to uninstalling is to delete the magix.ini file, and then delete the installation folder. Your registry is still messed up, though). Be wary of using an uninstaller in the background too. It doesn't like them.
2. Difficult program to learn and the manual is difficult to understand. The awkward wording suggests the book was written in German than translated into English.
3. Limited MP3 support - the program allows only 20 MP3 uses. After than, you must pay an additional fee to export your files to MP3.
4. It will not burn CD's when Easy CD Creator is installed, although all the other functions will work. For some reason, It doesn't like EasyCD Creator. It works properly with Nero 5.5.
Rating: 
Summary: compatibility issues
Review: The program only supports a few drives. Later Plextors made in the last year are not supported. HP drives are the only later model drives that are supported. Because of this, I could not produce any CDs unless I exported the WAV files to another program to do the actual burning. The program was also very poor at determining where to set the track markers for the songs. Had to move many of the markers to the correct location. Program has lots of bells and whistles but it does not handle the basics well.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out . . . .
Review: The real price of this program is actually $.. more than what's listed. The product itself is excellent. Easy to use, great for what I bought it for, which is digitizing old LPs and removing years of scratches and crackles. I was really, really annoyed, though, to find that the MP3 converter (converts WAV files to MP3) only works 20 times unless you pay an extra $.. (well, $..) for an upgrade via the Internet. Seems like they ought to tell you this somewhere upfront.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Product at a Fair Price
Review: This is a copy of an e-mail I sent to Magix- I recently purchased a copy of your Audio Cleaning Lab. It is probably the first program I have purchased (and I have a lot of them) that far exceeds my expectations. Your program is astonishing as to its ease of use and quality of its output. I have already created several CD's from 40-50 year old LP's in my collection and they almost sound like newly minted CD's. Congratulations on a job well done.
Rating:
Summary: Be Warned
Review: This program does not work with computers pre-loaded with Adaptec's Easy Cd Creator program.
Rating: 
Summary: Tips:
Review: This program is pretty easy to use. Like most people, I tried to use it without reading the manual. Read it. It makes things easier. I also recommend getting some good quality headphones, or decent speakers for your computer before burning anything to CD. What sounds good on your computer might not sound good in your stereo, and it takes a few tries to realize the strength of the effects. A little hiss-remover goes a long way. After several tries, I also found that burning in 4x mode is best. Many times 16x will result in "error" and wasted CDR's. I bought this almost 4 months ago, and just recently got the hang of it. Once you do, the possibilities are wide. You can upload your own music, master the recordings and burn your very own cd (this is not anything like the Magix Music Studio or the Cakewalk Music Creator programs, so owning it along with one of those is ideal), make cds from old records, 8 tracks, and cassettes, create compilations from different CD(or records...etc), put mp3s onto cd, make your own mp3s. Included is a "free trial" of direct mp3-making, but if you download MusicMatch Jukebox, there is a converter in that which allows you to change wavs to mp3, so buying additional software from Magix for converting is not necessary.
Rating: 
Summary: Good intention, but...
Review: This software has some very nice features, easy recording and cleaning of the digital files, everything appears to work great -- until I tried to burn a CD. It will not work if Adaptec is installed on the PC and I have not been able to burn a CD even after I removed Adaptec. The Magix customer support was not able not offer a solution.
Rating:
Summary: Adaptec, schmadeptec!!!
Review: Those people who are allegedly having problems with Adaptec, apparently haven't really called MAGIX for a solution. After I bought the "Audio Cleaning Lab", but before I installed it, I read the negative reviews, called MAGIX ... and talked to their tech support people about the alleged problems as discussed in these reviews. They said that negative reviews could come from 2 groups of people: #1) people with CD burners that are so new that no pertinent drivers have been written for them (...) and group #2) the group who coincidentally have the presence of a "Direct CD" program running in the background (this can be seen by pulling up the list of programs in the cntl+alt+del listing), and if so, then terminate it. Adaptec is just ONE program of MANY that uses "Direct CD." I have not had any of these problems since installing and using the program. This is not a "Buyer Beware" issue." This is a "User, Know your system" issue. This program is a good system and I highly recommend it to anyone for transferring tapes to CDs!!!
Rating:
Summary: Good except for one HUGE problem!
Review: When I purchased my new computer one of the main objectives I had was to convert my album collection to cd's. As a result I purchased a powerful machine and selected XP for my operating system. My system came with Easy CD Creator and I found that to be a good program for burning cd's. However I read the reviews on the Roxio Easy CD Creator Platinum Editon 5.0 which would allow me to transfer albums to cd's and found that everybody who had XP could not operate that software and so I began look elsewhere. What I found was Magix's Audio Cleaning Lab(ACL). Almost every review here at Amazon.com indicated the software did a good job of cleaning and improving the sound and that it was user friendly. The one big drawback that I got from the reviews was that ACL did not work if Direct CD was installed on the computer. However some people did seem to be able to run the software and burn cd's while others could not. I was able to purchase ACL for [a small amount] and figured I'd give it a shot. The software was user friendly and after playing around with the various controls I was able to improve the sound of my albums. However I could not burn a cd. I e-mailed Magix and they sent me prompt e-mails back with sugguestion and patches to download. I had already removed Easy CD Creator from my computer and so I could not figure why I was still not able to burn cd's? I sent an e-mail requesting a direct line to speak to a tech at Magix and to my surprise I received a direct number to a techs desk. I had to pay for the long distance call but it was worth it. This way I didn't have to spend endless minutes waiting on hold for a rep to answer my call as I seem to do with most tech support lines. The tech offered several suggestions and I tried them all with no success. It seems to me that the Roxio CD Easy Creator and other various software products that use Direct CD are preloaded on most of the newer pc's that are built today. Thus if Magix wants to do well and increase their sales they are going to have to get around this whole Direct CD issue. It dosen't matter how user friendly or good the program is if in the end you can't burn the cd's. As a reuslt I am now considering purchasing Easy CD Creator Platinum 5.3 which is supposed to be XP friendly. I'll wait to see the reviews before I purchase it. One last side note. When you clean an audio file with ACL the original audio file is unchanged on your computer ACL has a separate file that contains the changes you are making to the original audio file. I found that I can take the original unaltered audio file and transfer it to my Windows Media Player(WMP) and then burn that audio file to a cd. The only problem with this is that there are no separate tracks. In other words an entire album will play under one track. In order to create separate tracks you would need to record each individual song as a separate audio file. This obviously is a slow process and even if you have the patience to do this the material will not be cleaned.
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