Pinnacle Clean Plus

Rating:
Summary: Beware!!!! Clean can't find your burner.
Review: I bought Clean 4.0 and 4.1 and they have the same problem. When loading this software, Clean is supposed to find and configure your disc drives for reading and for burning. It usually always finds the ROM drive but finding the burner is a different story. Unlike it's sister software (included) Wave Lab Lite which enables you to choose whichever burner you wish, Clean might or might not find your burner. If it does find it, you're in business and it works flawlessly. Another problem is that Pinnacle nor Steinberg provide a download to correct this problem even though Clean has been out for a few years. How they could overlook this problem is beyond me. There is a Clean 5 (available in Europe only) but I am now afraid to invest any more money in this product. Until they print on the box that this problem has been corrected, BEWARE!!!.

Rating:
Summary: UI is easy to learn
Review: I have tried numerous sound editor programs, such as Goldwave, CoolEdit Pro, Nero Wave Editor, and more. They all work well if you have the time to find each little click and pop and manually edit the noise. While the various filters do change the sound track or selections, I found that I didn't have the time to use these programs. I had been using my old Atari Falcon for A to D and editing, because of the simplicity of the software. Mr Steinberg, actually invented and patented much of the wave display and cursor control technology or User Interfaces that we enjoy in many of the sound editors on the market. This UI technology was available to the Atari community in the mid 1980's, then later to Mac users, and now to PC users. I think the Pinnacle/Steinberg Clean 4.0 software and the pre amp hardware is great. It is time to retire my Atari Falcon...Not!

Rating:
Summary: UI is easy to learn
Review: I have tried numerous sound editor programs, such as Goldwave, CoolEdit Pro, Nero Wave Editor, and more. They all work well if you have the time to find each little click and pop and manually edit the noise. While the various filters do change the sound track or selections, I found that I didn't have the time to use these programs. I had been using my old Atari Falcon for A to D and editing, because of the simplicity of the software. Mr Steinberg, actually invented and patented much of the wave display and cursor control technology or User Interfaces that we enjoy in many of the sound editors on the market. This UI technology was available to the Atari community in the mid 1980's, then later to Mac users, and now to PC users. I think the Pinnacle/Steinberg Clean 4.0 software and the pre amp hardware is great. It is time to retire my Atari Falcon...Not!

Rating:
Summary: Meets all my expectations!
Review: I looked at the reviews for most of the major software for coping LPs and cleaning them and recording to CDs, including reading the reviews here. I was somewhat hesitant after reading the 1-star review on this program, but went ahead any ways. This program meets and in some cases exceeds my expectations! I got it yesterday and today recorded 4 of my albums onto CDs. It works very well and is fairly intuitive on how to use. I still have the occasional click or crack on the recorded CD, but overall I am very pleased with the results. So far I have only used the program to clean the recordings automatically, I'm sure if I play with the settings some I can probably eliminate the few remaining clicks and cracks. It's a little cumbersome to retrieve files that are removed from the play list and you want to use later, you need to save these as their own file right after they are recorded, otherwise, you have to hunt them down on your hard drive. The program works very quickly (I am using a Dell with a 2 GHz P4 processor, 512 MB SDRAM, and an SB Live 1024 Digital Sound Card), but make sure you have a lot of hard disk space, the 4 albums took 6 GB in .wav format. A few things that I learned along the way: 1) make sure your turntable is grounded, otherwise you might get a humming noise that the program will not clean up (or at least I have not figured out how to clean it up yet, but if the turntable is grounded, this is not an issue), and 2) in your sound card settings, make sure the Line In is not set to Mute. This is stated in the on-CD manual but not in the paper manual that comes with this program. Finally, I found that the price at Amazon was the cheapest around when you consider the free shipping. It arrived in 3 days. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PROGRAM FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO COPY LPs ONTO CD!

Rating:
Summary: Meets all my expectations!
Review: I looked at the reviews for most of the major software for coping LPs and cleaning them and recording to CDs, including reading the reviews here. I was somewhat hesitant after reading the 1-star review on this program, but went ahead any ways. This program meets and in some cases exceeds my expectations! I got it yesterday and today recorded 4 of my albums onto CDs. It works very well and is fairly intuitive on how to use. I still have the occasional click or crack on the recorded CD, but overall I am very pleased with the results. So far I have only used the program to clean the recordings automatically, I'm sure if I play with the settings some I can probably eliminate the few remaining clicks and cracks. It's a little cumbersome to retrieve files that are removed from the play list and you want to use later, you need to save these as their own file right after they are recorded, otherwise, you have to hunt them down on your hard drive. The program works very quickly (I am using a Dell with a 2 GHz P4 processor, 512 MB SDRAM, and an SB Live 1024 Digital Sound Card), but make sure you have a lot of hard disk space, the 4 albums took 6 GB in .wav format. A few things that I learned along the way: 1) make sure your turntable is grounded, otherwise you might get a humming noise that the program will not clean up (or at least I have not figured out how to clean it up yet, but if the turntable is grounded, this is not an issue), and 2) in your sound card settings, make sure the Line In is not set to Mute. This is stated in the on-CD manual but not in the paper manual that comes with this program. Finally, I found that the price at Amazon was the cheapest around when you consider the free shipping. It arrived in 3 days. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PROGRAM FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO COPY LPs ONTO CD!

Rating:
Summary: Insufferable UI
Review: I purchased Clean Plus a few weeks ago and wanted to try putting it through its paces before coming to any conclusions. Well, the conclusion is that this product is FABULOUS for the price that I paid. It was a decision whether to purchase Clean or Clean Plus. I have a very good stereo from Pioneer and hesitated to by the Plus version with its own preamplifier. I highly recommend the Plus with its preamp. I recorded a very scratchy Harry Belafonte album from 1963. In its initial recording, it was barely listenable with all the pops and clicks. After running through the paces of this program, and there are a few, the record now sounds like a professional recording studio has polished up the record. It is great!

One key factor is that the preset settings for the source work fine, but the program also gives you a high degree of custom settings to play with. It does this by creating a seperate file for the cleaned recording. In case you make a mistake, you still have the original file to go back to and try to customize again. Once you get used to the controls, it becomes second nature.

I now have the task of recording over 500 records...but I will enjoy the end product of my labors.

Rating:
Summary: New Life for your Records
Review: I purchased Clean Plus a few weeks ago and wanted to try putting it through its paces before coming to any conclusions. Well, the conclusion is that this product is FABULOUS for the price that I paid. It was a decision whether to purchase Clean or Clean Plus. I have a very good stereo from Pioneer and hesitated to by the Plus version with its own preamplifier. I highly recommend the Plus with its preamp. I recorded a very scratchy Harry Belafonte album from 1963. In its initial recording, it was barely listenable with all the pops and clicks. After running through the paces of this program, and there are a few, the record now sounds like a professional recording studio has polished up the record. It is great!

One key factor is that the preset settings for the source work fine, but the program also gives you a high degree of custom settings to play with. It does this by creating a seperate file for the cleaned recording. In case you make a mistake, you still have the original file to go back to and try to customize again. Once you get used to the controls, it becomes second nature.

I now have the task of recording over 500 records...but I will enjoy the end product of my labors.

Rating:
Summary: Insufferable UI
Review: I purchased Pinnacle Clean Plus after I tried Magix Audio Cleaning Lab. The cool hardware that came with Clean plus looked nice - and I figured the software should be very good too -based on Pinnacle's reputation for excellence.
Well - a swing and a miss folks.
The User Interface is insufferable! It is nearly impossible to even get the system to identify CD tracks - and absolutely impossible to make them accurate.
While the quality of the remastering is good - the ability to actually make a good CD doesn't exist.
I got a free copy of Magix Audio Cleanng Lab 3.0 at COMPUSA (After rebate) and didn't like it at first - but honestly now it Magix got it right while Pinnacle (Steinberg actually wrote the software)completely missed the boat. The Magix software does the remastering nearly as well - I believe Pinnacle has the edge here. BUt it's of absolutely no use if you can't identify and work with tracks accurately.
Now - I use the Pinnacle hardware with the Magix software and can get the job done.
I recommend you get a pre-amp for 35 bucks at Radio Shack - and get Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 - for now.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly poor product support
Review: I was never able to get the product to work. I tried the product support phone line. The phone line has the standard list of numeric choices... but doesn't let you enter a number midway through the list... you have to wait for the long list of products and choices to be read, even when you have called for the fourth time. The choices for this product lead to a dead end... the product is listed throught the first two levels of the menu, then disappears in the third level. The trail ends with no way to get to a human. The on-line listing of products supported does not list this product at the second level of menu, although it is in the first level.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly poor product support
Review: I was never able to get the product to work. I tried the product support phone line. The phone line has the standard list of numeric choices... but doesn't let you enter a number midway through the list... you have to wait for the long list of products and choices to be read, even when you have called for the fourth time. The choices for this product lead to a dead end... the product is listed throught the first two levels of the menu, then disappears in the third level. The trail ends with no way to get to a human. The on-line listing of products supported does not list this product at the second level of menu, although it is in the first level.