Magix Audio Cleaning Lab

Life

You probably won’t remember this but back in the old days, it wasn’t just DJs who played vinyl records — we all had LPs, EPs and singles. Sure we didn’t mix and match them like Fatboy Slim does, but we still used to give them a spin now and then until the Compact Disc put a stop to it all. 

CDs have revolutionised the way we listen to music, but there are still plenty of people out there who have their trusted 45s and 33s going mouldy in the attic. For those who resent paying out for all those great albums on CD, help is at hand because now you can breed new life into your classics with Audio Cleaning Lab software from Magix.

Audio Cleaning Lab allows you to polish up all your old audio recordings digitally and then either turn them into MP3s or burn them onto a CD. The promotional blurb makes this sound incredibly easy to do, but be warned you do have to hook up your old sound system up to your PC first and, let’s face it, how many of us still have record players still knocking about?

Wired up
Importing tracks into the application is pretty straightforward once you’ve wired everything up; you just click on import and start cleaning. The program helps users to eliminate scratches, hissing and other interference before adding a range of special effects that give recordings a crisper sound. Some of the mastering functions included in Cleaning Lab are: a Stereo Enhancer, which can be used to edit the stereo levels, and a Dynamics section, which lets you edit the volume ratios with a compressor and an Equaliser. There’s also resampling and stretching functions that allow you to accelerate or slow down audio material and merge tracks together, as well as an Echo/Reverb Editor that allows you to produce spatial depth.

While this might all sound very technical, the processes are actually pretty simple, thanks to the inclusion of a number of handy Wizards that will guide you. These allow you to try out a number of different functions before settling on the one that sound best to you.

I tried out the process on both an old cassette recording and a bad MP3 recording that I downloaded off the Internet and I found in both cases that Audio Cleaning Lab definitely improved the sharpness of the sound. However, I did find it difficult to completely eliminate hiss from the MP3 track. While the MP3 track did sound better, it still didn’t rank as ‘digital quality’ in my book. Another problem was that it seemed to take eons for changes to take effect.

Audio Cleaning Lab is certainly easy to use and it also contains a handy CD burning option. If you’ve been wondering what to do with all those old LPs and you still have your old record player then this is a good way to transfer those old records onto CD. 

Specs
Magix Audio Cleaning Lab

• This application is a convenient way to clean up your old audio recordings. But be warned while the packaging makes it sound as easy as pie, you do have to wire up your old sound system to the PC.
• Price £19.99
• Contact PC World +353 (0)1-802 5555
• Rating 25%