Cheap Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0 (Software) (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me) Price

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