No comments about Macromedia Fireworks 2 for Mac.

2 comments about Bias SoundSoap 2, Hybrid CD Win/Mac.

1. Have you shot video and later discovered the hum of an air conditioner or other noise affecting your sound? As you probably know, audiences will forgive some mistakes in video, but they have a harder time forgiving bad sound. Enter SoundSoap from Bias, Inc. It's a $99.00 application that will remove hum, hiss, buzz and rumble from your soundtrack(s).
   
   If you are using a camcorder, video editing software, audio CD burning software, a digital audio workstation, or other multimedia application, SoundSoap can really help you remove the bad ambient noises.
   
   I tried it on a couple of videos. One was my 'talking head' that I did with my iSight Camera using iMovie. My voice was way too quiet and the sound had a lot of "static." (I used Peak - also from Bias - to boost my voice.) The other was some video of my son and his bride dancing their first dance at the wedding reception. There were lots of clinking dishes, extra voices, etc.
   
   In both cases, the sound was greatly improved! SoundSoap simply and quickly did a VERY complex task - analyzing my sound and removing only the offending noise!
   
   SoundSoap ships as both a standalone application, and a plug-in compatible with any DirectX or VST host program - including Adobe Premiere, BIAS Peak, Cakewalk's SONAR, Guitar Tracks Pro, Home Studio, Music Creator, MediaWorks and Pyro 2004, Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge and Vegas Video Steinberg's Nuendo, Cubase SX/SL and Wavelab. SoundSoap's workspace is simple and uncluttered.
   
   It cleverly removes hiss, hum & buzzing, rumble & most other noise, without harming the audio you wish to preserve. SoundSoap has a one-step "Learn Noise" button to sample and automatically reduce noise. It also provides manual controls for trickier applications. Like Peak, the standalone version works with any QuickTime-compatible audio or video file (AVI, DV, .WAV, SDII, AIFF, MP3, MP4 & dozens more).
   
   My favorite feature is a "Preserve Voice" button that protects the range of the human voice while removing noise (and other audio). The hum removal is optimized for 60 Hertz (North America, etc.) or 50 Hertz (Europe, Australia, etc.). You click on a button to choose which one to use. And the "Noise Only" mode lets you listen only to the noise being removed, making it easier to fine-tune SoundSoap's controls.
   
   SoundSoap is a great, inexpensive solution to ambient noise problems, particularly those picked up by a camcorder. Get more info at http://www.bias-inc.com.



2. Bought this to use with an Ion turntable for digitizing vinyl. Produces amazing sound quality and extremely user-friendly.

5 comments about Magix Audio Cleaning Lab.

1. Works as advertised. I had previously tried Spin Doctor on Easy CD Creator and was truly unimpressed. Audio Cleaning Lab works perfectly, recognizes track markers and is very easy to use. The de-clicking utility took out all of the clicks and scratches in the vinyl recordings and left the music completely unchanged. It burned CD's with my CD burner perfectly. This is a terrific program.



2. 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.



3. 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.




4. 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.




5. I purchased Magix Audio Cleaning Lab and was given an unlock code to use it in my computer. Problem is, when my computer crashed and needed to be reformatted, the same unlock code no longer worked. So I have a useless piece of software that I paid for and no longer can be opened. No problem, says their customer support web site... resubmit the computer code and the purchase order and they will reissue you a new one. (Apparently this problem is to be expected with this product with any configuration change in your hardware). I entered the EXACT information, cut and pasted from the invoice and it says the info is incorrect. Three e mails to customer support are to no avail. Good money down the drain. My experience with Magix Music Studio 6.0 was no better... when I upgraded to Windows XP, the former version of Music Studio wouldn't work. No patches available, "buy the new version" was their admonition. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AND THIS PRODUCT!!! Their customer support is less than useless!!

No comments about Adobe Creative Suite Premium 2.3 Win [Old Version].

1 comments about American Greetings CreataParty.

1. I like this program a lot, but if you buy it and want to have a large variety of cards to choose from, prepare to shell out more cash. The program comes with a very linited supply, but you can upgrade. I have purchased 3 additional sets, and still am not extremely happy with the selection I have (example -- I currently have only three cards for a father's birthday -- actually, one down now and two more to go -- but then what? ). Also, the cards that you purchase are on a separae CD, so you have to continually switch back and forth from the Creat a Party cd and the Art and More Store CD. Annoying! Also, there is no option to e-mail the cards as you can in other programs, but I do like having all of the other accessories, such as banners, cup covers, mobiles, signs, posters, caledars . . .

3 comments about QuarkXpress 7 (Mac).

1. This upgrade is a must-have if you are a Quark user. Here's the good and bad, from my view:
   
   Good: Onscreen text rendering is vastly improved over previous editions. What you see is what you get ... for real.
   Good: Transparency and drop shadows, very cool and feature rich.
   Good: Menus and tools are much more organized onscreen, making visual real estate more streamlined and tools easier to reach.
   Good: They give you a 30-day trial to try the package, and it's the whole package so you can do real work. I hate trials that don't let you save. How can you test an app if you can't really use it? Quark gives the whole enchilada, at least for 30 days, so you can test it for real.
   Good: If you do get an error when printing, instead of just canceling the print job like previous editions without telling you the problem, this one will at least throw up a message telling you specifically which graphic is causing the hangup. Small and appreciated change.
   Good: It just feels zippier. Not sure how to quantify that, but I like the "flow" better than 6. Subtle but real.
   Good - kinda: The two biggest changes, in Quark's mind at least, are the addition of composition zones and job jackets. These basically allow multiple designers to work on a single project and not screw it up. That's great for large design firms, but for a small shop like mine, it's pretty irrelevant. I don't use these features. Despite this, this upgrade is still more than worth the price.
   
   Bad: Still crashes sometimes, but what program of this complexity doesn't. Actually crashed more often, but that was because my computer had only 1GB of RAM. I upped it to 2GB, and problems gone. This version is heftier on the RAM than 6 was, but that shouldn't be considered a bad thing.
   Bad: PDF support is still so-so. It seems a little better than before, but not by much. I still output as a .ps file and use distiller, as opposed to going directly to a pdf output.
   Bad: If you use drop shadows or transparency, it will take longer to print. Not a big deal really. It's a trade off. When you use drop shadows, they show up on screen in real time, which is nice. The trade off, however, is that they are rendered when you print, so that's when the processing occurs. The downside to this is, that the shadows will render every time you print, as opposed to rendering once and being done. An extension like shadowcaster would render the shadow when you made it, creating a graphic, but then the rendering was done. Of course, when that occurs, you cannot change the shadow without re-rendering. Although this does create longer print and .ps file generation times, I prefer this implementation because it makes actual design faster.
   Bad: Problems can crop up when you make shadows. The final product may have postscript artifacts if the shadow comes close to text or other graphics. I understand this is a problem with virtually all programs that use transparent objects, since postscript does not understand transparency and will rasterize vector images like text. You have to be careful when using shadows because of this, and proof cautiously.



2. I was incredibly excited to upgrade to Quark 7.0 from 4.01 earlier this year. I hadn't had such a major upgrade for such a long time because frankly, Quark 4 did everything I needed it too. But I upgraded my computer to the newest dual processor Intel Mac mini and with that my ability to use Quark 4 died. I wasn't thrilled about shelling out the dough for the program but it was necessary if I was going to do page layout projects for my clients.
   
   Well when I finally received the packaged and installed it I was rarin to go and try out how great this new version of Quark would be. I am in a word, disappointed. The other reviewer has said this program is a bit buggy but underscored it by saying what sort of complex program is not buggy. Well, I'll agree with that to an extent, but this program is incredibly buggy and I am not content to just say "oh well, it's a complicated program" and forgive Quark for it. If you plan to sit down for any length of time with this program and do work that you indeed would like to keep I suggest you save OFTEN and by often I mean probably every 5 to 10 minutes to avoid having work lost. I have not even utilized the new features yet and still I am encountering frequent crashes. The computer I am running is a Mac Mini 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 Gigs of ram and using the most up to date version of OSX (10.4) so I would hope that the specs are good enough for the program to work seamlessly. Unfortunately this is far from the case.
   
   There is one thing that I will give Quark, they offer free tech support and for that I am grateful, because it is necessary. I have utilized the help line numerous times already and while I hate having to call, I am glad I am able to when I need help fixing what shouldn't be broken in the first place. Unfortunately, even the tech support people don't seem to know how to fix your problem some of the time. I had problems with Quark not being able to auto-image a TIF I was using and I called tech support to find out what I was doing wrong. The guy told me that they know that runarounds may not work when you are using hyphenated text. Well, I'm no programmer, but I would think that a page layout program should be work with every type of character that exists on the keyboard. I wasn't able to fix the problem by eliminating the hyphens so then after some time, the guy, exasperated, told me to take care of my clipping paths in Photoshop and then import them into Quark because apparently Quark couldn't produce its own clipping path for some inexplicable reason. Not really stellar performance in my opinion if the way to get a feature to work is using a work around that essentially ignores the purpose of the feature in Quark. Thank god for Photoshop in this case! I also could not create a library without crashing the program despite repeated attempts to. Should be relatively simple to do... afterall, I had no problems doing that with version 4! Other things make the program crash, such as copying and pasting, moving items around, and just about anything else you can imagine. It's a wonder to me that This version of Quark saw the light of day, it seems very rushed to market in order to get a version that is supposed to work with the intel Macs. If I had the choice I would dump Quark and go to InDesign, unfortunately one of my clients demands Quark since that's what they use. If Quark doesn't issue some patches and fast I will be surprised if they continue to keep any substantial market share. This program is buggy in a way I have never seen before.
   
   Avoid if you can, if you can't then buckle your seatbelt and keep a packet of Tums handy, you'll need them.



3. I've been a loyal Quark user since v. 1. Like Andy Marks, I upgraded from an older program (5 in my case). That thing, like all previous versions I'd used, was rock solid, unbreakable. But I have had no end of problems with v. 7 -- and 7.01, 7.02, 7.1 and 7.2. Though crashes are frequent, many come completely out of the blue, randomly and inexplicably. However, I have had repeated and more predictable problems with "legacy" documents, things created in much older versions of the program. Doesn't matter that I've saved in 5; some files just crash the damn program. Exporting from 7 back to 6 (it's no longer a Save As) causes frequent crashes, and the exports are not reliable either. I have had much contact with Quark tech support -- they have been most accommodating, and are no doubt more upset with the engineers than I am.
   
   Perhaps some of the blame can go to Apple for making people write complicated progams for their Intel platform. However, some apps (Acrobat comes to mind) are robust and speedy as Gonzales. Alas, Quark is the program with which I earn my living. InDesign is supposed to be able to open Quark files, but not in my experience; otherwise I might just defect, though I have no abiding love for Adobe either.
   
   It's not pretty here in Mac/Quark 7 Land....

1 comments about Adobe GoLive/LiveMotion Pack.

1. A great product. This pack gives you so many graphics editing options and helps me create videos that look professional. If you are into video, you will love this. Amazon has the best price I could find. Don't settle for second best, ADOBE is the way to go.

3 comments about Snap! 2,000 Sound Effects.

1. There may be 2000 sound effects on this disc, but unless you have time to listen and catalog each one, it will be difficult to use. Effects are divided into several file folders but individual effects are identified by number only. If you have a ton of time on your hands, you can build your own index, but you will probably want to use this disc as a frisbee long before you get your index finished.



2. You would think the company that produced the disk could provide an crossreference between the sound effect and the meaningless name assigned to it on their DVD.



3. WOW! 2000 sound effects with helpful names like "9_24c" and no index! What could be more useless?

5 comments about Audio Xtract Pro.

1. Let me tell you, this has to be one of the coolest products ever on the market. Record 8 internet radio stations at once, then use the additional sound editors to trim them down to your own liking. Very easy to use, and once you have a pile of songs, pick out the ones you want and start burning cds. A great way to collect music and the best part of all is you don't have to pay some lame fee like with iTunes or MusicMatch.



2. The Audio Xtract program does exactly what it says it does, but there is a fundamental problem that everyone should be aware of. First, just like on commercial over-the-air radio, the music streams available usually 'blend' together such that one song fades out while the next fades in. This means that your recorded files will seldom have a clean start and beginning. Sometimes, there is even DJ banter that gets captured. The next problem is that the algorithm used to calculate when one song ends and the next starts appears to be imprecise. I've recorded songs that were off by as much as 10 seconds from where they should have started (and ended up having to combine them with adjacent files and re-split them manually). If you're looking for a good way to get radio-ized music, there is no better software than this. However, if you want clean songs with intact lead-ins and endings, you will seldom get that with this product. Sorry!



3. The testimonials scattered around the internet encouraged me to buy this product. After experiencing the product and having an unsatisfying interchange with their customer service, I am fairly sure that most of the testimonials are plants.
   
   Some recommendations:
   
   1) The product only works with ShoutCast. To see if these are the stations you would like to record, first go to the shoutcast web site.
   2) Before purchasing, it is highly recommended that you download the free trial from the audioxtract web site to see if the product will work for you.
   3) Do read through the FAQs on the same web site.
   4) Know that you will need DSL or cable to use the product as it is advertised.
   5) Also know that if you are as dis-satisfied as I am, you will be able to experience the wonderful efficiency with which Amazon.com handles returns.



4. After forking over 50 for this garbage, installing and then not using for a while, I was prompted for an ID and pass code. WTF?! I did not spend my cash so I could monkey around with this, especially after tossing everything else..Ahhh, the utter nerve and greed of these companies.



5. I have used Audio Extract Pro for several years and found it to be for the most part useful, but recently have had some problems with the manual record function. I have been attempting to contact their tech support for two weeks now and have been completely ignored. Not even an acknowledgment let alone a solution to my problem. I purchased what I thought was a DVD of the new version which finally arrived after several weeks and found that it was a nonfunctional with Vista old version.
   
   If you use this you are on your own. Tech support is just place holder on their website.

No comments about Arcsoft ArcSoft Panorama Maker 4 Pro.