Music Maker Professional

Music Maker Professional: 14 CDs of Cool Content
Product: Music Maker Professional
From: Magix Entertainment
tel. (310) 656-0644

www.magix.com

Price: US$599.95 (demo available)

Pros: 14 CD ROMs of royalty-free video and sound samples; a 15th disc contains a powerful 64-track arranger. Exports to several popular streaming media formats. Converts MPG to AVI and MP3 to other formats. Magix says a third-party codec is required to convert to MP3.

Cons: occasionally awkward interface. Some file conversion attempts failed.

One of the greatest attractions to Magix Music Maker Professional (MMP hereafter) is surely the sheer mountain of royalty-free data included with the program. You get a massive content library consisting of 14 CD ROM's containing thousands of professionally designed music, video and graphic samples, plus a sound-database to help you find the specific sound you need.

Key features include:

• Professional 64-track project window for audio, video, graphic and midi integration
• Royalty-free multimedia library on 14 CD-ROMs, with 8.4 gigabytes of music samples, sound effects, animations, graphics and video files
• Streaming internet formats for audiovisual web design and e-commerce performance
• Integrated multi-track hard-disc recording and .wav editing studio
• MPEG compression
• Extensive possibilities for video processing and effects for professional video post production
• Exact synchronization of audio and video material
• Easy and intuitive interface

There are other attractions, as well. Company spokesperson Petri Nauha, optimistically (and, we think, somewhat naively) characterizing it as "the first software to combine audio and video on a professional level on the PC platform," notes that MMP is one of the few programs that can turn MPG movies into AVI files -- an odd feature for a music program to have, perhaps, but very useful nonetheless. It can also convert MP3 files to various other formats if a suitable MP3 codec (such as the one from MP3 patent holder Fraunhoffer) is present on the system. In a pinch, the company says, the freely downloadable WinAmp can be used for this purpose.

MMP is suitable for professional multimedia producers, web designers, musicians, directors, graphic designers, artists and others who want to add audio to their presentations, websites or productions. As the company promises, it lets you become the artist again and not the technician.

A demo version is freely downloadable from www.magix.com.

We found the program somewhat less intuitive to use than Sonic Foundry's Acid, which has been really growing on us in recent months. As well, the graphics-heavy interface is a little sluggish at times, and often glitched while moving windows around, even on our Pentium II test system. The company says this issue and a few other bugs will be addressed by a free patch, expected to be available in late May. Acid, in contrast, worked without a hiccup under similar situations on the same systems. However, there's no denying: the massive sound library included with MMP makes it an attractive purchase anyway. (And the sound clips do work in Acid, by the way....)