Introduction
pyro Audio Creator, produced by Cakewalk, Inc., is an integrated set of audio tools that offers a 'total solution' for most of the common aspects of digital music creation and manipulation. The software package contains six audio programs which are: Burner, Ripper, Encoder, Tagger, Editor, and Publisher. With Audio Creator's tools, you can digitize sound from various sources, burn and rip CDs, remove hiss and pop from analog recordings, convert formats, edit MP3 tags, publish music to the Internet, and backup your music files to CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray.
Getting Started
Minimum System Requirements:
- Operating system: Windows XP / Vista
- CPU: Pentium 4 1.3 GHz / Athlon XP 1500+ and above
- Hard drive space: 100 MB for installation
- Memory: 256 MB RAM
- Video Display: 1024 x 768 / 16-bit color
- Optical Drive: Recordable drive for Burner tool
Interface: pyro Audio Creator's interface is a simple toolbar that displays each audio tool as a large animated icon. Each of the six buttons can be used to launch one of the audio tools in turn and the toolbar can be minimized to the Windows taskbar. The great thing about Audio Creator's interface is that help is never very far away should you need it. There's a quick start guide that pops up after launching the program, a help button on the toolbar, and further help buttons to give you guidance on most screens. Overall, the interface is nicely intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to use.
Configuration: The program's options menu is conveniently situated at the top of the toolbar which you can use to configure the recording and playback device. On the general tab, there are options to set the sampling rate, bit depth, and driver mode. The latency response of your system can also be configured either manually, or by using the wave profiler to automatically interrogate your hardware/software setup. In the advanced tab there are more professional-level features such as removing the DC offset while recording; this is a handy feature that can give a clearer recording by filtering out voltage interference.
Features
Editor: This is a very capable tool that can help you record, edit, and layer effects by using built-in audio processing modules and VST plugins. If you're recording from analog tape or vinyl records, Editor has a built-in hiss and pop remover that will help you clean up the sound. If you need to work on existing digital audio files then there is a generous range of tools to help you. Overall, Editor is an impressive tool that has the right level of features to suite the average user - no degree in audio engineering required!
Ripper: The first time you use the ripper tool to encode to the MP3 format you will need to go through a simple one-time activation process. After this, you can choose from a number of digital music formats to convert your audio CDs to. The formats that are supported are, MP3, WMA, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, AU, W64, CAF, RAW, and SD2. Unfortunately the ripper's performance is slow when compared to other programs such as Apple's iTunes software and it also doesn't support other popular formats like AAC and OGG.
Burner: The first icon in Audio Creator's toolbar is for burning various optical media, including, CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-ray. The burner tool is a simple disc authoring program that you can drag and drop files onto, or use the menu system to add files and folders. The two tabs across the top of the screen let you either choose the disc format to be written as an audio CD, or a data disc. This second option lets you backup any type of file regardless of whether it's a digital music file or not. You can even add the contents of folders too which makes the burner tool useful for backing up your important data.
Tagger: Using Tagger, you can edit the ID3 tags of MP3 files. This information is embedded into digital music files and displays information such as artist, track name, album, genre, etc. Tagger is restricted to MP3 metadata only and so if you need to edit other formats like WMA then you will be disappointed by the flexibility of this tool. Even though Tagger can't edit WMA metadata when compared to dedicated software such as TigoTago, it makes it an easy and straightforward process.
Encoder: If you need to quickly convert audio formats then the encoder tool's interface makes this process very efficient. Instead of the usual type of interface where you need multiple clicks to begin converting, the encoder program uses target icons that you can drop single files onto, or even multiple files for batch processing. These target icons are presets that you can setup for quick and easy processing of files.
Publisher: The last program in Audio Creator's toolbar is concerned with publishing music on the Web. If you've got some free Web space then you can use Publisher to upload digital music files via its built-in FTP client. The tool also generates HTML code that can be embedded into other websites for streaming your music to. The flash-based player can be embedded into blogs, social webspaces (FaceBook etc.), or any other website. A playlist along with the player will then be displayed to visitors on your various webspaces and the music will be streamed from one central location. Publisher is a great tool that makes streaming your own music easy.
Conclusion
Is it worth buying?
pyro Audio Creator is an excellent digital audio toolbox that will suit anyone looking for a 'total solution' to manage their digital music collection. The integrated set of programs that make up Audio Creator give you excellent scope to manipulate your music library; they are user-friendly and don't require a steep learning curve to achieve results quickly. If you need to rip a lot of audio CDs then you may find the Ripper tool's speed frustrating and its audio format list a bit limited; AAC and OGG formats are not supported at present. That said, these are only minor faults that are more annoyances than problems. The bottom line is that pyro Audio Creator is a great collection of essential audio tools that is certainly recommended for anyone that has a digital music library.
