Yes, I know that there are just short of 8 million threads on home recording. This one will be brief and very specific. Like most of us, I have just short of 7 million cassette recordings of stuff I've recorded at home on various tape recorders, and umpty-dozen tapes of concerts that I've done. I've used various computer software through time to burn CDs from cassettes but felt frustrated with the lack of ability to freshen the sound, remove the tape hiss and edit individual tracks.

A couple of months ago I bought Roxio Easy Media Creator 8. Before that, I bought a stupid expletives-deleted Cakewalk Pro for my computer and could never get the stupid expletive-deleted thing to work. The Easy Media Creator is just that... easy. Even for Senor Wences. Better yet, it has a lot of controls for not only eliminating clicks and hiss and editing the start and end of each track, but a ten-bar equalizer. I just finished putting together a CD of my own stuff and it's been great fun. One of the tapes I used is from when I was working with Luke Faust back in the early 60's. It's a tape copied from reel to reel onto a Radio Shack normal bias tape which is in itself close to 40 years old. Radio Shack electronic equipment is just a smidge better than Fischer-Price, so I was very pleased to be able to get a reasonably listenable sound from it.

Now, I'm excited! I have about 6.9 pounds of music cassettes with old performances, tracks never released on my albums, and just messing-around stuff with friends. It's all going on CD.

If you are like me - electronics-challenged, I'd highly recommend this software. It's been reduced in price substantially and is a great investment.

Jerry