MAGIX Webradio Deluxe 2 promises zero-cost music collections

If it works as promised, the Webradio Deluxe 2 app from MAGIX provides an affordable and easy way to grow your music collection from internet radio transmissions.

The £20 program is said to let you record from over 3,000 stations and - in its MkII incarnation with new support for Real format - make it even easier to split whole shows into individual songs; cut out commercials and DJ banter; and burn tracks to CD or archive them to hard disk.

Better still, MAGIX says that the recording of internet stations is not only free but legal, too.

The MkII app is claimed to offer noticeably better sound, thanks to a move to 32-bit technology - and help from new effects such as maximizer, stereo broadcast, brilliance and reverb.

Other improvements include a reworked interface, reckoned to make things a whole lot easier, and a new feature - MAGIX AudioID - that's said to find information about song titles, artists and albums at the touch of a button, then sort everything automatically in the internal database.

Webradio's virtual cutting tool has also been simplified and provided with a larger overview window and new functions, including cutting tracks based on the MAGIX AudioID info, not just on ID3 information carried within transmissions.

Of course, MAGIX isn't the only firm to offer such an application. Roxio's recently announced Easy Media Creator 9 Suite, for instance, has an audio-capture tool that's said to let you record any audio playing on a computer - including (and not just) internet radio. This applet has a pre-roll feature that automatically records audio before the record button is selected - making it, Roxio says, like a personal video recorder for audio.

Although the price is three times more than for Webradio Deluxe 2, Roxio's suite is an all-singing, dancing media-burning and media-editing affair with powerful tools for video editing, DVD authoring (it can write to Blu-ray Disc, too) and for sound and stills manipulation.

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