Cakewalk's Pyro organizes and converts the digital music that flowsbetween the tech-lovin' audiophile's computer and his or her home stereo, portable MP3player, or preferred new-fangled audio device. It's not the first all-in-onesoftware product of its kind, but it does offer unique sound-processingenhancements and CD-creation tools--from burning to labeling--that may appeal tousers who wish to customize files with sound effects.

Getting started is a breeze: select media files from your hard drive or CD,click a button, and wait as the tracks convert into your desired format. Onceconverted, the tracks can be played through the integrated media player.Environmental Sound Processing effects optimize the MP3 and WMA audio output (CDaudio is unaffected). These effects sculpt the sound for listening viaheadphones, a desktop system's speakers, or a home stereo. Other settingssimulate a concert hall, stadium, and orchestra hall, among other environments,adding flavor to certain recordings. Customizable effects such as flange,chorus, delay/echo, and reverb are available as well, though theadvanced-controls interface may intimidate some. Home-recording enthusiasts will benefitmost from these effects (and hundreds of additional downloadable DirectXeffects), since the settings can be permanently affixed to sound files. Generalusers who simply want to turn their favorite CDs into MP3s will likely playaround with these effects a few times for entertainment value, then ignorethem.

Moving the tunes off your hard drive is, in theory, a snap: a few clicks sendyour files to a portable media player or onto a blank CD. However, both optionshave potential limitations. Only a few portable players--Creative Labs's andS2/Diamond's most popular brands--are compatible with Pyro. The CD-burningfunction supports a wider range of popular CD-R/CD-RW drives, though ourostensibly compatible model (HP 8100 CD-Writer Plus) refused to successfullyburn a CD after numerous tweaks.

When properly configured with the user's hardware, Pyro provides plenty ofsound-sculpting options for the amateur music engineer. But for those who simplywish to convert CD tracks to MP3 or WMA files for general listening, one of thedozens of other popular--and often free--programs may provide a more economical,no-nonsense solution.--Eric Twelker