There have been some fairly mixed reviews about this application. People either love it or hate it, depending on what, if anything, has gone wrong for them. I have had a pleasant experience with this application and am writing this review as such.

In a nutshell, this is a loop-based music application that clones Sony's Acid program. It provived a similar feature set without breaking the bank and is available on store shelves. There is a steep learning curve associated with using an application like this, but it's worth it if you have the time and the patience once you learn the lay of the land and know your way around.

The backbone of the application is a sequencing grid that allows you to drag and drop MIDI and WAV clips onto it, then set the beats per minute (BPM) to suit. This particular version comes with a couple of content CDs that allow one to quickly cobble together music. You can also use the composition wizard to quickly pop together a mix, based on whatever style of music you pick (limited choices, but still a great way to get up and running), What the wizard generates won't be airplay quality, but it's a good running start.

It also allows video and picture content to be added, effectively building a multimedia track.

Within the sequencer, you can stretch a clip over several time frames, so that it can last 1 second or 10 seconds (or more if you like), saving a lot of time and trouble.

Need more content? There is a built-in limited FTP client that connects to the Magix website and allows access to some extra content. The extra content is good, but a word of caution - if you pull too much too quickly from the site, you get locked out for about a half an hour.

There are several built-in synthesizers that will help you create your own sequences. There is a Copper and a Silver synth, but these two are somewhat limited in scope in comparison to what is available for free download (more on that in a minute). There is also a classical guitar synth, as well as a grand piano synth, a drum synth, a rhythm and bass synth, and a couple of others (like an ambient noise generator). The sampler synth is an interesting synth, as it allows you to "draw" your melody with the mouse or punch one in via the keyboard, and it has several instruments that it emulates so you can change the sounds from sequence to sequence.

Built in to the application is a VSTi host, accessible through the synthesizers tab on the media picker. As long as the VSTi synth that you desire to use is installed in the directory specified by the host so that it can find it, no special effort is required to make it work. The VSTi synth can then be manipulated through a popup window that allows the user to make tweaks and change patch sets. The melody can be modified throough the host, which closely resembles the sampler synth.

So, once you have created your mix, how do you save it to something others can use? There are a few options. One is to export it to WAV, but this has a tendency to make huge files that are not practical to send via email or publish to a website. Another is to export as an Ogg Vorbis file. Yet another is to export directly to an MP3, but there is a catch with this - there is a built-in MP3 encoder, but there are only 20 free uses before you have to pay for unlimited use. The cost is small, but the fact that it's a teaser is very annoying. There are free alternatives to this if you are willing to use a two-step process - my personal preference is to export to WAV and use LAME to convert to MP3.

Built in to the application is a mechanism to publish your mixes to a community website. This allows you to get your stuff some exposure, albeit rather limited in scope. The community site is managed by Magix and they allow you to send your mixes as well as put up some other information you might want to share. Taking a look around, there are hundreds of community mixes there, and you can listen to them and build playlists and so forth. Be aware, of course, that the quality of said mixes varies with the skills of the respective arrangers...

This is a very large application and it takes up a lot of memory. It will complain and get sluggish if you have too much stuff running or do not have sufficient memory to keep it happy. I have seen the application slow to a crawl when other things (even seemingly benign stuff) occurs on the system, and on occasion I have had to kill the application when it got too bogged down to even respond to mouse events.

One problem I have had is in the use of VSTi instruments. On occasion, the synths will grab on to a note and not let go. Sometimes I can delete the sequence and recreate exactly and the problem goes away, but other times the problem appears suddenly when the sequence has not exhibited the problem before. This seems to be related to memory load, but it is not clear to me if this is indeed the case.

The previous reveiwer stated that the support of this application is generally limited to the support forums. This is more or less correct. There is email contact but the messages sent seem to go into the void. There is also a phone number for Magix, and I have a question I have been trying to ask them, but I never manage to get a live person on the line, even when holding for the operator. Keep this in mind.

This application is a good budget entry into the loop-based music arrangement software arena. It has it's share of quirks and idiosyncracies, but it is a good value for the money if you can overlook those problems. A good measure of patience and time are needed to get over the learning curve, but you will be rewarded with hours of fun building your own musical arrangements.

I've had a real bad experience with this product. When it comes to WMA ripping or converting (audio that are bit long, like 3.5 mins plus) it totally fails, it simply doesn't work. The only way to communicate with the company, MAGIX, is to email them. I'm still waiting for a response (I think has been 3 months). Their web support forum is really bad. You just find other people like me, having problems, trying to help each other out. Buyer beware of any of their products, especially if you require tech support.