Magix MP3 Deluxe 16

There are plenty of free music-playing programs available these days - Windows Media Player is included with every PC that has a copy of Windows, and Apple’s iTunes is available as a free download even if you don’t own an iPod.

This means that any company that wants to charge for its music-player software needs to come up with something pretty special.

As its name implies, MP3 Deluxe 16 can convert music CDs into the MP3 format so that they can be stored and played on the PC. It also allows users to listen to internet radio stations, which some other programs do, but it goes further by allowing users to record songs from those radio stations as well.

You can either hit the Record button when you hear something you like or schedule a recording to take place at later. There’s also a Hit Finder that can scan internet radio stations for particular genres of music that you specify, such as jazz or classical, to record at your leisure.

The marketing material also implies that MP3 Deluxe can download and record music videos from websites such as Youtube. Unfortunately, we were disappointed to see that it merely allows the user to record the song as it plays through the computer’s standard sound output. That’s something that can be done with any free audio recording program, so you don’t need to buy MP3 Deluxe to do it.

We were also shocked to find that while the program will convert music CDs into the MP3 or WMA formats straight away, anyone who wants to convert into the AAC format that’s used with Apple’s iTunes will need to pay an extra £10 to ‘upgrade’ the program. Admittedly, iPods can work with MP3 files so it’s no great loss, but the cost is quite steep.

That’s the real problem with MP3 Deluxe. It’s a perfectly good music player, with useful recording features, but most of those features can also be found in other programs that are cheaper or even completely free to download online.

That makes it hard to justify a fee of £30 for what is essentially the same as free alternatives.