Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good Program but You're On Your Own
Comment: Magix Music Studio G5 is a very powerful program for the money, but it's not for the beginner. If all you want to do is rip audio files from CD's, combine them, etc., LOOK ELSEWHERE--this is not your program. If you want to do basic midi sequencing this is also not your program (try something from Voyetra for that). The manual is virtually useless. The help files in the program are not great either. Forget about getting significant tech support from Magix. I have had to bumble my way around to figure out the basic operations. Upon doing so I have found it extremely useful for what I do, which is basic remixing and exporting to .wav files. If you're a "prosumer" doing digital recording and processing this might be the program for you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: All the bells and wistles but where's the inigma decoder?
Comment: I spent many hours trying to figure out how to use this software and I am stumped. The enclosed pamphlet and help features talk to a user who has experience in the recording industry and understands the jargon. For example - when you create a multitrack project, how do you record sound,songs or whatever to each track? Simple right. Wrong. It never tells you. You have to read 30 odd pages of jumble and try to figure it out. After 6 hours I still could not figure it out.My suggestion. Unless you know of someone who has used and understands this product. Buy something less expensive and more basic. Good luck.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A huge disappointment/hassle
Comment: This program did not work right out of the box and Magix tech support wasted a lot of my time. When you try to start the program, you will receive the following error message: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." I have a fairly new computer with all the modern features: 450 mhertz CPU, Windows 98, 32 bit sound, etc. Tech support tried to blame the problem on my system and told me to go through a whole bunch of manipulations. They would tell me to do a bunch of things, I would do them, the program still wouldn't work. After a few cycles of this, I decided to try it on my father's computer which has a different set-up. We got the same problem right at the start. I am an angry and dissatisfied customer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An amazing bargain and incredibly feature rich
Comment: This is an incredible digital hard disk recording program and midi sequencer! At this price it is an unbeatable value. I recently purchased it and it has features that you would have to pay thousands for until now. I use it at home for song ideas and writing. I can then save the files and export them to the professional studio that I record in with my band. If you are just starting out or finally switching from a traditional tape based analogue project studio, you'll find this program is more than sufficient. Again, for the price, it's unbelievable. You'll be glad you did. You can easily extract samples from CDs, edit and loop them and then add tracks for live instruments and vocals through you sound card. The better the hardware (your entire system, not just a good soundcard) the higher the quality the sound recording will be but I've got a Intel Celeron 300, 128 Megs RAM and a 15 Gig/7200 RPM hard drive with a decent but not expensive soundcard and it runs just fine.
