Transferring your old analogue recordings to a digital format can seem like a great idea - until you listen to the results, when you'll probably find you've picked up plenty of hiss, crackles and other noise along with the original track.

Don't worry, though; even if your source track is very poor quality (an old cassette, say, or an MP3 which has been compressed too many times) you don't have to live with poor results. Point MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 2013 at your recordings and it'll work to remove crackling, clicks, hiss and other noise. You can then apply a stereo processor, graphic equalizer and other mastering tools to improve your sound quality even further, before exporting your work in a digital format to protect it from further damage.

Getting started is reasonably easy, as the program asks you to decide exactly what it is you'd like to do: restore a vinyl recording, clean tape sound, optimize an audio book, edit digital files, and so on. Choose the appropriate option and MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 2013 will configure all its tools and presets to suit your needs.

And the program's Cleaning and Mastering agents are just as straightforward, automatically analysing your track, and making suitable recommendations. All you have to do is listen to the new version, and click "Apply" if you think it sounds better.

This is just the start, though. You can also apply a host of individual tools - the DeClicker, DeHisser, DeCrackler, DeNoiser, DeClipper and more - while adjusting all their individual strengths to suit your needs. Every tool has further settings you can tweak, and there are all kinds of other options on offer here. If you're an audio novice then this can quickly become quite complicated, but fortunately you'll only see this level of complexity if you go looking for it, and MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 2013 also has some plenty of help available, should you need it.

Once the audio cleaning is over, though, life becomes much simpler again. And all you have to do is use the program's Export options to save your tracks as an audio file (WAV, MP3, MP3 Surround, WMA, AIFF, OGG Vorbis, FLAC and AAC are supported), or burn them to disc. So although there can be some complications here and there, MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 2013 is on balance very easy to use, and if you need a hassle-free way to clean up your audio tracks then it could be the ideal solution.