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Burning CDs can be a confusing task. SimpliCD from Oak Technology aims to reduce the hassles of CD creation, and it succeeds well enough that for many bread-and-butter tasks, it serves as a surprisingly capable alternative to Roxio's highly popular Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum package.

SimpliCD gets you going with a task-launcher icon in your system tray that lists available CD recording tasks in commonsense phrases--such as "Format CD like a floppy," to create discs that let you add content more than once, and "Copy Any CD." The software covers copying CDs, creating data and audio discs, and performing other basics of CD recording.

In my trials with a late beta copy, I found that SimpliCD copies discs much faster than Easy CD Creator. The copier also checks CDDB (an online audio database) for audio CDs and automatically adds artist and track information. You can easily create data CDs, too, using Windows Explorer. SimpliCD also throws in a few extra buttons for setting options for common tasks.

If you spend a lot of time compiling audio CDs, you may regret not having some of Easy CD Creator's advanced features--for example, cross fading and normalizing, which records songs at a uniform volume level. Other annoying limitations: The recording interface has an awkward circular volume control and displays only the first 20 characters of song titles.

If you're new to CD mastering or mainly do common CD-creating chores like copying discs, SimpliCD is a great way to go--at $50 for a digital download and $65 for a CD-ROM, it is significantly cheaper than the $100 Easy CD Creator. If you decide you want more features later, you can always go for the $50 competitive upgrade that Roxio offers for Easy CD Creator.

SUMMARY

SimpliCD PRO: Good interface, fast copying. CON: Lacks advanced features. VALUE: Easy-to-use, inexpensive basic CD-burning package. List price: Digital download $50, CD-ROM $65 Oak Technology 408/737-0888 www.oaktech.com

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