Indeed, Music Creator is essentially a less capable adaptation of Cakewalk's celebrated professional-level music system, the considerably more pricey Sonar. Certainly anyone familiar with Sonar will instantly recognize the program's presentation. Even those who don't will have little trouble becoming acclimatized, as Cakewalk has furnished a large and detailed set of tutorials designed to guide newcomers through the procedures and pitfalls of PC music making.

Supporting traditional instruments such as guitars and drum kits, and MIDI-based devices such as computerized keyboards, Music Creator is extremely versatile. You'll need to supply the equipment to transfer your sounds into the computer at first, but the program is ready to handle everything thereafter.

Through its graphic waveform-based interface, Music Creator allows you to fine-tune and reposition your audio and MIDI files, apply multiple effects to both single and multiple tracks, and take advantage of an expansive range of synthesized virtual instrument sounds. With a little practice, you can add fades and crossfades, rip samples from your favorite CDs, and concoct any number of ACID-type loops. Of course, one of the great advantages of digital recording is the ease with which you can remove unwanted background noises and wayward notes, and the program allows you to do just that with just a few mouse clicks.

The package also features a stripped down version of Cakewalk's reasonably respected CD burning utility Pyro, and an extremely valuable search tool that automatically checks your drive(s) for those easily misplaced bits and bytes of seemingly lost tracks.

Despite its relatively friendly nature, Music Creator sports a wealth of rather complex concepts, and thus shouldn't be taken lightly. PC music rookies and hobbyists may well find that Music Creator 2003 is the only application they'll ever need. --Gordon Goble

Music Creator is designed to let you concentrate on making music, and not bog you down with confusing software. No matter what you want to record--guitars, keyboards, vocals, CD samples, or any other sound source--Music Creator makes it easy. Record your own tracks, or click and drag to create music with loops from the included Cakewalk loops library.

Intuitive point-and-click tools make it a snap to quickly edit, arrange, and mix your music with professional-sounding effects and great synth sounds. When you're done, share your music with family and friends: burn it on CD with the included Pyro Express CD Maker, print out sheet music, or create MP3s or Windows Media files to distribute your music on the Internet.

HOWEVER, if you log in under a non-privileged account, Music Creator dies with a message about "unable to create Staff view music font." Then, rather than exiting, the program hangs with its initial splash screen displayed. It just sits there, frozen, until you kill it with the Task Manager. (Very lame...)

From this behavior, I have to assume that no one at Cake Walk ever tested this software under a non-privileged account. (I probably shouldn't be surprized by this, given that no one ever tested it with DirectX 9.0 either...)

Of course, one workaround is simply to run the program from Admin all the time, but this is a TERRIBLE security risk. Admin-enabled accounts should be used ONLY for system maintenance -- NEVER for day-to-day work. (Unless of course, you really like giving viruses the run of your machine.)

In my case, I think the correct workaround for this problem is to return the software and get a refund...