DIGITAL L.A. GOT A BURNING DESIRE?

Byline: David Bloom Staff Writer

Worried about your Napster getting kidnapped? Trying to figure out the whole music-on-computers thing? Here are a few programs that make messing with digital music more fun.

I've found much to recommend the MusicMatch Jukebox (at www.musicmatch.com), the basic version of which is free through the Internet, and which can be upgraded to create higher-quality audio files (among other improvements) for $29.

More important than good looks, the program lets you extensively annotate and classify your music files, with room for lyrics, bios, general notes, even the song's mood, genre and appropriate place to listen to it.

MusicMatch also lets you ``burn,'' or create custom CDs of your digital music if you have a CD-RW drive. It also shortcuts the data-entry process by giving you an online link to a service that fills in track information like the name and song length.

Plenty of music programs, such as WinAmp and Sonique, along with the solid offerings from Microsoft, RealNetworks and Apple's Quicktime, are available, but even MusicMatch's bottom-level version outstrips them in most respects in providing a solid, flexible package that covers basic needs.

If you want to get fancier, you might consider Cakewalk's Pyro and Sonic Foundry's Siren Jukebox, two all-in-one packages available in stores, both providing additional capabilities beyond those basics.

Cakewalk is a company long known for its professional music creation and publishing software. That heritage shows with Pyro, which is saddled with a less-than-stellar exterior but which can tweak your music substantially using DirectX filters (many of them included) for such effects as reverb.

For people who burn their own CDs, Pyro comes with two small separate programs (as well as a blank CD-R) that make it relatively easy to create stylish cover art and related materials for the CDs Pyro makes.

Pyro, which costs $49, also connects with CDDB, the terrific online service that automatically figures out the track information for the CD you're playing. Go to www.cakewalk.com for more information..

Sonic Foundry, another music software veteran, has also hit the MP-3 software business with Siren Jukebox, which costs $29.95.

Like the other major packages, Siren reads and creates files in the WMA format, Microsoft's excellent alternative to MP-3, and in the aging WAV format.

If you want to try out Sonic Foundry's offering, you might start with its free limited version Siren XPress, available online at www.sonicfoundry.com. The company also sells the full Jukebox program online, and offers free additional ``skins'' there to change the program's appearance.

Next week, I'll touch on some other recent programs that make it easier to create your own music, or mix it like the DJ at your favorite underground club. In the meantime, burn on.

SITE OF THE WEEK

Skinz.org: A central repository for ``skins,'' the generally user-made bits of code that customize the look of a program or even an entire operating system to a user's personal tastes.

Where: www.skinz.org

What's cool: It's not the site's black-and-tan design, which is odd for a place that's all about helping you make the programs on your computer screen look as cool as you can stand. What is cool is the huge array of choices available, hundreds of skins for more than 100 programs (PC only, it appears, alas).

Features: You'll need to sign up to partake of this bounty, but it's free. You'll get chatty, nearly comprehensible (and comprehensive) news on new programs that are ``skinnable,'' user polls, chat areas, message boards, contests and lots of resources to help amateur programmers create their own looks.

You'll like this if: You're a firm believer that there's more than one way to skin a cat, or a computer program.

Think your Web fave is good enough for Site of the Week? Send your suggestions to davidbloom(at)earthlink.net

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