Free Audio Editor Programs for the PC

The following free audio editor programs are either totally free or operate free for an extended period of time.

This makes it easy to start small and shell out later if you decide that you need to.

Totally Free Audio Editors

Audacity (Available for Windows, Mac & Linux)

Audacity is a totally free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings.

Audacity also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST plug-in effects.

Cost: Free!

Website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Partially Free Audio Editors (PC software)

All Recorder

What's "Free": Record up to 30 seconds for free, forever.

All Recorder is a combination sound recorder and audio editor that allows you to record sound from microphone, line-in audio, streaming audio from the Internet, or music played by Winamp, Windows Media Player, Quick Time, Real Player, Flash, games, etc.

With All Recorder, you can:

• Record, edit, and export any sound without losing any quality
• Save recordings directly into mp3, wma, ogg, vqf, and wav formats
• Edit recordings with cut & paste, undo & redo features
• Apply special effects such as fade in, fade out, normalize, scale, squeeze, silence and much more!

Demo Version: (PC Only) Free demo allows you to record up to 30 seconds of audio. To record longer selections, you must purchase the All Recorder.

Cost: $29.95

Website: http://www.allrecorder.com

Goldwave ($55 Canadian, ~$42 US)

What's "Free": You are allowed 4,000 operations before you have to pay for Goldwave.

GoldWave is a top rated, professional digital audio editor. It contains so many great features, you will be amazed by all the things it can do:

• Play, edit, mix, and analyze audio
• Apply special effects, such as fade, equalizer, doppler, mechanize, echo, reverse, flanger, and more
• Digitally remaster recordings with noise reduction filters
• Record audio from cassettes, vinyl records, radio, etc. through your computer's line-in
• Record dictation through a microphone or play dictation back at a slower speed for transcription
• Make perfect digital copies of audio CD tracks using the CD Reader tool and save them in MP3, WMA, or Vorbis files
• View a variety of real-time visuals and VU meters
• Convert files to/from different formats, such as wav, wma, mp3, ogg, aiff, au, vox and even raw binary data
• and much more...

GoldWave is the most advanced and complete audio editing program available in its price range. It even includes many features (such as batch processing/conversion, CD reader, and audio restoration filters) that cost extra in other, more expensive audio editing programs.

Demo Version: (PC only) Free demo version lets you perform 4000 operations before you have to purchase the program.

Cost: $55 Canadian (approx $42 US)

Website: http://www.goldwave.com

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Professional-level alternatives to a free audio editor
Willing to spend a little more money to get the best sound quality and the most editing flexibility? Review these professional audio editing programs.