
Credit: Background image from DA
A digital audio editor is defined as a computer application for manipulating digital audio. As a multimedia creator, we normally use audio editor for recording audio, edit the duration and timeline, mix multiple sound tracks, apply simple effects for audio enhancement and create conversion between different audio file formats.
There are countless ways that digital audio editor can be used, and fortunately there are plenty of good and free digital audio editors out there to help you with your own implementation. So if you’re thinking to purchase a license for Adobe Audition, Cool Edit or Soundforge, hold that thought first. Not to say they aren’t cool, but it’s always wiser to tryout free applications before going to the pay deal.
Here’s our collection of 25 free digital audio editors. Full list after jump!
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Audacity
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It allows you to record live audio, converts tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files. You also can cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together with Audacity. Built-in effects are given to remove static, hiss, hum or other constant background noises.
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Power Sound Editor
Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data.
You can use Power Sound Editor Free to record your own music, voice, or other audio files, edit it, mix it with other audio or musical parts, add effects like Reverb, Chorus, and Echo, and burn it on a CD, post it on the World Wide Web or e-mail it.
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mp3DirectCut
mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.
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Music Editor Free
Music Editor Free (MEF) is a multi-award winning music editor software tool. MEF helps you to record and edit music and sounds. It lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.
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Wavosaur
Wavosaur is a free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert. Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing. The program has no installer and doesn’t write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design.
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Traverso DAW
Traverso DAW is a GPL licensed, cross platform multitrack audio recording and editing suite, with an innovative and easy to master User Interface. It’s suited for both the professional and home user, who needs a robust and solid DAW. Adding and removal of effects plugins, moving Audio Clips and creating new Tracks during playback are all perfectly safe, giving you instant feedback on your work!
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Ardour
Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can produce your own CDs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-destructive editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a powerful mixer, unlimited tracks/busses/plugins, timecode synchronization, and hardware control from surfaces like the Mackie Control Universal. If you’ve been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix, or Sequoia, you might have found it.
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Rosegarden
Rosegarden is a well-rounded audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment. Rosegarden is an easy-to-learn, attractive application that runs on Linux, ideal for composers, musicians, music students, and small studio or home recording environments.
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Hydrogen
Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It’s main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming.
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WavePad Sound Editor
WavePad Sound Editor lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. WavePad works as a wav editor or mp3 editor but it also supports a number of other file formats including vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and more.
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Sound Engine
SoundEngine is the best tool for personal use, because it enables you to easily edit a wave data while it has many functions required for a mastering process.
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Expstudio Audio Editor
Expstudio Audio Editor is a visual music file editor that has many different options and a multiple functionality to edit your music files like editing text files. With a given audio data it can perform many different operations such as displaying a waveform image of an audio file, filtering, applying various audio effects, format conversion and more.
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DJ Audio Editor
DJ Audio Editor is easy-to-use and well-organized audio application which allows you to perform various operations with audio data. You can create and edit audio files professionally, also displaying a waveform image of audio file makes your work faster.
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Eisenkraut
Eisenkraut is a cross-platform audio file editor. It requires Java 1.4+ and SuperCollider 3. It supports multi-channel and multi-mono files and floating-point encoding. An OSC scripting interface and experimental sonagramme functionality are provided.
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FREE WAVE MP3 Editor
Free Wave MP3 Editor is a sound editor program for Windows. This software lets you make and edit voice and other audio recordings. You can cut, copy and paste parts of recording and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.
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Kangas Sound Editor
Fun Kangaroo-themed program that allows the user to create music and sound effects. It uses a system of frequency ratios for pitch control, rather than conventional music notation and equal temperament. It allows instruments, both musical and percussion, to be created.
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Ecawave
Ecawave is a simple graphical audio file editor. The user-interface is based on Qt libraries, while almost all audio functionality is taken directly from ecasound libraries. As ecawave is designed for editing large audio files, all processing is done direct-to-disk. Simple waveform caching is used to speed-up file operations. Ecawave supports all audio file formats and effect algorithms provided by ecasound libraries. This includes JACK, ALSA, OSS, aRts, over 20 file formats, over 30 effect types, LADSPA plugins and multi-operator effect presets.
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Audiobook Cutter
Audiobook Cutter splits your MP3 audio books and podcasts in a fast and user friendly way. The split files can easily be used on mobile MP3 players because of their small-size. Their duration allows smooth navigation through the book. The split points are determined automatically based on silence detection.
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Jokosher
Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more, all from an integrated simple environment.
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LMMS
LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.
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Mp3Splt
Mp3Splt-project is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It’s very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks. If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds.
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Qtractor
Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt4 framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio, and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI, are the main infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.
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ReZound
ReZound aims to be a stable, open source, and graphical audio file editor primarily for.
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Sweep
Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. It supports many music and voice formats including WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and LADSPA effects plugins.
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Wavesurfer
WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It has been designed to suit both novice and advanced users. WaveSurfer has a simple and logical user interface that provides functionality in an intuitive way and which can be adapted to different tasks.
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Posted by Kay in Tools , at 11.04.08
Tags: application, audio, download, editors, free, music, sound |
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Comments
Andy Sowards November 4th, 2008
Thanks for the collection! Nice ones! I use Audacity myself usually, which is your favorite?
ReplyWakkos November 4th, 2008
nice compilation!! i’ll test a couple to edit my World of Warcraft PVP video!
ReplyDanh ba web 2.0 November 4th, 2008
Great list for me. Thanks you very much
ReplyKeep up the good work !
inetbuzz November 4th, 2008
I like it as long as they are Free.. thanks bro.. :D
Replydev(devSoft.Mobi ) November 4th, 2008
huge list again from hongkiat ^_^, hope all or most of them are easy of use software, thank
ReplyDainis Graveris November 5th, 2008
oh lovely article..as always..:) didn’t realize there are so many great and freee audio editors available..:)
Replyshyboy November 5th, 2008
Thank to this great collection of freeware!
ReplyJoey November 5th, 2008
If you could add which platforms each editor is for, it would be appreciated.
ReplyTelevision Spy November 5th, 2008
Great set, audacity is a personal favorite.
ReplyMiles Logan November 5th, 2008
Which one is best to mix songs?
ReplyKristina November 5th, 2008
Free is good! I like audacity, and I use it to make my own ringtones, but I’ve yet to get into podcasting.
Replyngocvu November 5th, 2008
thanks for shares,,good
ReplyTV Guide November 5th, 2008
Audacity is just fab. Simple and powerful. No mess nor fuss.
ReplyMr. Candid November 6th, 2008
Great list! Thanks!
ReplyRahul November 6th, 2008
Thank for this awesome collection of of audio editors!
looking forward for some DJ’ing editors as well.
Replyvalonic November 6th, 2008
thanks a lot of this list.
Replyznydz November 6th, 2008
Wow..there’s a lot of them..I only know 2 of them, Free Wave Mp3 editor and Audacity..
you come up with a good list…great work
ReplyBored November 7th, 2008
this is a very good list. I really liked the screenshots so that i could get an idea of the interface.
ReplyMVRH+ November 7th, 2008
I didn’t know the most of them. i think i’ll replace audacity.
ReplyMVRH+ November 7th, 2008
Hey! wait! Some of them are for linux. You should add it to the caption.
Replyafas November 12th, 2008
thats crazy cool! thanks for sharing with us this digital audio editor!
ReplyInformixx November 23rd, 2008
this is a very good collection!
Replymarlop98 November 24th, 2008
Woowwww….Great list, nice. Thanks for the info
ReplyTechNald December 2nd, 2008
thanks so much for posting this list!
ReplyMarco Tonini December 3rd, 2008
Hi,
good list!
If you are interested, another one here:
http://marcotonini.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/free-or-open-source-audio-software/
Bye
Replypradeep December 20th, 2008
ka … sab thik ba.. bahute badhiya hai … hamaar ke pasand ba
ReplyRyan December 31st, 2008
CD Wave is great for splitting up a long WAV file into separate tracks while maintaining sector boundries for burning to cd. It’s great for tracking concerts.
ReplyBhimsa January 7th, 2009
Great one!! I liked ur post..but there are other software as well..like cool edit pro..though they are not freeware but it damn best..than any other i have used so far..
Replygrego January 10th, 2009
Cool! Thanks.
Reply(I *still* can’t figure out how to do a few basic things on Audacity…)
Audio Dude January 12th, 2009
Great roundup you’ve created. I’m an avid user of Audacity, but I’d not heard of many of the others. “Ardour” looks like something I’m going to have to check out.
ReplyLes February 4th, 2009
Many thanks a great site
ReplyHiphopsamplez February 19th, 2009
great post, thanks for sharing this info
Replydon elliot March 17th, 2009
Depends what you mean by MIX? Crossfading pre-record, ed tunes to make a “mix-CD” can be done with just about anything, including, AUDACITY. This would also be the #1 choice for doing a multitrack mix of original instruments in a new recording as well. A hugh step up from that and the best of the best is SawStudio. Elegant code, easy interface, stunning sound and inexpensive. Compared to ProTools, which is a drag with its slooowww real-time rendering, the SawStudio choice is a no-brainer.
ReplyBob Sloan April 4th, 2009
Very exiting list, lots of good tools here
Replykhanhpt April 7th, 2009
thanks!
ReplyShami Mohammed April 8th, 2009
I have no words to express my feeling, you made my studio more professional with these gifts. Thank you
Replyrav April 10th, 2009
WOULD YOU HAVE ANYTHING THAT CAN HELP ME LISTEN TO WHISPERING AUDIO FILE SOUND..WHAT DO I DO TO BE ABLE TO LISTEN TO IT…..
ReplyJ4 cXSparrow April 29th, 2009
oh……… thanks
ReplyBunty Ghatak April 30th, 2009
Graet posting. You have saved a lot of time at least for beginners like me. Thanks so much.
Replystaff going into music May 15th, 2009
i am very happy too have you guys by my side,am a young boy from africa Ghana and i can now be able too make my own music in my room even if i dont have money too go for a studio you guys are going too be on my album your name will allways be on my mouth i lov eyou guys keep it up i am going too make every body know about you
ReplyHorusHab7 May 24th, 2009
Hi!!!
ReplySomebody knows if some of these softwere’ s is similar to Mixcraft 4?
I thank the contact for email. And tanks to all.
albery777@hotmail.com
frank furter May 25th, 2009
Cheeser Muffin!
Replyvietdogstarvebones May 27th, 2009
Free stuff is suit for the starved viet dog, global beggar ME he he
Replychristopher May 28th, 2009
Now if only we could find an application that removes layered sounds and keeps the vocals only, hard to do, because the spectrum analysis would have to be so precise and CPU intensive, IZOTOPE has some free stuff for renedering and remastering, even for the iphone!i know that there are vocal removers, just hard to find the opposite.
Here is a site with a bunch of free really cool audio tools.
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio.htm
~Namaste
Reply.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.Christopher.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.
vietdogstarvebones May 28th, 2009
What a pile of bones you just laid down before my muzzle, ha ha. Growl, mam mam. A godsend for the impoverished, round-the-year starved viet dog, global beggar, ever forlorn ever rejected by Jesus…
Replycocofolie June 3rd, 2009
Audacity is the best. I like it. Thank you for all programs. Greeting
ReplyRob P June 11th, 2009
I really love audacity and wavosaurus!! I tried a bunch of editors like Soundforge,Wavelab and Cool Edit Pro and I always go back to audacity for its simplicity and ease of use.Wavosaurus is a perfect alternative to Recycle and the chops can be exported in wav and not a crappy proprietary format like rex files.
ReplyWavepad isn’t that bad too,it’s crazy all the freeware that’s available out on the web:)
Johar June 14th, 2009
I think more better if we use cool edit pro, but its not free software
ReplyAudio software June 23rd, 2009
I will refer new learners about audio editing to this site. Thank you. Keep up the the efford.
ReplyJames Ireng July 7th, 2009
Thanks for sharing… Great blog…
ReplyGary July 23rd, 2009
Downloaded Audacity, only to find it was a none activated version – uninstalled. They should warn us if the free offer is useless!
Replychot July 27th, 2009
Thank you
ReplyMike August 5th, 2009
Another one – quick and simple Wave Editor http://www.wave-editor.com
ReplyNick August 11th, 2009
Nice list, but would be better if more details were available in pitch and time shifting abilities on the list itself
ReplyDriveN August 29th, 2009
Great list man. I’ve got some lines that I’ve been trying to spit over these beats, but I can’t figure out how to record vocal tracks during playback. I’ve used “Expstudio Audio Editor” and “Music Editor Free” and haven’t been able to make it work in either, is there a way that i”ve been missing? Or am I just wasting my time trying with these two?
Replymukund rajwade. September 7th, 2009
Dear Sir,
ReplyIam a retired person,73 yrs old ,i am very fond of instrumental
music,with me i have about 400 Audio cassettes , some of them
are rare.All these audio cassettes i intend to converet them to mp3
audio cds.I have downloaded Audacity softeware .
1>Iam able to record the music/save it.
2>unable to repley the same,ihave tried every thing icould do as
per the Help guide,PL suggest me a very eassy Soft ware/system.
I will be thankfull to you SIR.
Yours,sincerly
M.B.Rajwade.
Paco October 9th, 2009
There is something for MAC?
ReplyR.C October 10th, 2009
How do you upload your MP3 or wavs to your phone after you make your ring tone. Please help
creditmaxx7@yahoo.com
Replybeggarman October 11th, 2009
tao ghet viet nam lam!
ReplyJames Ireng October 14th, 2009
Thanks for sharing..
ReplyGman October 27th, 2009
I’m looking for an an audio editor to lengthen or shorten wav files, which is necessary to correct audio-video synchronization problems. Can anybody tell me which of these apps is capable of modifying the length of an sound file?
Replywestcoastmaniac October 28th, 2009
At last a list where to pick and try out several sound editors – great compilation! My personal favourite – not listed here, though – is Adobe Audition, but kinda overkill regarding to small audio recording and editing jobs.
Replybbbb October 31st, 2009
ขอบคุณค่า เป็นประโยชน์มาก
Replyกำลังต้องการเลย
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