I must admit I'm not very fond of audio editing tools. Mixing music has never been my cup of tea, so when it comes to testing an audio editor, chances are I end up more confused than satisfied. However, this isn't the case with Audacity. To begin with, this editor is free source and supports MP3, two features which usually don't meet in this kind of application. Secondly, it's easy to master, even for newcomers. And finally, there's a wide range of filters and special effects you can apply to your music so that you easily achieve the desired effect.

Audacity doesn't stand out for its interface. At first sight one wonders if this program is really going to be that easy to use. In fact, the interface sometimes makes it really hard to work with your tracks, especially when you zoom in on them for a more comfortable editing session. Besides this, I found myself constantly right-clicking on the working area and the tracks too, waiting for some handy context menu to appear but nothing came out.

After these few first minutes struggling with the interface, it's time to begin having fun. You can open as many tracks as you want by just dragging and dropping audio files onto the program's interface. Use your mouse to select the fragment you're interested in and begin working with it. You can perform the basic editing actions (cut, copy, paste) or apply effects to it. The zoom tool helps a lot when selecting small areas, as well as the chronometers found at the bottom of the program's window. Obviously, you can use the integrated player to check how your work sounds before saving the project.

Audacity features quite a large selection of filters and effects. Each one has its own setting options to adjust it to your liking. But what I loved is the possibility to preview how the filter will look on the audio track. This preview function allows novice users to test each filter before actually using it and also configure it with great accuracy.

On the downside, Audacity doesn't have much more to offer. After a few days playing with the program, you soon grow tired of selecting audio fragments and adding effects, and you feel like you need something else. In other words, the simplicity of the program makes it easy to learn, but at the same it makes it too basic and requires a lot of creativity on the user's side to obtain ear-catching results. Anyhow, Audacity is still a perfect choice to take your first steps in the music mixing world and then perhaps move on to another more professional tool.

Download Audacity 1.3.5 Beta in Softonic

WavePad is a full featured professional sound editor for Windows. It lets you make and edit 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.

The program is designed to be a very easy and intuitive to use for audio editing. Within minutes you will be able to open or record a file and edit it. But if you take time to explore the other features you will find many powerful tools for editing audio designed with the professional sound engineer in mind.

Key features:

• Supports a number of file formats including wav (multiple codecs), mp3, vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and many more
• Sound editing functions include cut, copy, caste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim and much more
• Audio effects include, amplify, normalize, equaliser, envelope, reverb, echo, reverse, sample rate conversion and more
• Tools include spectral analysis (FFT) and speech synthesis
• Audio restoration features including noise reduction and click pop removal
• Supports sample rates from 6000 to 96000Hz, stereo or mono, 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits
• Ability to work with multiple files at the same time in seperate screens
• Includes its own CD ripper with 'ultrafast 'rip mode and cddb music database lookup
• Links directly to the Express Burn CD Recorder to burn your sound files to CD.
• Recorder supports autotrim and voice activated recording

Download WavePad 3.12 in Softonic

This free version of Sony's music creation tool, ACID, allows you to create your own original music using a pick, paint and play interface. The program is as easy as picking some loops, painting them into a track and playing your music back. The Integrated "Show Me How" tutorials guide you along the music creation process beginning to end.

Download sample songs or use any of the Loops for ACID collection or Loop Starter Kit libraries. You can choose any loops you want to use because ACID XPress software matches the tempo and pitch automatically in real-time. Tyhe you can share your music by publishing it to ACIDplanet.com and Screenblast.com, or stream it from your own website.

Download ACID XPress 5.0 in Softonic

Expstudio Audio Editor is a powerful and best of all, free audio editor. It supports a wide range of formats. It offers all the features of the professional edition but can only save audio files as uncompressed WAV PCM (*.wav) and mp2 (*.mp2) files. It also features free updates although user support is limited. Get editing your audio in a jiffy!

Download EXPStudio Audio Editor 4.22 in Softonic