Adobe Audition has been available on Windows for many years now as a multi-track recording studio that offers all the refinement you expect in Adobe products but may leave beginners floundering in technical jargon. However, only now has it arrived on Mac but it has been completely re-written to provide cross-platform functionality and modernize it to increase native support for multicore processors and new hardware.

Adobe Audition's interface is clean. Each window is separated by tabs to keep the File, Effects, Main and Mixer sections separate and easy to revert to. If you don’t like the layout then Adobe has provided an Unlock Panel option which allows you to detach and move these windows to a position of your choosing. You can save your own rearrangements as workplace templates according to the type of project you are working on.

To really get the most out of Adobe Audition, you’ll need a pretty good sound card. For those concerned with MIDI support, Adobe Audition doesn’t offer a great deal in this area and many users report this as one of the most confusing aspects of the program to configure.

To describe all the editing possibilities of Adobe Audition would involve going into the minute technicalities of audio composition and compression but there are four main modes to get to grips with. The first is Waveform Display which displays the wave in graphical form. Second is Spectral Frequency Display which graphically displays the frequency range with colors. Logarithmic Display does exactly the same but obviously displays the wave as a Logarithm. For producing stereo-sound, there’s also Spectral Pan Display and Spectral Phase Display which enable you to get stereo sound perfectly synced.

The actual editing in Adobe Audition is performed using the time-honored cut and paste functions common to most audio and video editing programs. You simply mark an in and out point and cut and paste the audio until it’s as you want it. However, the program is much more advanced than this as it’s able to detect beat patterns and rhythms and set in and out points accordingly. To use this function though, you’ll have to spend a long time studying the Help guide (which fortunately is very clear and detailed). You can also use a relatively new function in the audio editing field called Frequency Space Editing which means you can edit certain frequencies of the sound rather than the wave as a whole. There are also of course a heap of effects that you can apply to sounds ranging from complex distortions to pitch bending specific frequencies.

Adobe Audition has been updated with a host of new features. Pick of the bunch is probably the way Adobe has improved multitrack editing, added new effects and enhanced noise reduction. They've also added phase correction tools plus VSTi virtual instrument support and native 5.1 surround support. The multi-track editing suite has been improved to save time and maintain consistency by grouping clips into a Multitrack View. From here you can trim and fade much more easily. You can also batch save all audio files applying specific file formats, locations, filename templates, and more.

However, some features from Adobe Audition 3 on Windows are missing from this Mac version, namely VSTi support and Spectral Pan and Phase views.

Adobe Audition is a very advanced program designed only for those who are serious about multi-track audio production. If you are looking for a simple sound editor, then this is way too advanced and will only leave you frustrated. If however you want to take your first few steps into professional editing, the extensive Adobe help guide will ensure that you get the most out of this rich and complex program.

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Finale is strictly a tool for professionals, and beginners to music composition will quickly find themselves overwhelmed. It has however been made easier to use in recent releases and Finale 2011 is probably the most user friendly version yet. There are also several major improvements in the latest version including Improved Lyric Entry and Spacing, Instant Capo Chords and Expanded Percussion Playback.

Certainly Finale is still probably the most powerful tool on Mac for turning ideas into music. There are literally hundreds of features in Finale's rather crowded interface which make it very intimidating at first. However, Finale 2011 has made things much quicker and more intuitive meaning you can get more music written in half the time. Many of the old keyboard shortcuts have also been replaced by one click actions meaning you don't have to remember all those "Alt" key functions.

Finale 2011 is the best version of Finale yet although beginners should be prepared for a very steep but worthwhile learning curve.

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Well, you can do exactly that very easily with Ringer. Ringer is fully integrated with iTunes so that as soon as you open it, you can access your collection. Simply select the song you want to convert and Ringer will process the track in just a few seconds. It then displays the track in waveform, which you can edit and cut. Select the part of the song that you want to use as a ringtone, whether you want to fade-in and fade-out and click 'Preview'.

When you're happy with the result, click 'Create' and you're done! In this demo, Ringer creates a marker noise at the beginning of the ringtone, which you can remove by paying for a license. There are a few useful additions to Ringer too worth mentioning. If your ringtone features a quiet part of a track, Ringer will auto-adjust the tone volume so that it's audible enough on your iPhone. You can also control the time delay between rings.

As slick as Ringer is, however, the cost of buying a license is inevitably going to put some people off. You can do exactly the same thing with any basic audio editor - including GarageBand - albeit, not quite as easily.

However, for the modest license fee and the convenient integration with iTunes, Ringer provides an extremely easy way to create your own custom iPhone ringtones.

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SingSong is a fun karaoke game that claims to allow you to sing to any song in the world and SingSong will rate you based on how well you sing. The first thing to note is that SingSong uses a rather annoying Java applet to download so you'll need to wait for SingSong to open Java before you can even get going. However, once downloaded, it launches straight away and you can start limbering-up your lungs.

SingSong scores you while you sing by measuring your voice against the original artist. In this trial, you can choose from Madonna, Eric Clapton and Gloria Gaynor but you'll have to have the original MP3 or OFF file to sing them. In the full version, you can use any song, but using the note editor you have to enter every single lyric which would be a real pain. Alternatively, you're also given a few generic ones to try out which are really cheesy but allow you to see how it works.

You can play against others or play a multiplayer game but this is obviously limited by the amount of microphones you can attach to your Mac. It's hard to know whether it's really scoring your voice accurately as you sing or not though. You can shout into the microphone and still get the same results as singing the right words. In addition, the scoring system is a bit dull, just measuring your accuracy in percentage instead of giving you a score like in SingStar.

SingSong Karaoke is a nice idea and it's great you can choose any tune you want in the full version. However, I'm not convinced by the accuracy of it's scoring or the scoring format.

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This latest update of the application means that it now supports 64-bit machines, longer file names are supported and a sampling bug has been fixed.
An option to save parameter values when switching patches has also been added. If you've never used Mainstage it's designed for corodinating instruments and effects in a live stage show.
It enables you to do everything from expanding your show with live loops or prerecorded backing tracks to controlling MIDI and USB devices on stage.

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Aimed mainly at musicians, Sonic Visualiser features powerful waveform and spectral visualization tools with annotations possible. However, its likely that you'll need to use some plug-ins with Sonic Visualizer and you may find that some work better than others. To be sure, check out the list of Vamp compatible plugins here.

Sonic Visualiser can use LADSPA and DSSI effects plugins and Windows users are at a slight advantage over Mac users as they can download some LADSPA plugins from the Audacity plugin page. Although its free, Sonic Visualiser is very powerfu. It can load audio files in WAV, Ogg and MP3 formats, view their waveforms in spectrograms and allows you to annotate audio data by adding time points and markers.

Unfortunately though, Sonic Visualiser cannot support VST plugins directly because Steinberg's VST license is incompatible with Sonic Visualiser's GPL license although both Mac and Windows users can get support using the Audacity VST Enabler.

Sonic Visualiser is an impressive free tool for musicians that will aid music learning and analysis of audio files.

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Best of all, its absolutely free and a pleasure to use. It is supposed to be designed for use with Griffin Technologies iKaraoke hardware which unfortunately, is discontinued. However, there's absolutely nothing to stop you creating your videos, exporting them to iPod, iPhone, QuickTime or AppleTV format (which TunePrompter automatically does for you) and then burning the results to disc.

Once you've opened TunePrompter simply load your Karaoke track which can be in MP3 format. Then, use the "Search Lyrics" tool to automatically search the web for the right lyrics. Paste them into TunePrompter and then click "Sync Lyrics". You then have to listen to the music and tap the spacebar at the right tempo with the lyrics. Once you're done, go to Preferences, select the format you want to export to and you're done!

The only drawback is that you need Karaoke tracks of your favorite songs to load into TunePrompter. It's obviously no good loading in the original MP3 because the real vocals will drown-out yours!

TunePrompter is about as easy as it gets when it comes to creating your own Karaoke videos.

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This program features a wide range of musical symbols that will enable you to create tablatures including even complex scores such as Gregorian notation. You can input music through the mouse, computer keyboard or even an external MIDI keyboard.

Melody Assistant comes bundled with its own embedded software synthesizer (SoftSynth), which provides high quality output on basic sound cards, even without any external MIDI device, and includes hundreds of different instruments. In addition, you'll find a complete score editor, tablature calculation for miscellaneous string instruments, a chord diagram library for various instruments plus the possibility to allow visitors to view, transpose, play or print your scores.

If you're completely new to composing music too, there's a host of very handy video tutorials on the developer website to help you get the most out of Melody Assistant too.

Easy to use and with input possibilities from MIDI devices, Melody Assistant will help you write tablature and musical scores in no time.

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GuitarGuru teaches you how to play your favorite songs as the virtual fretboard guides sync with your CDs, audio files or the bundled MIDI files. You can choose three main viewpoints - minimized, maximized and full screen. The latter two expand the fretboard right across your screen which looks a bit of a mess so I stuck with the minimized version. You're presented with cliche of cliches, the first 10 seconds of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin to get you started.

The sound is in MIDI and the frets highlight where your fingers should go as each note is played. You can however use a CD or MP3 file instead although you have to provide this yourself of course. By clicking the music note, you can change song - you're given about 20 for free including Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix, Blackbird by the Beatles and Everyday is a Winding Road by Cheryl Crow. You can change the tempo with a slider.

Guitar Guru is well presented, very easy to use and I can see how it could easily improve my playing if I persevered with it. The downside is that to have the tab for the full song, you have to buy the songs online which cost around 6 or 7 dollars - pretty steep if you ask me.

Guitar Guru is an excellent application although make sure you've got enough to spend buying the songs to make it a worthwhile investment.

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All you have to do is drag and drop tracks into the iRingtones interface, crop and trim it, and then sync it with your iPhone. If you can't be bothered creating your own, there are hundreds of free ones to choose from included with the app. iRingtones supports all Edge, 3G and 3GS models.

Note that iRingtones does not alter the original version of your iTunes tracks - it makes a copy to ensure that your originals are left intact. As long as your audio file can be opened with Quicktime, it will be compatible with iRingtones.

There is very little to fault with iRingtones - simple, effective and much cheaper than buying ringtones separately, it's a must for iPhone ringtone addicts.

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Do you still compose music with pen and paper? If so, then you should know you can also do it with the help of your computer. Much like iDrum for percussion instruments, MuseScore lets you do this in a very easy way, either from scratch or using any of the score templates included in the program. It features dozens of musical elements such as notes, clefs, keys, and time. Just by dragging and dropping them on the interface, you can quite effortlessly add them to your composition.

Whenever you want to hear your composition, simply use MuseScore's built-in player. It has support for multiple instrument sounds to allow you to hear the full effect of your creation. Alternatively, you can simply plug in your MIDI keyboard.

MuseScore works with many different formats, including PDF and MID. Plug-ins will also extend MuseScore's functionality. It lacks the advanced options and tools from more professional applications like Finale (for PCs), but it's perfectly usable and adequate for the amateur composer who just needs a free app to create music at home.

With MuseScore you can easily create your own music, listen to it and save professional-looking scores.

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This simple little application lets you play back a song and adjust speed, volume and pitch thanks to sliders. You can also set a loop by entering both an end and a start time. 33 RPM displays song information and you can quickly reach any point in your track thanks to the slider in the main window.

There's not much more you'll be able to do with 33 RPM other than transcribing audio tracks. However the application is clean, and you can close off both the info and controls windows if you want to. 33 RPM can be of great use to test out different rhythms of a song without having to open a more advanced media player.

33 RPM is a very simple application to play around with the volume, speed and pitch of a song.

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It's a darn sight cheaper than buying your own and is just as easy to use. Metronome makes a ticking sound which gives bar markers for 3/4 time, 4/4 time and 6/8 time. To select the tempo you want to use just click on one of the numbers and metronome will start immediately. Click 'Stop' to stop it at any time. There´s nothing more to it than that. The metronome has been designed specifically for a guitar course offered by the developer but it should be useful for general musical needs.

Metronome is a handy tool for any musician that needs bar markers in 3/4, 4/4 or 6/8 time.

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