Interface

Whether you choose the stable or beta series, Audacity is not very attractive, and can at first look complex. However, with a little experimentation it soon becomes a very usable application.

For live sound and digitizing old media, you need to feed audio into your computer via a cable. Your audio-in, or mic should be set up by default, but otherwise can be found in Preferences. Recording is then as easy as hitting the red button on the Audacity interface.

Easy to use

What makes Audacity great in this regard is that editing recordings is really simple, not tricky like some professional apps! Using the Highlight tool you can quickly cut, copy, or add effects to parts of tracks. Make a mistake and you can undo as many steps backward as you like, meaning you can experiment knowing nothing can be broken! As you can use up to 16 channels at once, Audacity gives users lots of flexibility.

Editing MP3 and other digital files is just as easy. Drag them into Audacity to open, and then do what you like with them. Adding fade ins or outs is easy, and you can save in whatever format you like. Audacity supports ID3 tags, so you can add all the meta data you like to saved tracks. There is lots more to Audacity, and luckily it has extensive documentation available online or to download.

Conclusion

Audacity is the best free audio editing tool around. It's an incredibly useful application, whether you're recording live or just editing audio files. Despite it's unattractive interface, Audacity is an essential download.

Download Audacity 2.0.3 in Softonic

Whether you choose the stable or beta series, Audacity is not very attractive, and can at first look complex. However, with a little experimentation it soon becomes a very usable application.

For live sound and digitizing old media, you need to feed audio into your computer via a cable. Your audio-in, or mic should be set up by default, but otherwise can be found in Preferences. Recording is then as easy as hitting the red button on the Audacity interface.

What makes Audacity great in this regard is that editing recordings is really simple, and not pedantic like some professional apps! Using the Highlight tool you can quickly cut, copy, or add effects to parts of tracks. Make a mistake and you can undo as many steps backward as you like, meaning you can experiment knowing nothing can be broken! As you can use up to 16 channels at once, Audacity gives users lots of flexibility.

Editing MP3 and other digital files is just as easy. Drag them into Audacity to open, and then do what you like with them. Adding fade-ins or outs is easy, and you can save in whatever format you like. Audacity supports ID3 tags, so you can add all the meta data you like to saved tracks. There is lots more to Audacity, and luckily it has extensive documentation available online or to download.

Audacity is the best free audio editing tool around. It's an incredibly useful application, whether you're recording live or just editing audio files. Despite it's unattractive interface, Audacity is an essential download. However, we recommend the beta release.

Download Audacity 2.0.2 in Softonic

Why buy ringtones for songs that you already own? You can easily make them yourself with applications like Ringtone Maker. Its interface is minimal and snappy. You can create your ringtone within seconds if you can click quickly enough.

Using the app is a pleasure for the most part. You begin by dragging and dropping an MP3 into the window. Next, Ringtone Maker will show your track and time indicators. Drag to where you want the song to start and end. You can only make a ringtone up to 30 seconds. You can preview the snippet that you've chosen before finalizing your work.

Ringtone Maker will export your ringtone to the type of device you have (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone 7, or Other). Select where you want to save and you're done!

Ringtone's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The interface of Ringtone Maker is a pleasure to use but its lack of options while editing a track is frustrating. There's no ability to fade in/out so ringtones start abruptly if you don't select carefully. Ringtone Maker also made it difficult to be precise selecting the part of the song we wanted as there's no option to zoom into a specific section. It's also a shame that Ringtone Maker doesn't support any formats other than MP3. Users looking for more control should check out Audacity.

Overall, Ringtone Maker is a good app if all you want to do is turn your MP3 tracks into ringtones for a wide variety of devices. We just wish we had more editing control.

Download Ringtone Maker 2.4.0.42 in Softonic

yet inexperienced - government operative trained to eliminate threats to national security. When a mission goes horribly wrong, Thorton is the only one with the information, skills, and audacity to stop an impending international catastrophe.

To do so, he will utilize the very government directive that the enemy sought to use to against him - Alpha Protocol. Set in modern day, Alpha Protocol gives players complete control not only of Thorton's actions but his personality and attitude as well, all of which will determine the future of the world as we know it.

Blending fast-paced modern combat, significant character advancement and innovative RPG features, Alpha Protocol brings a fresh new perspective to the genre.

With a story rivaling the best spy-thriller novels and an immersive, ultra-realistic espionage world, Alpha Protocol will redefine the RPG genre for the next-gen gamer.

The title is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment. creators of Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II The Sith Lordsand Neverwinter Nights 2.

Key Features:Redefined RPG. Classless system gives players the ability to mold Thorton into the secret agent they want him to become with lethal close combat techniques, marksman skills proficiency with gadgets and much more.

The International Spy. Players will travel around the world to international safe house locations to obtain information and mission objectives and conduct meetings with a growing list of contacts.

Dialogue Stance System. With an innovative real-time dialogue system, characters will remember conversations and the relationships with allies

With an innovative real-time dialogue system, characters will remember conversations and the relationships with allies

Download Alpha Protocol in Softonic

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.

Download Sonic Visualiser 1.7.2 in Softonic

This is a piece of audio editing software that has many features, but it's not hard to use, especially as you can add and test effects in real time. AV Music Morpher Gold has lots of effects to explore, from the ridiculous like 'Merry Doggy' to the more useful like 'Reverb'. It's very easy to turn effects on and off, although timing can be tricky.

There's also a wave editor, so you can cut and join tracks. It's pretty basic, and not up to the standard of Audacity. The AV Music Morpher Gold interface is pretty simple, but has a very old fashioned skin. AV Music Morpher Gold really does look ten years old, and the lack of drag-and-drop support makes this feel even clunkier than it looks.

AV Music Morpher Gold does many things, but none of them well enough. There is much better DJ software available, much better music managers, and audio editors too. This jack of all trades applications needs more focus and an interface overhaul to bring it up to date.

If you're looking for a simple way to add strange effects to your music, AV Music Morpher Gold does just that. Unfortunately it's a bit too basic, and pretty ugly to boot!

Download AV Music Morpher Gold 5.0.57 in Softonic

While we find the interface a little hard to get around, it's a really powerful and flexible application. Importing sound files is easy, they can just be dragged into the window, and then you can edit and manipulate it in many ways.

One basic useful tool for this is making tracks louder or quieter. You can alter the base volume of tracks in iTunes, but the actual file is not affected, and the end result is many files that play at different volumes. With Audacity, you can tweak the volume of the track so it's at a similar level to the rest of your library however loud it is. You can also use it to add fade ins and outs, cut them out altogether and add a variety of interesting effects.

You can also use Audacity to record live from whatever input you choose, and it's really easy to edit and play around with your results. Recording a speech and then adding background music is really logical, for example. Open the speech file and music file out together, edit the sound levels then merge together.

There are tons of other ways to use Audacity, it really depends on your creativity. This portable version does everything the original does, and simply requires installation onto your portable drive to run on a PC.

Audacity is great, and it's fantastic to be able to run it from a USB drive

Download Audacity Portable 12.6 Rev 4 in Softonic

Split MP3 is a really basic program, sticking to exactly what its name suggests.

If you want to cut any MP3 file, simply open it with Split MP3 and you can set new start and end times and make a new, shorter file. It doesn't support drag-and-drop, so you have to open your MP3 manually, then you can play, stop and mark new start and end times form the interface.

When you're happy with your edit, you can save it in the current format, or convert it to any of the main audio formats, and a selection of bitrates. Saves and conversions are respectably fast. Split MP3 is a very basic application, and misses a few features. There are no start/end markers for the timeline, which itself is missing a waveform, so it's pretty useless. You can't add fade-in/outs either, making it a super-basic editing tool.

Split MP3 is extremely basic, but does it's job well. If you need more editing funcions and flexibility, try Audacity

Download Split MP3 1.0 in Softonic

Do you have WAV or MP3 files you'd like to alter? Audio Music Editor, which supports a wide range of formats, allows you to cut and add effects to your audio files.

In this trial version non of the features are limited, so you're free to play around as much as you like - although you can only save 3 files. Opening a file is easy, although you can only open one at a time, meaning combining files is harder than in similar applications. To add effects or filters, simply highlight part of the track at choose your option. While you can alter the effects parameters, they are not all that impressive. There is an ID3 tag editor so you can save meta data with your files.

In general Audio Music Editor is just too limited, and what's worse its natural competitor Audacity is much much better and free. Both programs work in much the same way, but Audacity has deeper abilities. If all you want to do is mess around with how a file sounds, Audio Music Editor is fine, and if you are new to Audio editing in general, you can get a feel for the kind of ways you can manipulate sound, but there is nothing here for experienced users.

Audio Music Editor is a very mediocre application, that distinguishes itself only by being worse than other similar programs

Download Audio Music Editor 2.3.7 in Softonic

That may not be something that immediately sounds useful, but it does have its uses. You can create a seamless audiobook, merge ripped CD tracks into one or make a mix for someone (a mix where they can't skip tracks!)

Merge MP3 can import ID3 tags from any of the tracks being merged, or you can write a new one yourself, and listen to the tracks in the program. There is no limit to the size, length or number of tracks than can be merged.

The interface is very simple, and merging files is super fast.

Merge MP3 does what it claims perfectly and efficiently. However, because of the its limitations, it won't be for everybody. Programs such as Audacity can also merge MP3s, while also allowing you to edit, cut and mix them together, although for simple joining of MP3s, this is much easier to use.

If you want to join MP3s together, Merge MP3 is a simple program that does exactly that very well, and no more.

Download Merge MP3 0.1i in Softonic

Tap Tempo is a very simple tool for manually calculating the beats-per-minute of music. With programs like Audacity and WavePad, you can mix music together, but they don't calculate BPM for you, which is awkward.

If you want to know the BPM of a song, simply start it, open Tap Tempo and tap the beat on the space bar. After 10 - 20 taps you'll have an accurate figure for the beats-per-minute.

Tap Tempo is useful if you need BPM, though obviously not if you can't keep time very well! On some Keyboards it's difficult to input a regular beat and while it does calculate tempo, it's a little too basic. It is missing a reset function, and you can only view one calculation at a time. This reviewer has been looking for a tool like this for some time, and despite the lack of features, it does the job.

TapTempo is a very simple app, performing a simple function, but it's only as accurate as you are.

Download Tap Tempo 1.03 in Softonic