AIMP is the best audio player we’ve tested in a long time. It’s beautifully designed and has tons of features that make it the perfect choice as your default player.

With AIMP you can organize your MP3 files in a library, edit tags if necessary and enjoy them in excellent audio quality. AIMP works with other popular formats as well, including karaoke files and several playlist formats.

AIMP offers all the standard playback functions you find in other similar apps: an 18-band equalizer, visualization effects, a separate window to view your current playlist, fading effect between songs, a normalizing filter to avoid sudden volume changes and support for global hotkeys.

But there’s more to AIMP than just that. The program also plays online streaming radio stations, includes a complete tag editor and can be set to repeat a certain part of the song – which comes in handy when you’re trying to decipher the lyrics!

The interface in AIMP is both attractive and intuitive. All functions and buttons are clearly laid out, and the design can be easily tweaked with skins.

We tried hard to find any, but there are really no cons about AIMP. It’s an awesome audio player you just have to try.

If you’re still searching for the perfect music player, AIMP may be the answer.

Download AIMP 3.20.1165 in Softonic

A point to keep in mind - Sony Vegas Video is not easy, but is still simpler than other suites like Premiere or Final Cut Pro. Also, the program is very well documented, so you'll probably find the answer to your questions in the Help section. Thorough documentation, together with a nice interface that will be familiar to anyone who has ever edited video, makes Sony Vegas Video an excellent choice.

Sony Vegas allows you to work on your videos with total freedom; you'll be able to import your media from various devices (including HD video), use more than 300 filters and special effects, leverage specific tools to work with text layers and subtitles and easily optimize image quality.

But Sony Vegas Video doesn't just allow you to edit video. Soundtracks are also important in this editor, which includes more than 30 sound effects and support for VST plug-ins, among other features.

The Sony Vegas Video interface is similar to other video editors. There are several windows to preview your media and current work, as well as a timeline to organize the various audio and video tracks. The best thing about the Sony Vegas Video interface is that it's totally customizable: you can freely open, close and arrange the program's diverse modules to best suit your needs.

In all, Sony Vegas Video is one of those programs that seems off-putting for newcomers and requires some effort to get to grips with. But it's also one of those programs that are totally worth the effort!

Sony Vegas Video is an excellent choice in the area of video editing software: powerful enough for professionals, but easier than other video suites.

Download Sony Vegas Video Pro 11.0.700 (32bit) in Softonic

With Wondershare Video Editor, you simply import video and sound files into the Media window, and then drag them onto the time-line below. Here you can edit your files, adding sound, effects, trasitions between scenes and credit sequences.

The basic editing and transition tools are good in Wondershare Video Editor, allowing you to quickly and easily stitch together a video from clips. The additional tools - effects, text and intro/credit are very basic. They don't allow for much creativity, and they give you pretty cheap looking results.

If you're looking for an easy way to edit videos, but aren't ready for Premier, Wondershare Video Editor is a good place to start. It may lack subtle features, but its essential editing tools work well and can give you good looking results.

Download Wondershare Video Editor 3.1.1 in Softonic

* Show how to. No matter how accurate your texts are, explaining step by step, your audience will often remain thinking: 'ok, but can you show me exactly how to do that?'. If they then can start a screen recording going through the exact moves, they will feel much obliged * Impress your audience. Including animations make your presentation stand out * Gif and Audio. Gif files don't include audio tracks, but you can make a separate sound file and synchronize them * Low price, new versions free

For any user. The Animated Gif Recorder software makes it easy and efficient to create and edit Gif Animations.

Download Gif Recorder 3.0.1 in Softonic

Download My MP3 Splitter 2.2.2 in Softonic

Screen Recording Suite records from a number of sources including your own internal audio and external devices such as a microphone or musical instrument. Screen Recording Suite naturally also records from your screen and webcam although it saves files in WMV format which isn't the most convenient file for working with in an external edit suite. A built-in video editor however allows you to crop, trim, convert and compress video and output to different video formats, such as AVI, MKV, MP4, SWF, FLV and 3GP etc.

In particular, there are useful profiles setup for Apple, Android and Sony device in Screen Recording Suite which makes exporting for different platforms very easy. To take a screencast, simply click the red Start button in the top left hand corner and Screen Recording Suite will countdown from 3 to 0. To record yourself playing a game or put yourself in the video, just click the webcam icon and Screen Recording Suite instantly switches to picture-in-picture mode.

Screen Recording Suite is perfect tool for making professional screen recordings or screencasts.

Download Screen Recording Suite 3.1.0 in Softonic

Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder is video capture software that will allow you to record your computer’s screen or audio. With only a few simple tools you can decide which parts of your computer are captured and converted. Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder is a great piece of software for screencasts, screenshots, and audio.

Features

With Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder you can record your desktop, take screenshots, or record audio. With the screen record option you can select from recording the entire screen, specific regions, focus around the mouse, or take web cam input. For audio you can pick to record desktop sounds, speak through your microphone, or combine both. Default formats for video is WMV, and for audio MP3, OGG, WMA, or WAV can be selected.

Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder can also set up tasks that automatically record for you. You may schedule a certain time of day, the duration of your recording or specific stop date, and if you are capturing video (including regions) or audio. You can also set if your computer shutdowns automatically after Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder finishes.

Usability

Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder has a very basic yet intuitive design. When the app is first opened and no files are in the output folder the file window will be hidden. After your first recording this window will expand, causing Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder to become larger in size. Each button has a simple drop down menu to adjust settings. There are rarely any detailed settings windows, except when scheduling tasks. One annoying aspect of Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder's UI are false buttons that you might expect to open new options and menus. Instead these are just fancy links to Apowersoft’s website placed in deceptive locations.

If you select region recording, an overlay will cover the screen, allowing you drag a desired rectangle sized space. If you’re unhappy with the rectangle size you can move it around, adjust pixel width and height, or select a preset from a drop down menu. Before recordings you can set up a countdown to prepare your screen, as well as audio beeps when a recording starts and stops.

Quality

Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder has a very minimal appearance, often times you may forget it is even open. When not recording it simply looks like a black and off-white bar. The miniature design works well as you rarely want a large abrasive UI while recording. You can also choose to hide most all of Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder’s toolbars to further increase its stealth.

Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder doesn’t cause any obvious slow down while it records, allowing you a smooth capture session as you open other programs and web pages. Quality of finished recordings is generally high and files are compressed to low sizes. There can be visual problems when using the area around mouse option, but only if you select a resolution under 640x480.

Conclusion

Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder is a great way to capture your screen for screencasts and audio. It only supports WMVs, but the quality of recordings is good with compact file sizes. Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder can set up captures at specific dates and automate shut downs, making handy for daily recording. Just remember that several buttons are links and not options.

Download Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder 1.1.3 in Softonic

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

Edit Audio Pro works together preferred audio formats to edit without the quality loss brought on by other editors. It is possible to edit and modify your digitized audio in myriad various ways

Edit Audio Pro works together preferred audio formats to edit without the quality loss brought on by other editors

Download Edit Audio Pro 11.6 in Softonic

Audio is an equally crucial element of your video experience. A meaningful sound track/effect is often as complicated as the images on the screen. AudioDirector helps you in creating, sweetening, repairing and producing the pristine sound that goes perfectly with your video.

For video editors who are familiar with PowerDirector, AudioDirector is the best audio tool for them to edit and enhance the audio portion within their projects.

Download CyberLink AudioDirector Ultra in Softonic

While the original Premiere application is mainly intended at professional video editors, Adobe Premiere Elements brings video editing closer to the average user. The program features a complete set of simple yet powerful tools that will help you extract video from several sources, combine them into a movie, add special effects and filters and share with family and friends.

The interface in Adobe Premiere Elements is very similar to that in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The application is divided into two main parts: the Organizer and the Project editor. Both work seamlessly with each other and share the same sleek, elegant dark interface.

The Adobe Premiere Elements Organizer lets you browse your media (photos, audio and video), rate them and add captions to them. The Editor, on the other side, is where the creative part comes in.

The editor in Adobe Premiere Elements features the classic video editing working space, with a special area for imported media, a built-in preview window and a timeline at the bottom. Though it may seem confusing and difficult to use at first sight, a bit of effort and patience on your side will help you master the program without much fuss.

Adobe Premiere Elements works with all popular media formats (including HD video) and features a bunch of extra material (special effects, transitions, graphics and text, menus, titles and more) with which you can easily create awesome movies.

Moreover, Adobe Premiere Elements also features all the necessary tools to share your movies, either by burning them to DVD and Blu-ray, or by uploading them straight away to Facebook and YouTube.

Adobe Premiere Elements is the perfect way to get started with video editing and the powerful tools included in the original Premiere suite.

Download Adobe Premiere Elements 11 in Softonic

Adobe Audition is a multi-track recording studio that offers all the refinement you expect in Adobe products but may leave beginners floundering in technical jargon.

After the initial installation, Adobe Audition searches for compatible audio formats on your hard drive but asks you which file types you want to associate with it. Otherwise the program would detect every single sound file on your hard drive meaning your Adobe Audition library would be a jumbled mess.

Adobe Audition's interface is clean, with the active window highlighted by a red border. 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.

Editing 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 Adobe Audition 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 have 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.

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.

Download Adobe Audition 5.0 in Softonic

CyberLink Director Suite combines many useful tools for working with videos and other multimedia files. CyberLink Director Suite's all-in-one package performs many tasks that go beyond the basics.

CyberLink Director Suite consists of four programs that work with various types of multimedia content:

PowerDirector video editing

With PowerDirector you can edit video you've taken with your own camera. The program allows you to edit existing material, merge with other videos, and also burn the finished movies onto a DVD or Blu-ray disc.

The program includes sample materials, is very well-document, and will allow you to export to sites like YouTube and Facebook, all in a nicely organized interface.

PhotoDirector

PhotoDirector lets you develop digital raw images. The software is compatible with a variety of different image formats and allows you to retouch images to perfection. You can also export the images to various social networks and create a custom slide show of pictures.

ColorDirector

ColorDirector helps correct incorrect lighting and unnatural lighting in your videos, to name a few features. You can also cast the entire scene in an entirely different light tone, or target specific areas in each frame. A unique keyframe features allows for precise color corrections.

AudioDirector

AudioDirector can help get your sound and video synced up properly. In addition, this tool can allow you to eliminate unnecessary noise and offers a multi-channel mixer. Sound is processed with up to 99 tracks in one video.

It would have been nice if CyberLink Director Suite's interface had been more unified. Instead, CyberLink Director Suite simply offers you all four programs in one download package, which might not be to every user's preference.

If you have a variety of different multimedia files that need editing, or even integrating with one another, CyberLink Director Suite is a good option.

Download CyberLink Director Suite 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

Download Harmony Assistant 9.6.2 in Softonic

Ever wanted to change the tone of your voice? MorphVOX Junior is a free voice changer software that is supposed to modify your voice to match your personality. If you so like, you can sound like a man, a woman, a midget, a robot and many other bizarre variations in between.

The program is optimized for online games, but obviously, the most fun you'll have with this is to make prank calls and wind-up your friends. The program can also send out some rather annoying high pitch screams and bizarrely, drum rolls.

This is great fun although there's not really much point to it. Perhaps if they had integrated it with a music making program or other editing software, it would have been much more useful. Still, you can save your voice modulations and then use the file in an external program.

Download MorphVOX Junior 2.7.5 in Softonic

The range of options in WavePad basic - there is also a commercial "Masters" version - is impressive. You can add effects, fades, split tracks, merge tracks, and much more. Performing all of these tasks is easy, and easy to undo if you make a mistake. It's certainly user-friendly, and the fact you can import more or less any sound file format makes it incredibly accessible for anyone (there's no need to mess around with file conversion).

As well as importing from your hard drive, you can also import directly from CD, and there's a tool to burn whatever you want. There is a tone generator, and even a text to speech generator, so you can express yourself with a robotic voice. There are tabs at the bottom of the edit window for you to move easily between open files, a zoom tool so it's easy to highlight exactly the part you want when editing, and the highlighting itself is really intuitive, allowing you to apply effects with precision.

The one function I think WavePad is missing is a BPM analyzer - although this is sometimes unreliable in other programs, it's a nice feature to have.

For anyone that wants to mess around with their sound files - WavePad is a great and lightweight program to use.

Download WavePad 5.4 in Softonic

It is not a simple converter or ripper, it is a complete toolkit for MP3 editing and creating. People can use MP3 Toolkit to manage and process their audio files fast and smoothly. And it is totally free.

MP3 Toolkit is made for users who want to convert Audio files to MP3, or rip audio CD to MP3 music, or edit MP3 tag information, cut and combine audio files, or record sound from their PC.

Download MP3 Toolkit 1 in Softonic

In this program, you may use both general and extended sets of musical symbols and as well create your own symbols, terms and chords for complex compositions with a peculiar or a non-standard grammatical solution.

Special tools such as: virtual piano, virtual fingerboard for six and seven-string guitars, notes performance editor, real-time notes play-back editor and the navigator let you easily and efficiently record and work with both single pieces and large musical compositions.

The basic features of the Maestro version are as follows: Automatic spell-checking of entered information; Extensive editing capabilities (copy, paste, delete, transpose both single notes and selected blocks); Note entry using the virtual piano; Score entry using the Chord Builder; Capability to bind comments, links, and other appearance elements to all score elements; Adjustment of volume, balance, and effects for each track (of an instrument's score); Reading from MIDI files and writing to MIDI files; Play-back of the entered notes both by a single instrument and by the entire orchestra; Printing scores, including previewing the scores; Drag and Drop support; Capability to cancel the running operation; Score recording from a MIDI device.

Extended functional capabilities of the Maestro version: Export of images to graphic files (BMP, JPEG, GIF); Control of texts orientation on the page (the text may be displayed at any angle); Calculation of notes volume - based on the dynamic symbols placed on the staff; Calculation of the effects play-back (Arpeggio, Gruppetto, Vorschlag, Trillare) - based on the staff's symbols; Real-time notes play-back editor for changing the position and the duration of notes.

Download MagicScore Maestro 7 7.375 in Softonic

Your hands need not leave the keyboard when you type the spoken words into the computer keyboard as the file plays. The text editor supports Unicode characters (XP/Vista edition only) and the media player the usual audio file formats include WAV, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC.

The EF Talk Scriber is easy to use, with a modern interface, the keyboard shortcuts is full customizable for all the usual functions. Designed for Windows Vista/XP/9x/ME/NT4/2K/2003.

Download EF Talk Scriber 2.40 in Softonic