Audacity

Audacity is an open source, cross-platform audio editor and recorder that aims to process the most popular audio formats, podcasts included. Audacity won’t disappoint if you need a piece of software that can record live, convert tapes or cut/splice/mix sounds.

Audacity features support for importing, processing and exporting WAV, FLAC, AIFF, AU and OGG Vorbis files. Bundled with a large array of plugins and effects, this software is ready for audio recording/playback, track mixing and audio spectrum analysis.

Audacity has a clean and pleasant user interface, with rich menus that offer easy access to all of its functions. There’s also a quick access toolbar from where you can trigger the player or the recorder.

Audacity can record multiple channels simultaneously at high sample rates from microphones, USB or Firewire devices. Sound editing can be performed via basic Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete operations. Mixing can be achieved from multiple clips, while the Draw feature allows altering individual sample points.

The rich list of Effects includes noise processing, equalization, bass, high/low pass filters, as well as amplify, fade in/out, normalize, reverse, echo and phaser filters. Additional effects can be achieved via plugins.

Audacity can also perform flawless audio analysis through an algorithm based on the Fourier transformation. Frequencies can be visualized through spectrogram views, while the Plot Spectrum allows users to analyze frequencies.

All in all, Audacity impresses through its plethora of features combined with ease of use and accessibility. The processing speed is decent, to say the least and the results are of superior audio quality.