Getting a good audio editing package these days can be daunting. There is a jungle of shareware and freeware applications out there, all with different characteristics.  Audacity is an open source alternative, which has really caught on. The software can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux machines and offers basic audio editing as well as recording.

Audacity has some nifty features, it’s a breeze to remove noise, change the pitch and apply a number of effects (such as echo, bass boost and reverse). The software handles WAV, MP2, MIDI, MP2, AIFF, AU and Ogg Vorbis files. It’s possible to convert WAV-files to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.  There is one draw-back with Audacity and that’s the lack of support for WMV-files, mainly because it’s a proprietary file-format.

Importing and exporting large audio-files seems to be faster than in other similar audio-editors. Editing files in Audacity is a very easy, it is possible to have several files open at once and mixing them together.  Most of the editing is done using the mouse and cut and paste, it is also possible to zoom and undo an unlimited amount of times.  The interface in the progam is familiar, if you worked with other audio or video programs you will feel right at home.

Audacity is a great piece of software if you are recording podcasts, radio shows or need to do basic audio editing or analysis.  If you are after playing around with sound for sake of it there are probably more suitable applications out there.