Best Audio Editing Software Free Download Full Version For Mac

Jamie Lendino The Best Audio Editing Software of 2018 Having a tough time sorting out which digital audio workstation is right for your music or sound project? We've tested the most popular options to help you choose the best audio editing software. A Recording Studio for Your PC There has never been a better time to buy digital audio workstation (DAW) software.

1. Best Audio Editing Software Reviews
2. Easy Free Audio Editing Software

Power Sound Editor Free latest version: Free sound editing software for personal use. There is no version designed to be used with Mac systems.

Twenty years ago, to record a music album at a professional level, you needed a sizable mixing console, several eight-track digital records (such as ADATs or DA-88s), and a good selection of outboard compressors, reverb units, and other effects, plus a two-track deck to mix down to. In other words, you were looking at about $10K to $15K worth of gear to start—and that's before you got to microphones, speakers, and other accessories.

If you were on a budget, you'd probably stick with a tried-and-true Tascam or Yamaha four-track tape recorder and Alesis compressor, get used to bouncing tracks in mono, make peace with tape hiss, and remember to clean the tape heads every week. And you'd be sharply limited in the kinds of projects you could produce. The only easy multitrack recording you could do at the time was with MIDI, with hardware synthesizers or samplers, and maybe with a Mac or an Atari ST computer attached as a sequencer. It's an entirely different world now. Software packages that cost a few hundred dollars now deliver hundreds of audio tracks and incredibly flexible editing. Some programs are even free.

You can create as many instances of effects plug-ins as you want, including spot-on emulations of compressors that cost several thousand dollars each, and attach them to as many mixer channels as you want. It's all nearly unlimited and 'in the box' now. Choosing the Right DAW From the standpoint of someone recording 20 or 30 years ago, a DAW today is like a giant candy store; it's as if you can do almost anything. For the newcomer, though, it may seem almost hopelessly complex.

Choosing the right audio software can be quite difficult. Most of the famous packages like Pro Tools and Logic have been around for decades. They've grown incredibly powerful, and as a result have user interfaces that are as complex aswell, professional mix consoles. So how to decide? To help with this task, we went out and tested the most popular DAWs.

Numerous venerable (and excellent) recording magazines have reviewed these applications many times over the years. That's great for the existing user base of each DAW, but maybe not always quite as clear for newcomers. In each of our reviews, we did our best to approach each product as a whole, rather than devoting the majority of the space to just the latest features that were added in the most recent point update.

Before we get to the specifics, the simplest program for audio editing is a two-track editor; probably the most famous example here is the free Audacity. While Audacity aspires to some extremely basic multitrack recording with overdubs, its real use is as a solid stereo editor.

If you're or editing a clip of your kid's piano recital that you recorded on your phone, Audacity is an excellent choice; you can probably start and stop there. If you need something more sophisticated, read on. It helps to think about the kinds of projects you want to create. Are you planning on producing beats for hip-hop or fully electronic compositions? Do you want to record multiple musicians playing live instruments at once? Will you be using your setup to score for picture, or creating sound effects and dialogue for TV and video games?

Do you need to produce fully polished, printed scores, or otherwise prefer to work with musical notes and staves? Do you plan on tuning the pitch of vocal performances? Working out the answers to these kinds of questions up front will help you narrow down your choices. What Comes With Each DAW? The good news is all of the packages can we tested can more or less do all of the above tasks, with a few notable exceptions.

The trick is that each program has strengths in different areas, and some tasks may be a bit more complicated in one than they are in another. One overarching rule to decide faster is to look at what your colleagues or friends are using, and then choose the same package. That makes it easier to share tips or even projects between each other, rather than being the lone person using a particular product and then introducing session import issues. Another is to look at what's bundled with each program. Would you prefer a DAW that comes with a ton of virtual instrument sounds, such as synthesizers, sampled violins, guitars, and electric basses? You may want to look at something like Logic Pro X, Cubase Pro, or Studio One, all of which include many gigabytes of sounds and loops. Do you have or plan to buy your own instrument plug-ins you want to use?

Reaper is a fully stripped down DAW at an excellent price, and it makes an excellent host for third-party VSTs. It's also great if you're recording a band full of live instruments and don't need much in the way of virtual ones.

Do your tastes lean toward the electronic and synthesized realm? FL Studio, Reason, and Ableton Live are inspired choices with plenty of built-in synths, though you can produce electronic music with just about any of these programs. Often, it comes down to the details and the editing philosophies. Do you prefer pattern-based recording for electronic music?

FL Studio is going to have plenty to offer. Would you rather have a 'do-it-all' DAW with a large built-in sound library at a low price? PreSonus Studio One beckons.

Do you want to not just be able to bring projects into major studios, but collaborate online and also open sessions directly as you work on them with others? It's impossible to top Avid's Pro Tools for this. Is the music already done, and you work in post-production and want to produce more professional podcasts or videos? Adobe Audition is a prime contender for these tasks.

And if you've got a Mac, it's worth giving the free a spin, if only because it's more powerful than it ever was and you already own it. How Much Do You Want to Spend? Closely correlated to the bundled instruments and effects is price, and that's a factor that can cloud the issue a bit. Many of the top-tier packages also have less expensive (or even free), feature-limited editions available. It's not as simple as saying 'Reaper is a budget DAW at $60 and Studio One 3 is a professional-level DAW at $399,' because you can also buy the stripped-down (but still pretty feature-rich) Studio One Artist for $99. What do you lose? What do you gain?

We try and touch on this as much as possible within each review. Which DAW Is Right for You? In short, read our reviews (linked below) and try some demos where you can. But otherwise, don't sweat it too much.

We spent countless hours testing these products and putting together both the reviews and this guide. Despite the complexity of the software here, we've found it's honestly tough to go wrong. It's not like computers or cameras, where you can clearly see that of the latest crop of products, a few perform well and a few don't perform as well as the leaders. These are all mature, well-established products, each with thousands of fans.

As a result, more than half of the packages in this roundup score at least four out of five stars. You can get professional-level results with all of them. Each has some specific workflows that work really, really well for some people—hence the endless 'X is the best and Y is garbage' arguments on the internet—but they all can work for just about anyone. Pros: Still the cleanest audio editing workflow on the planet.

Fast 64-bit recording and mixing engine. New cloud-based project collaboration tools. Robust, useful track freeze and commit options. High-end hardware and support policies are tops in the industry. Cons: Lacks built-in pitch correction. No VST plug-in support or instrument track presets. USB dongle-based copy protection.

Monthly fee required for new software patches past 12 months. Bottom Line: Avid stays the course with Pro Tools and maintains its status as the standard cross-platform solution for professional audio editing work for music, film, games, and broadcast. Pros: Vector-based interface is attractively animated, and supports 4K, multi-monitor, and multitouch configurations.

Brilliant loop and pattern-based MIDI composition tools. Visible automation clips are easy to manipulate. Light memory footprint. Free lifetime updates.

Cons: Convoluted, inflexible audio recording (in higher-priced versions). Must manually assign instrument tracks to mixer channels. Built-in sound library could use some updating. Lacks notation editor. Bottom Line: If you want to produce some of today's slickest beats, right up to full electronic dance music tracks, FL Studio could be the ideal key to unlock your creativity.

Pros: Strong audio-restoration, sound-removal, and noise-reduction tools. Excellent stereo waveform editor. Useful visualization tools.

Adheres to film and television broadcast standards for audio. Cons: Lacks MIDI support. Only available via an expensive monthly subscription. Bottom Line: Audition is a comprehensive audio editor for video post-production, podcasts, and audio restoration. It's expensive for what you get, though, and makes the most sense as a supplement to a video editor or as part of an existing CC subscription. Pros: Versatile array of bundled instruments. Awesome sound set serves as instant inspiration for new electronic tracks.

Fast composition workflow. SSL-style mix compression and EQ.

Cons: Aging rackmount-and-patch-cable UI idiom. No surround or scoring features. Track editing still lags the competition. Bottom Line: Despite its flaws, it's tough to knock Reason as an all-in-one recording, mixing, and mastering tool, particularly if you're into electronic or hip-hop music and want a tremendous array of sounds and beats right out of the gate. It's still as much fun to use as it has always been.

It was a lonely quiet night. I hadn’t slept for 20 hours. My coffee was depleted and my energy even more so. Despite this, I had just spent the last 3 hours of my life searching for an audio editor that would do what I needed. I had over twenty different pieces of software that had audio editing capabilities. Yet none of them could perform the simple task that I wanted to carry out.

Eventually I found an application that did exactly what I wanted with minimal effort. To be frank, I was ecstatic. That event inspired me to try out every free audio editor out there and compile this list.

If you are thinking about, and you want to start looking at the available free audio editing software out there, you are in the right place. But, if you want the quick answer, I narrowed it down to a short list of the top 3 audio editors. Find out what they are here. Contents. Which Audio Editor Do I Use? Audacity (Windows, Mac, Linux) This is the godfather of free audio editing software.

You can multi track to an extent (have more than just one stereo track e.g. A full band recording). There are a range of effects and plugins, and it’s easy to use once you get used to it.

It’s by far the most popular free audio editing software. Volume automation is easy using the envelope. Deleting and muting sections of audio is also a breeze. Recording is easy too. Tip: Reset all the gain sliders if you want to do a / track balancing. You might also like our post on. It does have its drawbacks though. The user interface is not particularly appealing, and there a lot of features that you’ll rarely use that clutter the tool bar.

It looks a bit ancient, but it gets the job done. This is an awesome starting point for anyone wanting a free editor.

Link: ocenaudio (Windows, Mac, Linux) This new simple audio editor has a clean and colourful user interface. It’s so easy to use!

It’s fast and it’s lightweight compared to Audacity. It’s bundled with loads of effects (including compression, EQ and ) that you can apply and tweak in real-time.

This is a huge benefit as most free editors are destructive (they record effects straight to the audio) so you have to rely on a ‘preview’ button. This is how Audactiy works, for example. But in ocenaudio you can play with the parameters of the effect and hear the changes instantly. The editor has VST support so you can use your own plugins.

It’s easy to record audio straight in to the software as well. There are lots of useful tools (such as a spectogram) for the more advanced user. One downside of this software is that it only supports single stereo/mono files. You can’t have a multi-track session and record several instruments in your home studio and mix them. More on recording voice.

But for editing stereo music files, or mono audio files (such as a voice recording) this is awesome. It’s also relatively simple in terms of features compared to Audacity, although they aren’t trying to compete on that front. Link: Hya-Wave (Chrome) This is a member of the new wave of online audio editors that run in your internet browser.

And it’s my favourite of that bunch. Released in January 2015, I only discovered this a few months ago. The interface is clean and user friendly and the learning curve is pretty much non-existent. Three cheers for simplicity!

It doesn’t support multi-tracking but you can copy, paste, cut, clear and crop your audio. You can load and save in the cloud, apply live effects and share to social media or via URL (take a listen to a song I applied some compression and a high-pass filter to here: ) Browser based DAWs could be the future of audio editing. There are several out there for music composition already and now more audio editors are appearing too. This is ideal if you are recording or editing on the fly and don’t want to install large programme on to your laptop. Link: WavePad (Windows, Mac, iPad, Android) A slightly older DAW, but still highly useful. The interface may not be as sleek as some of the editors listed here, but it makes up for this in features. It’s easy to install and easy to use.

There are lots of bundled effects including noise removal, compression and reverb. There are also some great analysis tools for more advanced users. Pitch and speed changes are possible.

So is audio scrubbing, which can be very handy. It doesn’t support multi-tracking so you can only edit stereo or mono audio files. My absolute favourite feature of this software is the batch processing (which I discussed in the introduction). You can apply compression, reverb, EQ or any effect to a number of audio files at once. This can save you HOURS in the right situation. Link: TwistedWave (web app, Mac, iPhone) Another awesome online web application for editing sound.

Again, it can’t multi-track, but it makes up for this with usability and features. It’s easy to normnalize your audio and the effects are easy to apply. Quick tip: like a lot of audio editing software, if you delete a section of audio the rest will ‘shuffle’ back so that there aren’t any gaps. If you want to remove noise without shuffling the audio, you need to ‘mute’ or ‘silence’ the section with noise.

In TwistedWave you can do this easily by highlighting the section of audio that you want to mute and hitting ‘s’ on your keyboard! Link: Wavosaur (Windows) This one is a bit ancient. Dinosaur Wavosaur get it?!

It’s looks like the missing link in the evolutionary chain between tape cutting (prime apes) and modern (humans). Joking aside, this application may be basic, but it works.

The download is only 1.3MB. Now that is small! And it’s not that old.

The latest version was released in 2013. It’s a good piece of classic Windows software.

No frilly bits, no messing about. Straight to the point. It supports VSTs but doesn’t come with any. If you want to apply effects you’ll need your own. There are loads of great analysis tools and volume automation is easy. It’s very basic and doesn’t look great. But if you just want to get the job done without downloading a huge application, it’s perfect.

Link: Soundation (web app) This is a great online application that also functions as a multi-track DAW. This means you can have several audio tracks playing at once.

The interface is attractive. It’s easy to record. Volume and pan automation are easy to perform. You can change the color of the tracks to keep them more organised. Time stretching is also supported and there are a range of effects and plugins.

There is an awesome looping feature reminiscent of Logic Pro. This application is geared just as much to music composition and arrangement as audio editing. Yet this may be it’s downfall when considered an audio editor – it’s features and workflow are perhaps better suited to arranging music. Link: Acoustica Basic (Windows) Easy to set up a project and start recording. It has a scrub tool which can be extremely useful! Unfortunately the basic edition does not support multi-tracking but there are some great analysis tools.

Best Audio Editing Software Reviews

This is also the only free audio editor that I have come across that comes with a convolution reverb (a special type of digital reverb you can use to semi-accurately model any room). You have to use your own impulse files though.

Link: Audio Cutter Pro (web app) If you just need to crop some tracks and add some fades, this tool is perfect. It’s simple, the interface is great and the keyboard controls are intuitive.

You can also import files from Dropbox or Google Drive so it fit’s in perfectly with cloud based storage. Link: Nero Wave Editor (Windows) Another simple and free audio editor. There’s nothing particularly special about this one, but it will meet basic audio editing needs. You can apply effects non-destructively which is pretty useful. You can also create your own presets.

Link: WaveShop (Windows) WaveShop supports multi-channel audio (up to 18 outputs) which could be useful in the right situation. It also claims to be ‘bit-perfect’, so samples aren’t changed needlessly.

I can’t think of any more reasons why you would want to use this over any of the other editors listed here. But it’s worth taking a look if you want a simple Windows application for basic audio editing. Link: Qtractor (Linux) A colourful and sleek UI, multi-track support and even a mixer! This one is perfect for Linux users. Unfortunately I don’t have anything running Linux so I can’t give this a try myself. It has some great reviews though.

Link: Audio MP3 Cutter Mix Converter (Android) If you need to make edits on the move, check out this Android app. It has over 1 million downloads, 55,000 ratings and a range of features. Link: The Top 3 Editors for Musicians There are a lot of options out there. It can be overwhelming. I tried every editor on this list, and narrowed it down to the top 3. Find out what they are here. Thanks for wonderful article.

Noticed, BLUEJAY was missing from review: Nut shell: Low overhead, high performance music player: DJ, Edit, Play mp3,wav,wma,cd,midi,mod,more music files in rack style with 14 audio components + new DX-DYNAMITE Digital Effects Crossover. Developed with real DJ’s, enjoy exciting track to track fades. 10-band programmable EQ. 16 polyphonic wave players, spectrum analyzer, favorites, hotkeys, presets, options, lots of options. Extract audio from CD too. BLUEJAY, a must have.

Wavepad is an NCH product. NCH will load trojans that are extremely annoying. They are so bad that some Anti-virus programs like Avast will identify them as malware and block their operation. Unistalling an NCH program will NOT uninstall the malware.

You will have a learning curve getting rid of the leftover trojans. One annoying feature is it hijacks your default opening applications for things like photos, even tho you arent using the NCH product. NCH are unethical and a real pain. Not recommended. It’s like none of these editors had someone thinking “What would be the best keyboard-shortcuts or mouse-options to do this with?

What would be the easiest, and fastest operating user interface for this option?” Funny how nobody mentions Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge, GoldWave or Cool Edit as historic legends in that aspect. I still use older free copies of those, they work just fine in Windows 7 x64.

Especially fairly recent Sony Sound Forge has a still unmatched UI! I have tried and used them all, mostly professionally, but also for home/studio/radio work. Sound Forge beats them all in logical thinking, and it makes the work so much more pleasant to do. I always seem to run back to Sound Forge, no matter what I try on other bulky editors with strange quirks or weird looking interfaces, SF does it faster, you can customize literally everything of it (also colors/sizes) and seems more lightweight, even though its disk-footprint definitely is not, it uses RAM way more efficiently than others.

Even Audacity does really bad in that area. You need lots of RAM for that to run smoothly. I tried to find free equals to SoundForge, but I have yet to bump into one. I luckily still have a registered copy from way back when it was cheaper.

Its price-tag now is just bordering on insanity. If you want the noise reduction / noise filtering plugin, you immediately need to pay up for the Pro version at Magix, which costs around 400 USD now. Seriously, who’s going to pay such ludicrous amounts for something as basic as audio-editing? I’d much rather have paid Sonic Foundry around 80 euros or something, and then have THEM update Sound Forge with their mindset and dedication. Ever since they sold it to SONY, it has gone downhill in many ways, especially in their pricing. As a music teacher, I have some unusual requests!! First, it needs to be ridiculously easy, almost like a toy.

Second, It would be extremely wonderful if sharing (importing/exporting/previewing) clips were easy as well. I’m thinking something like “Padlet” for audio. Make a clip, post to a wall of clips from your classmates. Import/export clips in and out of your tool, remix, edit, etc. Each student make his/her own song made from shared samples.

Hya-wave looks promising! Any thoughts about how I might make learning en masse easier is appreciated! I experimented with two programs recommended here.

I am not a PC novice but definitely I am a novice at video & audio editing. I started with something I expected to be dead simple: remove the introductory audience clapping from trumpet piece. I also needed to eliminate this same clapping at the end of the piece. Once I got used to the principles employed to do this ( fairly intuitive but definitely not “simple”), i immediately noticed that I could not do these tasks with any precision.

Moving a cursor can’t easily be done within one or two second accuracy on a 16 min track. So after multiple attempts I had a track which was almost as I wanted it. All this took well over an hour & to me looks like a fundamental weakness in the two programs tried.

Both were said to be easy to use. Many other oddities found which would make both programs not practical for the occasional user who might easily forget the step details. Bearing my experience in mind I am not impressed with the contents of the reviews here which look as though they are copied from the marketing department.

I am sorry to say that you totally missed the point with Wavosaur and here is why: Your November 2017 updated article doesn’t mention that Wavosaur was updated to version 1.3 in 2017 and now works flawlessly in 32 bit AND 64 bit. Wavosaur has more tools and helpful calculators than most of the other editors (among which I use audacity and Ocenaudio for different matters). It has many decent though minimal real time and offline monitoring visualization and statistic rendering and gets the job done. Last but not least, it loads up to 255 VSTs in Rack as FX-chains (with re-ordering, mute/solo function) open/save FXB/FXP which is a HUGE advantage for flexibility.

It allows any kind of non destructive sound design and processing. None of the other free editors can beat this one on this aspect of edition I believe. It makes mastering tasks a breeze and super fast. Its biggest drawbacks is that it doesn’t edit metadata and doesn’t import as many format such as flac. Still, Wavosaur is some kind of Soundforge made free. You really can’t go wrong with this one. PS: There is no free versions of Acoustica since version 7, which IMO makes Wavosaur it’s direct replacer.

Hello, Thanks for the great list! A question though to you, if I may: I have multiple recordings of a single conference at different locations according to the speakers.

Of course if they all used the microphone there won’t be any issues however, that was not the case. With that being said, would there be an optimal software where I would upload all the audio files in multi tracks and with a single function would enable me to have a single final audio file where the software would only take the clearest pitches of each sound file? In other words, say speaker A would speak in Audio File A. It’s not that Speaker A would be speaking all the time during the Conference. Would there be an existing software or function where the software would automatically crop the high pitches, the actual speaking voices and edit/crop them into a single file? I’ve been struggling with this problem for quite some time and for ever similar occasion had to simply resort to manual options where it would take me nights after nights for the editing. And the backside would be that there would eventually be some howling esp on the latter part of the file.

So, if you could help or give me any kind of advice, that would be mostly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance! I’ve been using Audio Cleaning Lab by Magix for a number of years. I’ve used several versions of it, and use it to edit and clean up recordings of sermons for our church. Recently I’ve also started to add music/speaking introductions and conclusions to the sermons, as well. After using it as much as I have, I am very comfortable making edits. It has some limitations, in that it will only work with two stereo tracks and only record one source at a time (mono/stereo).

The nice features include the ability to cut out individual pops/clicks down to fractions of a second, fading in/out of the multiple tracks included in a recording, normalizing volume (selectable), expandable timeline to facilitate accurate edits, multiple built-in cleaning filters (completely adjustable), and a free downloadable 30-day unrestricted demo that becomes the full version upon purchase of the license/registration. I need to record four tracks simultaneously using the Behringer UMC404HD.

I was assured by several dealers before buying it that this would work but it doesn’t. Audacity says this is because the (program) needed (maybe ASIO) needs to be paid for. This implies to me that NO free recording programs can record more than two track at a time. This seems a basic requirement but it is rarely mentioned in articles, reviews, and ads. It’s rarely mentioned in regards to budget-priced programs either.

Even expensive programs do not provide a list of the digital interfaces they will recognize. I’m pretty puzzled by this.

Easy Free Audio Editing Software

Not quite Terry. The reason Audacity doesn’t have ASIO support built-in is not because it’s free but because it’s open source. Including ASIO as it stands would violate either the GNU license rules or Steinberg’s license – a bit of a catch-22. You can get Audacity with ASIO if you compile it yourself and add in the ASIO plug-in and promise not to distribute it to anyone else. Compiling Audacity from scratch is, it seems to me, not something to be taken lightly. So, free doesn’t mean no ASIO. I’ve found a mixer/editor called MixPad by NCH which purports to support ASIO and multi-track recording and editing.

First though I need a decent audio interface to connect to it. Hi, I’ve been trying out a few of these free DAWs, using my laptop with windows 8.1 and my focusrite 18i20 and I haven’t had much luck with anything free thus far. Studio one was a big disappointment because you go through the trouble of signing up, installing it and setting it up and then after a while you realize that it limits you to two tracks. There’s just stuff like that. The best thing to do is just buy the full version Reaper. It runs on anything–mac, pc, linux–and it’s very smooth and runs on my systems.

Where as protools and cubase are huge hogs on your system and bug you endlessly with registration related stuff. I can’t stand protools especially. Honestly I’m thinking of going to logic pro, after many years of messing around with windows apps. Your are wrong about Studio One limiting you to 2 tracks. It’s unlimited even in the free Prime version and as of version 3.52 the Arranger track is now included in this free version. Here’s a short summery. Studio One Prime Highlights “Studio One Prime does not time out, feature a nag screen, or limit the number of songs you can create.

Record and mix with no limit on the number of simultaneous tracks, plug-in inserts, or virtual instruments. Create songs quickly with Studio One’s fast drag and drop workflow, and newly enhanced browser for accessing backing tracks, plug-ins and more. Get inspiring sounds with the new Presence XT sampler featuring a rich 1.5 GB sampler library. Sweeten your mix with nine PreSonus Native Effects™ audio plug-ins that cover all the bases. Access the power of a real DAW with real-time time stretching, resampling, and normalization; single and multitrack comping; multitrack track transform (advanced freezing), and Control Link controller mapping. Expand Studio One Prime with more Presence XT libraries and professional loop content, purchasable directly from within the Studio One browser. I loved your article and I was wondering if you could help save all these hours that I am spending looking for an online solution.

I would like to stream but my voice (45 yrs old) is not great. I would like to make my voice more attractive to the audience. I am looking for a real time voice editor/changer as I hate the way my voice sounds.

The Voice changers that I have downloaded make my voice sound so fake and in order to try a product I am prompt to buy it. I dont mind spending money on buying a product as long as I know that it will work in real time streaming and the result wont sound fake or like Im an Alien/Robot. I would really owe you a huge favour if you could please please help me.