can someone tell me what the best audio editing programs are? if you can, could you put the prices as well, personal opinions, etc...

This post has been edited by HTML_Guru: Oct 13 2005, 12:51 AM

It really depends how much you're expecting to pay and the type of work you want to use them for. For studio type work, where you record, put the recordings together and modify them to make a track you'd be expecting to pay about US$300 +. At our studio we use ProTools, which is a pretty good program.

If you just want to do more basic stuff, like make the track louder here and there, fade in or out and add a few basic effects, there's plenty of free programs out there. One of the most popular ones is Audacity, and another one I like for its sheer simplicity is WavePad, but WavePad only works in Windows.

I would recommend Cubase SX or Audio Logic if you need more than one audio channel. And if you need to edit only the whole recording (wav file), you can use WaveLab or Sound Forge.

For the prices check these websites:
http://www.steinberg.net/
http://www.apple.com/logic/
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/

Well unless you are strictly a professional I would use Audacity along with Lame (which encodes MP3s) and they are both free. I ofer them both on my web site and you could get them and see if that is what you are looking for. I use them to take on air recordings and clean them up and then compress them to MP3s shich is a great file savings without almost no noticable quality difference.
You can use this link Utilities Downloads and look for Audacity Audio Editor and Lame MP3 Encoder.

I use Adobe Audition or cool edit pro. Both have a very similar interface. With Audition you can save your files as basically any format.

I have GoldWave, I believe its a free downloadable program. But I hear Cool Edit is good. Really I mostly use CakeWalk Home Studio for most of my audio editing, but I only have that because I use it for recording stuff when I write music. I like it better, but its pretty expensive, so I would stick to the free or cheaper programs.

I found that the best audio editing and mixing(5. 1, 7.1) post production software is Steinberg Nuendo. You can check out proces for Nuendo and a bunch of other software and hardware at
http://www.pcaudiolabs.com

I have tried Pro Tool, Sonar, Cubase, Logic, Cakewalk, etc and found Nuendo to be the most versitle.

PC Audio labs also has great support. check 'em out.

I recommend audacity, site: http://audacity.sourceforge.net.

"Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems."

Second Reply and response AUDACITY http://audacity.sourceforge.net along with LAME encoding used by Winamp are the best free and without a doubt the BEST regardless of cost (Download them)

Just because something is free doesnot mean that it is garbage...

I could give a list of FREE programs that outdo most of the ones that charge you for the privlidge of owning them...but that might look like spam!

Audacity along with LAME is great - and open source - I use Audacity for cleaning up tracks as I have no other use for it.

If you don't want to use Audacity for some strange reason you could use Nero Wave Editor, but there's no point.