Audacity

Audacity

Price: $

Working with audio files is definitely no joke and plenty of people need to spend quite a few bucks for a proper audio editing program. It all depends on what one needs from the program.

If you are looking to become the next great indie music producer, you will definitely have to look for a more serious tool. On the other hand, if you need to quickly edit a couple of audio files, Audacity will probably satisfy your needs.

Audacity is a completely free, open-source audio editor and it has been around for a while. It's safe to say it's the most popular tool for the job. It's great for people who want to start their podcast or for anyone who wants to mix or record music on an amateur scale.

Starting to record is easy, as well as importing an audio track. The top menu provides helpful description for anything you want to do with the file. Worth mentioning is also that its editing is destructive, meaning that the alterations are made directly to the track data.

Audacity is available for all major operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its user interface is not flashy, but that is one of the reasons it can run on virtually any setup. Still, for a free editor, it's the number one tool for people who need to edit audio files on a daily basis without the need of professional features, such as vloggers and podcast owners.