Audio editing software

Make and mix unique music. Create podcasts. Record or convert speech and other tracks. Audio editing software gives you the tools you need to manipulate and work with sound on your computer - no matter whether you’re a budding musician or simply need to tidy up audio files for your MP3 player.

Audio editing software explained

Although audio editing software has long been used by professionals, recent years have seen it become much cheaper and easier to get to grips with.

It still takes time for newcomers to learn how to use audio editing software for complex tasks, like mixing tracks together. But even beginners can easily carry out simple jobs, like removing hiss from a recording.

Mixing, cutting and filtering sound

The key functions of audio editing software are:

• Cutting and slicing files – so you can chop out unwanted portions of a recording or combine chunks of different recordings together.
• Mixing different tracks – for instance, allowing you to lay a recording of your speech on top of some background music.
• Audio filtering – this lets you emphasize or reduce parts of the sound, or change its characteristics. For instance, you could add bass or remove hiss.

Importing and saving audio

It’s important your audio editing software can handle the type of audio you need it to. Most software can work with all common sound file types, including WAV, MP3, WMA, OGG and MIDI.

If you plan to make your recordings available on the internet, it’s especially important your software can save in the efficient MP3 format. This keeps the file size to a minimum for easy downloading.

In addition, think about other ways you might want to get audio into your computer. As well as opening existing sound files, good audio editing software will allow you to record directly from a microphone or to import music from an audio CD.