1. Adobe Audio Editing Software Download
2. Adobe Voice Editing Software
3. Adobe Voice Editing Software Pc
4. Adobe Audio Editing Software For Mac
5. Adobe Voice Editing Software Online

This week, we are going to dive into voice editing software. Some of the big players in the industry are Voco, lyrebird, Wavenet & Baidu all of which are making it possible for individuals to capture speech samples and use those samples to mimic and create speeches or statements that individuals never said.

A professional audio workstation. Create, mix, and design sound effects. Edit, mix, record and restore audio. Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing and restoring audio content. This powerful audio workstation is designed to accelerate video production workflows and audio finishing — and deliver a polished mix with pristine sound.

I’m pretty excited to be covering this. Let’s jump right in!

Voice editing software has been around for quite some time, we use it to while making movies, podcasts, radio ads as well as a whole bunch of other creative projects.

Software such as Audacity, or Adobe Audition have made it incredibly easy for individuals to produce quality audio content basically forever. The one problem that creatives run into while editing is that sometimes they recording ends up being unusable for various reasons.

For instance, during an interview the speaker mumbles or a key statement is inaudible, or even that the recording became corrupted or destroyed at some point after and redoing the whole interview to get a sound bite is just impossible.

Well companies recognized these issues and formulated a solution. In late 2016 Adobe made the announcement during their Sneak Peaks event that led to some wide spread concern.

They were developing voice editing software named Project Voco that could take a sample of someone’s speech, then analyze and alter the sample to include words that were never in the speech to begin with and would sound exactly like the person.

BBC covered the event in an article that states the following:

“At a live demo in San Diego on Thursday, Adobe took a digitized recording of a man saying 'and I kissed my dogs and my wife' and changed it to say 'and I kissed Jordan three times. The edit took seconds and simply involved the operator overtyping a transcript of the speech and then pressing a button to create the synthesized voice track.”

The new audio sample would be almost indistinguishable from the original and as they improve on the software, the synthesized audio could one day be impossible to identify.

Around the same time, Google announced a rival software called Wavenet. The software which has been researched and developed by the company deepmind can be described as follows.

“WaveNet, is a deep generative model of raw audio waveforms. WaveNets are able to generate speech which mimics any human voice and which sounds more natural than the best existing Text-to-Speech systems, reducing the gap with human performance by over 50%.”

From my understanding, Wavenet takes the sample, analyzes the waveform for patterns and then uses this information to create a pattern to the sample. This pattern is then used when creating new audio by predicting what the next bit will should sound like to fit with the original sample. The deepmind website does an incredible job explaining their development and research process. The link is in the show notes on Lshompole.com if you’d like to read through it for a deeper understanding.

Shortly after the announcements of both Google and Adobe, another company jumped into the ring. Lyrebird, a small Canadian company came out the gates with significant improvements to Adobes’ Voco Project. Lyrebird would only need to capture 60 seconds of sample speech to be able to convincingly mimic and alter the sample.

Not only that, Lyrebird also added emotion to the tech. The software can infuse emotion that was not originally in the sample to the new synthesized speech!

Sure, there are a lot of great uses for this technology. James Vincent, a writer for “The Verge” spoke with Lyrebird reps early in 2017 shortly after the string of announcements from Google & Adobe. The Lyrebird reps said that “The resulting speech can be put to a wide range of uses, says Lyrebird, including “reading of audio books with famous voices, for connected devices of any kind, for speech synthesis for people with disabilities, for animation movies or for video game studios.”

Google now also boasts that this tech can be used to improve AI customer service speech, and from their website there’s not much of a mention of the negative uses for this technology.

And on the Adobe blog, the company described the very issue I brought up earlier this episode.

“When recording voiceovers, dialogue, and narration, wouldn’t you love the option to edit or insert a few words without the hassle of recreating the recording environment or bringing the voiceover artist in for another session? #VoCo allows you to change words in a voiceover simply by typing new words.”

Voco would make the lives of every audio creative simpler, easier, and more efficient. This is undoubtedly true. After the initial learning curve podcasters, voiceover creatives, Movie producers and musicians will have more options when it comes to their art.

Although the benefits of this tech are substantial, the possibility for misuse is significant. This software does pose some substantial ethical dilemmas and will lead to significant changes in how we interact with information.

The ones that I find the most intriguing and most likely are

1. Hacking

2. Misinformation and spread of propaganda

3. The impact on evidence and the ability to identify fake audio

4. The simultaneous use of video editing & voice editing software and its impact on our understanding and perception of the real world

Let’s start off with hacking.

For quite some time, biometrics and voice analytics has been used as a method to verify an individual’s identity. The U.S government has been using tech at border crossings since 1996. Currently some banks also use it to identify callers.

“In May 2013 it was announced that Barclays Wealth was to use passive speaker recognition to verify the identity of telephone customers within 30 seconds of normal conversation.[15] The system used had been developed by voice recognition company Nuance (that in 2011 acquired the company Loquendo, the spin-off from CSELT itself for speech technology), the company behind Apple'sSiri technology. A verified voiceprint was to be used to identify callers to the system and the system would in the future be rolled out across the company.”

So what happens when your voice sample is used to hack into your bank account?

With a software like Lyrebird, all a hacker would need to do is call you up on the phone and keep you on the line for 60 having a regular conversation.

Or in a simpler example, they could be one of your Instagram followers waiting for you to post a 1-minute long video hanging out and talking to your friends. That’s all that the software would need to be able to effectively synthesize any and everything that could be said. In the future, this technology will even be able to use your voice, emotion and all, to speak clearly and believably in any language known to man.

Adobe and Lyrebird have both addressed the possibility of hackers using their software to access individual’s personal information or credentials. Both companies are also taking very different approaches to safeguarding our data.

Adobe is researching and developing a digital watermark that would allow voice biometric software to detect when their voice editing software is being used.

However, my concern is that the digital watermarking tech will always have to stay ahead of any hacking tech that is developed to outsmart it. I expect that no matter how complex and intelligent the watermark, there will always be a hacker out there capable of circumventing the security as we have seen with just about any technology currently available to us.

Lyrebird takes a different approach; they intend to make their software completely available to everyone.

The Verge article states that Lyrebirds “solution is to release the technology publicly and make it “available to anyone.” That way, they say, the damage will be lessened because “everyone will soon be aware that such technology exists”

While speaking to “The Verge” Alexandre de Brébisson of Lyrebird adds: “The situation is comparable to Photoshop. People are now aware that photos can be faked. I think in the future, audio recordings are going to become less and less reliable [as evidence].”

While making everyone aware that audio can be faked is a first step to protecting individuals from falling victim to hacking, it doesn’t do much more than that.

Individuals will just be more aware that at any moment, their voice can be used to con companies into believing that they authorized things like wire transfers or removed fraud notifications on their bank accounts via a phone call.

Now the possibility of misinformation and spread of propaganda through audio editing and video editing is my favorite

In another article on “The Verge” by James Vincent we saw just how easy it can be to edit voice and video to create a buzz through society. In the article discussing the Adobe demo with Jordan Peele, James Vincent writes:

“Using some of the latest AI techniques, Peele ventriloquizes Barack Obama, having him voice his opinion on Black Panther (“Killmonger was right”) and call President Donald Trump “a total and complete dipshit.”

The video was made by Peele’s production company using a combination of old and new technology: Adobe After Effects and the AI face-swapping tool FakeApp. The latter is the most prominent example of how AI can facilitate the creation of photorealistic fake videos. It started life on Reddit as a tool for making fake celebrity porn, but it has since become a worrying symbol of the power of AI to generate misinformation and fake news.”

Sure, using this audio software by itself is believable, but imagine having video that reinforces and matches the message. Obama discussing Black Panther can be deemed harmless.

But Donald Trump effectively declaring the onset of World War 3? That video would be viral in seconds and the consequences can be extreme.

Our ability to judge the authenticity of information we receive through the internet is falling short with every improvement on technology and AI.

Every single round of software updates to technology like Lyrebird or Project Voco will mean that more and more of us are unable to take in information and come to a true conclusion.

As we saw during the 2016 election – and as I covered in Episode 7 – where Russian Bots were used to effectively change the outcome of the presidential election in the U.S.

The use of voice editing would have a tenfold effect on society. Audio is better understood and believed. Additionally, used in conjunction with bots, edited/synthesized video & the internet, we could find ourselves in a mess all from the spread of fake news (as Trump calls it).

Last of all, lets discuss the impact on evidence.

Video and audio has been used for years in trials, disputes, and even for insurance claims.

The ability to record sound and video as an event occurs has been incredibly valuable for not only police officers and judges, but also for the media.

As human beings, seeing and hearing is believing. So what happens when the audio is altered. What happens if let’s say during a recorded interaction between a police officer and an individual the conversation that originally occurred is altered to make it so that the individual sounds to be uncooperative, or threatening.

What happens when in that interaction, the police officer ends up shooting and killing the individual.

What happens when that altered audio is now used as evidence in a case?

The possibility of evidence tampering is significant and it’s safe to say that there is enough of a motive and incentive in these types of cases for tampering to occur.

Lyrebird, Adobe’s Project Voco, and Google’s Wavenet create opportunity. Both good and bad.

In my opinion, as technology develops, the need for ethical guidelines and regulations increases. Companies should be required to consider the negative consequences of developing new tech. They should also be able to produce effective methods that work to identify the misuse of their technology and provide protection in those cases.

At the moment the only one of these products that are available on the market, though not the complete version, is Google’s Wavenet. A portion of the software is available through Google’s Could Text to Speech site where users can enter in text and use the software to convert the text to speech in a multitude of languages varying in speed and tone.

Lyrebird and Adobe’s Project Voco are both not yet available to the public and pricing has yet to be discussed. Although according to the article by Vincent, Lyrebirds “de Brébisson says more than 6,000 individuals have signed up for early access to its APIs, and Lyrebird is working to improve its algorithms, including adding support for different languages like French. “This technology is going to happen,” says de Brébisson. “If it’s not us it’s going to be someone else.”

While an Adobe Spokesperson has mentioned that no official ship date has been announced for Project Voco, but in the meantime, Adobe is focusing on researching the digital watermarking tech that will allow individuals to know when their voice editing software is being used.

So at this moment since none of this tech is available for regular use, there is no tips for protection that I could make for you to implement.

Once this software is released I intend on revisiting and updating you all on how to better protect yourself.

I hope that you found this interesting, and if you want to know more you can head over to Lshompole.com where I have a whole bunch of links to articles and other information about voice editing software.

As always if you have any stories about your interaction with tech companies, apps or gadgets that you want to share with me or Creepy Tech Listeners, please send your story or audio clip over to WYN@Lshompole.com and I will feature it on an upcoming episode.

If you enjoyed this episode please head over to the iTunes podcasting app and rate, review and subscribe. I just got the first to ratings for Creepy Tech and it definitely made my day! Thank you!

Hope to have you back next Tuesday!

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What is the best software to edit audio? Asking the question is like searching for a best cast iron pan for cooking. The quality of the pan matters, yet it is the person holding that pan that makes all the difference.

This post gathers standalone audio editing software for users at different skill levels, from simple program with merely cutting and splicing features, to wave editors with advanced features for restoration and fixing, as well as DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) with multi-track editor and music production features.

Please note that the list is not in the order of importance, because each tool has a different market to entertain, and thus different feature sets. Comparing 'audio editors with some DAW functions' with a 'DAW with editing functions' isn't a level playing field. You can use multiple tools for different situations.

1. Audacity

Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux

Price: Free

Pros:

• Open source and free with decent functions of editing, recording and applying effects.
• Lightweight for low-specs computer.
• Support VST plug-ins and MIDI files.

Cons:

• The UI is less enjoyable comparing to other tools in this list.
• Less stable for complex multi-track projects, might lead to file corruption occasionally.
• Require downloading codecs to export files in certain format.

Audacity is standalone audio editing software with recording, remixing and VST features. This lightweight tool uses few computational resources, and is quite robust with it functionality. It is possibly the most popular cross-platform audio editor among beginners and hobbyist, because it is completely free and works equally well as other premium programs.

Basic edits such as cutting, trimming and splitting audio are easy to handle. You can make recordings for podcasts, video games and audible books, remove noise, and assemble audio clips easily in Audacity. For advanced users, Audacity also supports large amount of plug-ins for new effects.

For recording, Audacity supports up to 192,000Hz sample rate, and at 24-bit depth. You can record multiple channels at once, with level meters that monitor the volume and prevent audio clipping [1] and other problems. Professional recordings sound great not only because of microphone and other equipment, but also thanks to editing techniques. Audacity has a decent compressor built-in to dynamically adjust the volume of your recordings according to the threshold, compress ratio and other settings.

For noise reduction, Audacity offers you a handy wizard to remove sibilance, rumbles, plosives and background noises, or remove vocals from a song for karaoke. You only need to record a few seconds of 'Silence' on the audio track, and let Audacity to analyze this sample. You can tinker with the settings to clear up the noise from your environment, or simple go ahead with the default settings.

Audacity has an impressive library of effects, such as fade in and out, auto duck, and amplifier. You can also use the envelope tool to create audio panning effects, which gives the listener an illusion of 3D space where sound moves back and forth between the left and right side of your headset.

This program also supports VST plug-ins, making it as versatile as some of its paid counterparts. That being said, its main gig remains editing and recording, and may fall short on industry-level music production. For instance, even though Audacity optimized the compressor with threshold and attack settings back in 2009, it still lacks the real-time preview when the compressor [2] starts working.

Please note that default effects in Audacity are destructive: once you save and close the file, there is no way to go back to the original version. If you record and edit your audio file in Audacity, make sure to create a backup file, i.e. simply duplicate it to another track.

To wrap up, Audacity is the Go-to free audio editing software for beginners and hobbyists. There are abundant free tutorials and forums for you to get the rope of audio editing, without spending a dime. Once you get familiar with those sliders and parameters, knowing what decisions to make and how to make adjustments accordingly, you will find Audacity limits your creative power. At that time, you could go a step further and move to advanced DAWs.

2. Adobe Audition

Supported OS: Windows, Mac

Price: $20.99/month for the single app | $52.99/month for Creative Cloud

Pros:

• Powerful audio repairing and fixing functions with precise control.
• Deep integration with other Adobe programs such as Premiere Pro.
• Handy features for podcast production such as auto-ducking music when the sound tracks are triggered.

Cons:

• Subscription-based license is pricey if you are working on your own.
• No music creation tools and the MIDI support is less desirable.
• Not for casual users and beginners.

Adobe Audition is a powerful audio editor for audio restoration, video post production and podcast recording and editing. It does everything Audacity does, and offers more comprehensive features in terms of audio editing. Yet it lacks music composition tools comparing to a professional digital audio workstation (DAW). If Audacity is on the side for free audio editing, and DAWs on the other side for professional music production, then Adobe Audition sits in between in a category of its own.

Audition is the rebranded version of the much-loved Cool Edit by Syntrillium Software, which was acquired by Adobe in 2003. It naturally inherent the dual design of waveform editor and multi-track editor, allowing you to make precise and granular control over the audio and mix multiple sound tracks. Using the waveform editor, you can easily cut and trim individual sound track, correct and repair problematic audios [3], apply sound effects, add reverbs and change pitch manually. The multi-track editor in Audition does a nice job for remixing. There are powerful EQ controls for each channel, envelopes for automating mixes, and loop tools.

Multi-track recording is the feature that wins favor with many podcasters and content creators. In Audition, you can record on multiple tracks with several microphones, and that gives you a lot of control and flexibility. Let's say you are hosting a roundtable-style discussion show, you can assign separate EQ (Equalization) [4] for each track and record individual speakers directly into the multi-track.

For videographers, the vast library of sound effects and VST extensions bring more possibilities to spice up your sound track of a video. You can add telephone filter effects, underwater sound, or add reverbs to simulate the sound in a certain environment. The best thing is, effects applied to the multi-track editor are non-destructive. You can freely play around with an effect and undo it at any time.

Audition has a text-to-speech generator built-in. You can paste text and let Audition create a realistic voice-over from that content. The tool taps on the audio libraries on your system to create the synthesized voices, and thus there is a difference in the resulting audio on Windows and Mac.

In a word, Adobe Audition is the powerhouse for audio editing and repairing, and it does an excellent job with audio recording. The subscription-based license is pricy, but that doesn't prevent Audition from being one of the best audio editing software on this list. This program is nice to use in the workflow of video post production, with the handy dynamic link to switch to and from Adobe Premiere. However, it's less likely that a music studio would base its whole workflow around Audition. It is not designed with music production in mind.

3. Ocenaudio

Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux

Price: Free

Pros:

• Freeware with features enough for basic audio editing.
• Real-time previewing of effects and adjustments.
• Customizable hotkeys to speed up your audio editing workflow.

Cons:

• No multi-track handling and envelope tool.
• Lack of instructions or user guide from the official site.
• Does not support CD burning or ripping tools.

Ocenaudio is the best audio editing software for beginners. It is the brainchild of a Brazilian research group at LINSE. This tool is developed for tasks such as audio editing, spectral analysis and audio signal generation. If you are looking for a free audio editor that are intuitive and easy to use, Ocenaudio ranks high on the list.

This program is lightweight and responsive. It loads and quits very quickly, and it is also able to handle large files. For beginners, there is no sight of daunting sliders and parameters to scare you away, no matter you are here to trim and merge audios, or make a spectral analysis for phonetic studies. For advanced users, Ocenaudio excels at quick audio editing and processing work, especially when you are not in the mood to open a full DAW for a simple task.

An instance of quick editing is the multi-selection feature. In this program, you can select multiple silent parts indicated by the wave, and hit Delete to quickly cut them all at once. This is a time saver if you are editing podcasts or interviews that have many pauses and silent sections.

The best part about Ocenaudio is the ability to apply effects and filters with real-time preview. Thanks to that, you can make timely adjustments and listen to the outcome simultaneously. Here is another smart move: it automatically creates a backup of your audio file, so that you don't need to worry about destructive editing.

Other handy features include iPhone ringtone support, VST plug-ins, insert digital noise, edit MP3 metadata, etc. In short, you can use it as a simplified alternative to Cool Edit.

4. Wavosaur

Supported OS: Windows

Price: Free

Pros:

• Free and lightweight.
• Real time preview and ASIO support.

Cons:

• No Mac version currently.
• The interface is archaic, and the interaction is less intuitive if you are from the Cool Edit world.
• You might need to download and install additional codec when exporting mp3 files.

Wavosaur is a portable audio editor with the mere size of 1MB, lightweight enough that you can put it in a memory stick and edit audio on the go. Despite an interface that makes Wavosaur a dinosaur (pun intended) among other choices, this program is still a fully featured audio editor that supports VST plugins, ASIO driver and multichannel files. You can find the VST plug-ins on their site, ranging from VST compressor, limiter and equalizer to reverb, autotune, and chorus tools.

If you are not familiar with all those acoustic theories to navigate around VST, you can simply use Wavosaur as a basic mp3 cutter and editor. You can convert audio file format, crop out unwanted parts, normalize audio, or use the envelope tool to manipulate volume. Same as Ocenaudio, Wavosaur also supports real-time effect processing. You can hear the difference instantly.

5. WavePad

Supported OS: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android

Price: $24.9 Standard Version | $34.9 Master Version

Pros:

• Wide choice of cleanup tools to enhance your audio recordings.
• Ready-to-use iPhone ringtone templates.
• Support CD input and burning.

Cons:

• Only works with a single audio track (though you can batch process multiple single tracks), no multi-track editor.
• Could be inefficient if you have huge piles of audio pieces to work with.

As the name suggests, WavePad is an audio waveform editor for single track editing. It can be a good companion for voice recordings and editing. You can cut out sections from the recordings, insert another audio piece into the existing work, or splice several audio clips into one entire track.

There are a handful of cleanup tools and filters to manipulate your audios. You can use the noise removal tool, compressor, amplifier, and high pass & low pass filters to achieve the desired result. However, if you have a trained ear and want to take the audio editing to the next level, you won't be able to find more advanced tools that other professional music editing software provide. For instance, the program doesn't include low shelf & high shelf pass or bell filters.

Besides audio recording and editing, there are handy tools for spectral analysis, text to speech synthesis and voice changing. You can also batch export and convert audio files to WAV, MP3, OGG, M4R, AAC, FLAC and several more.

6. GoldWave

Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android

Price: $45 one time purchase | $15 per year

Pros:

• Detailed guide and active forum to solve your problems.
• Affordable program with decent features.

Cons:

• No multi-track editor or optical media burning capability.
• The program might slow down if you are working with large files.

Initially released in 1993, GoldWave is a dated but robust audio editing software. It is created for various tasks from the simplest recording and editing to more sophisticated audio restoration and enhancement. Despite its obsolete GUI design, this veteran program offers wide possibilities for small groups and home use.

The program offers a handy feature for voice recording, where you can let it to start recording when there are voices. In that way, there won't be long pauses and silent part. The feature can be found in the level-activated function, with settings for decibel level that determines when to record. Another nice feature is the ability to remaster the old vinyl records and tapes. Once the audio is recorded, you can use GoldWave to enhance and restore it. There are noise reduction and filters that clean the click and pop vinyl recordings.

For audio editing and enhancement, you can use equalizer and compressor with visual display. It also offers you a wide selection of FX, including pitch, flanger and mechanize effect. You can add reverberation, time warp, and fade in and out effects to spice up your audio files. With precise controls, filters and analyzers, it allows you to meet the demand if you are submitting audio files with strict requirements.

7. Acon Digital Acoustica

Supported OS: Windows, Mac

Price: $59.9 Standard Version | $199.9 Premium Version

Pros:

• Ability to batch apply effect chain to multiple audio clips makes it a big time saver.
• Powerful time stretcher tool to change the tempo.

Cons:

• Takes time and effort to dig through if you want to fully grasp the functions.
• Not for casual users and novices.

Acoustica is an advanced audio engineering program with editing, mastering and restoration capabilities. The clucky interface could be overwhelming until you learn its idiosyncrasies, and the dashboard is certainly not designed for novices trying to accomplish basic editings. With Acoustica, you can switch between waveform and spectrogram [5] for clip editing, cut, copy, insert and trim waveforms, use retouch tool to attenuate noise, add loops and fade. All your edits are non-destructive thanks to the program's high-quality editing engine.

For audio restoration, you can easily apply DeClick, DeClip, DeNoise, DeHum and more to clean up your clips and remove noise. Acoustic offers a wide variety of effects, from reverb to convolution reverb, flanger to phaser, and pitch change controls. With the right amount of adjustment, you can maintain the integrity and crispness of the audio file.

Note: Acoustica reviewed in the list is developed by Acon Digital, an Olso-based software producer. Please do not mistake it for Mixcraft 9 from Acoustica inc.

8. DVDVideoSoft Free Audio Editor

Supported OS: Windows

Price: Free

Pros:

• Free and lightweight.
• Option to change album art.

Cons:

• Cannot split stereo tracks to edit individually.
• Cannot preview the trimmed audio unless you export it.

Free Audio Editor by DVDVideoSoft is a barebone wave editor designed for quick cutting. It mainly helps you to split audio or delete unwanted sections. You can also set album art and edit audio metadata. The only filters or sound effects you can use is the volume control, which allows you to boost the volume up to 10x and then rebuild the audio waveform. There are several output formats to choose from, including AAC, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, M4B (iPhone audiobook), M4R (iPhone ringtone format), MP3, OGG and WAV.

9. Free Audio Editor from FAE Media

Supported OS: Windows, macOS

Price: Free

Pros:

• Easy to understand interface.
• Option to produce 24-bit or 32-bit audio files with up to 192kHz sample rate.

Cons:

• No audio restoration tools.
• Not suitable for multi-track audio mixing.

Free Audio Editor by FAE media is a lightweight wave editor for general users. If you still remember the good old Windows Movie Maker, you shall find this tool shares a similar design. All the basic tools you need are displayed under the menu bar. For editing, you can cut, delete, repeat or mix audio files, mute part of the section, or insert another file. For the effects, the normalizing tool and compressor are ready to use. You can add chorus, play around with flanger and reverb feature, or change the pitch and speed of the audio. It also allows you to grab audio from YouTube, CDs or video files.

10. Reaper

Supported OS: Windows, macOS

Price: Free Trial

Pros:

• It is stable, and you can record long audios, even in multi-track.
• Good integration with ASIO so that you can go live with streaming software such as OBS.
• Nice customization that will faster your workflow.

Cons:

• It is daunting for beginners and requires a steep learning curve.
• No 1-click restoration tool for the novices.
• Lacks a MIDI editing ability and there is no MIDI sample library.

Reaper is a robust free audio editing program for music creation and audio analysis. Stable, fast, and light on CPU are the re-occurring tags people in the industry assign to Reaper. It offers you a whole month to try the full features and see if it is engineered to your taste. The best part about Reaper is its open-ended nature. It supports endless extensions so that people with different needs can create custom tools that interact with the program. For instance, ReaPack, a package manager for Reaper, is one of the most popular extensions.

Reaper is a trust-worthy tool to quickly turn your ideas into musical creation, especially when you have the light-bulb moment. No matter you are editing the sound of a feature film, doing phonetics search and other scientific sound measurements, or creating multichannel and ambisonics, Reaper won't let you down.

11. MAGIX Sound Forge

Supported OS: Windows, macOS

Price: Free Trial

Pros:

• Make edits rapidly with the help of hotkeys and markers.
• Support large amount of VST plug-ins and in a well-organized manner.
• Useful for spoken audio due to the ease of editing features.

Cons:

• The ability to listen to VST effects in real-time is less desirable.
• You cannot chain VST effects, instead, you need to undo a certain effect.
• It is less flexible if you want to apply FX while keep recording the dry signal.

Sound Forge is a professional audio editing software for mastering, sound design and recording. It has been around for more than two decades, formerly developed by Sonic Foundry, then sold to Sony, and now owned by Magic Software GmbH. There are handy tools in SoundForge to create delay and reverb effects, including coreFX chorus, coreFX flanger, and coreFX delay. No matter you want the sound to be fuller, cooler, or dynamic, you will always find the desired FX to tweak with.

Sound Forge boasts of advanced recording tools to deliver high-quality audio. You can capture up to 32 audio channels in a customizable workflow that best suits you. It also supports threshold-triggered recording, so that you don't have to stay in the recording room to control everything. It also supports digitizing vinyl recordings into the working project.

The revamped graphical user interface is fully customizable, and the markers and hotkeys in Sound Forge can effectively improve your workflow. If you need to deal with numeral pieces of audio files, such as podcasts, interviews, and voiceovers, this tool can help you to make hundreds of edits without messing up.

12. AVS Audio Editor

Supported OS: Windows

Price: Free Trial

Pros:

• You can directly publish the finished audio to YouTube and other social media.
• Ready to use effects such as vibrato, chorus, flanger, pitch shift, and echo.
• Support mainstream audio and video formats.

Cons:

• Only works on Windows, and the license is bound to one PC.

AVS Audio Editor is beginner-friendly audio editing software. It supports all the basic edits you can perform to sound waves, such as cut, trim, or glue together multiple soundtracks. You can add audio files into the editing area, or extract audio directly using this tool, including ripping from CD, or separate soundtracks from movies. General functions such as audio fade in and out, adjusting the volume using the amplifier, or remove noises from the sample are readily accessible from the menu.

There are plenty of effects and settings to use, and you can also add external tools and effects using the VST/DX tab. For advanced users, you can use the equalizer to enhance the audio according to your own taste, and use the envelope tool to adjust the volume dynamically. A bonus feature is its ability to creating ringtones for an iPhone. You can record or import a piece of audio, trim it to the desired length, and then save it to the M4R format.

13. Apple GarageBand

Supported OS: macOS, iPhone and iPad

Price: Free

Pros:

• Free yet powerful to record, mix and edit music.
• Intuitive interface for beginners to start mixing and recording.

Cons:

• It is tricky to export the audio file if you are using an iPad. You can follow this guide to save Garageband as MP3.

GarageBand is a perfect free audio editing and production app, available on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. If you like the design of Logic Pro X, you will probably enjoy this free alternative. It supports recording an electronic guitar, bass, and other instruments. With microphones, you can also record vocals. To better tap on the features, you can use a USB-compatible MIDI keyboard and audio interface such as PreSonus for the setup.

Though GarageBand doesn't offer you everything a professional-level music software has, it still offers nice features such as creating a mixing, adding reverb effects, or panning tracks to create stereo sound. After recording the instruments and vocals, you can freely copy, paste, and arrange your creations.

14. HYA-WAVE Online Audio Editor

Supported OS: Online Tool

Price: Free

Pros:

• User-friendly interface for beginners.
• Deliver nice work with simple edits.

Cons:

• Doesn't support multi-track editing.
• Cannot load large audio files.

HYA-WAVE is one of the web-based wave editors that I turn to for quick editing. There are times when you don't want to launch up a full-blown desktop audio editor, and that's where HYA-WAVE comes to your aid.

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The interface is simple and easy to understand, and there is no steep learning curve for the novices. It is straightforward to copy, paste, trim or clear the audio waveform, as easy and stable as doing the edits on desktop-based applications.

You can also add live audio effects, and shuffle among numerous pre-sets to find a desirable one. HYA-WAVE has all those effects that you would find in an offline wave editor, such as the highpass filter, high-shelf filter, compressor, peak normalization, etc.Sharing your work is only a URL away. You can save the audio in the cloud, and publish it to Facebook and Twitter.

15. Soundation Multitrack Online Editor

Supported OS: Online Tool

Price: Free

Pros:

• Free and web-based tool; ideal for students, beginners, and hobbyists.
• Decent amount of effects and instruments to use, including some interesting synths and MIDI packs.

Cons:

• Cannot save projects automatically. You can lose your hard work when there is a glitch.
• The interface is not fully scalable so that some sections might be too small for aging eyes.

Soundation is an online editor to record, edit, and mix audio. Being free and easy to use, this tool finds its popularity among students in music classes. It only takes 5-15 minutes to set up, and once you get the hang of it, there will be so much fun to create your own music projects. Soundation makes it easy to collaborate. You can create groups, and members in the group can listen to each other's work and leave comments.

The workflow is basically the same if you are familiar with Ableton Live or Cubase. You can instantly start to record audio, use virtual instruments to create beat and melodies, and apply effects such as distortion, EQ, delay, flanger, etc. Soundation also offers a dazzling array of presets and loops, which can inspire you to create melodies even if you are a beginner.

The timestretch feature is quite handy for the users. You can import pre-recorded audio into Soundation, and it will timestretch the loops to match the tempo of your song.

Audio Editing Basics

[1] What is clipping in audio editing?

Audio clipping occurs when the intensity (interpreted as volume) falls outside the maximum or minimum limits. It could be audibly distorting to the degree that the listener can instantly hear the effects. Represented by audio meter, audio clipping occurs when the audio hit or exceed 0dB. In waveforms, clipping is the area where waves get clipping off, resulting in a flat plateau shape.

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Reducing the signal level can help you to avoid clipping. For instance, you can resort to volume envelope manipulation, or apply a compressor/limiter.

[2] Compressor: What is it and why it matters?

In audio editors and music production programs, a compressor helps to change the dynamic range (i.e. difference between the loudest and quietest parts) of a signal. To put it in plain language, it can boost or reduce the intensity of the audio. In that way, you can better level out, colour and manipulate the audio.

The compressor will not be working the entire time, it starts to react when the signal reaches the dB level you set (threshold). It doesn't start immediately, as there is an amount of time (attack) designated for it to react; and it doesn't stop immediately, as you can set how quickly or gradually the effect will disappear or linger (release).

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[3] What are you dealing with in audio repairing?

Background noises and undesirable sound from the equipment, low-frequency rumbling, hum from electrical interference, and s-sounds created by sibilance when you speak… these are examples of noises that can be picked up in recording. Audition possesses an arsenal of tools to clean and repair audio for better sound quality. The recent version also added a plugin to remove unwanted reverberation from the sound file.

You can use diagnostics panel and spectral frequency display to make decisions, and reach out for flexible restoration tools. Audition allows the finest control you could ever imagine. For instance, when applying noise reducing effects, you can adjust the opacity of the selected area to determine how intense the effects will be – a genius analogous and visualized way to handle sound as if you are dealing with colors.

[4] What does an equalizer do in audio editing?

The equalizer in audio editing software can boost or reduce a specific range of frequencies to alter the sound quality. There are four basic concepts in equalizer: type, slope, Q and gain. They affect and control different aspects when boosting or reducing the frequencies.

The type determines how you would like to affect the frequency. For instance, High-pass allows higher frequencies to pass and only affect lower frequencies (hence the alternate name Low-cut), and Low-pass does the opposite. Bell affects a specific point and its neighboring frequencies, creating a bell-shaped image. Shelf affects frequencies above or below an anchor frequency, and its image appears like a bookshelf, thus the name.

Gain determines how much gain or attenuate you want to reply, and it is measured by dB. Q factor can be simply understood as the range of influence to impose on a certain range of the spectrum.

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[5] Waveform vs Spectrogram

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Waveform displays the changes of a signal's amplitude changes over time. It is the ebbs and flows that you see in many editors, where the wider vertical lines indicating louder sound, and narrow vertical lines represent the opposite.

The spectrogram indicates amplitude at specific frequencies as it varies with time. With such a visual representation, it is handy to adjust or remove the amplitude of specific frequencies.