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Sony Vegas Pro has always been one of the best video editing software in the market. I love Sony Vegas Pro because of its built-in audio editing features. While other editing software like Final Cut and Premiere Pro provide some control over audio editing, Vegas Pro brings a full-fledged audio editor.
Jamie Lendino The Best Audio Editing Software for 2019 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. 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.
More by: 1 WavePad Free Audio Editor for Mac OS X is a studio audio editing software anyone can use. Whether you are a professional sound engineer or a casual home editor, WavePad has the powerful features and tools that you need to make your own custom sounds. Size: 2.2 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: NCH Software (nchsoftware.com) 2 Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows. With this cool audio editor, music editing will never be the hassle.
Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows Size: 8.1 MB, Price: USD $29.99, License: Shareware, Author: SED Company (soundeditordeluxe.com) 3 Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows. Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows. With this cool audio editor, music editing will never be the hassle.
Size: 8.1 MB, Price: USD $29.99, License: Free to try, Author: SED Company (soundeditordeluxe.com) 4 Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows. Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows.With this cool audio editor, music editing will never be the hassle.
Size: 9.1 MB, Price: USD $29.99, License: Shareware, Author: SED Company (soundeditordeluxe.com), 5 WavePad is audio editing software for Windows. This program lets you make and edit voice, music and other audio recordings.
You can cut, copy and paste parts of recording and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. Size: 505.7 KB, Price: USD $76.00, License: Shareware, Author: NCH Software (nchsoftware.com), 6 QuickAudio is audio editing software, allowing you to edit, play and record digital audio as well as convert between various popular audio formats. QuickAudio is audio editing software, allowing you to edit, play and record digital audio as well as convert. Size: 3.0 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: Sion Software (sionsoft.com), 7 Audio Editor Pro is a visual multifunctional audio editing software for Windows. Audio Editor Pro is a visual multifunctional audio editing software for Windows. It allows you to perform various operations with audio data such as displaying a waveform. Size: 6.9 MB, Price: USD $39.95, License: Shareware, Author: Mjjsoft.com (audio-ware.com), 8 Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows.
With this cool audio editor, music editing will never be the hassle. Sound Editor Deluxe is the visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows. Size: 8.1 MB, Price: USD $29.99, License: Shareware, Author: SED Company (soundeditordeluxe.com), 9 Full-featured digital audio editing software that offers a variety of audio recording, mixing, editing, analyzing and effects processing possibilities. It provides an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and is designed for the everyday user.
Size: 10.1 MB, Price: USD $29.95, License: Shareware, Author: MPEMedia Inc. (mp3editorpro.com), 10 Free Mac Data Recovery Software works perfectly well to recover deleted, formatted or inaccessible documents, photos, music, videos, emails and archive files. TogetherShare Data recovery free for Mac works perfectly well to recover lost photos, video. Size: 2.2 MB, Price: Free, License: Shareware, Author: TogetherShare (togethershare.com), 11 MovieMator Free Mac Video Editor is a powerful-yet- free video editing software for Mac, which is carried with 60+ professional-looking filters and transitions. Amazing home movies will be created in a few minutes with this free video editor for Mac. Size: 60.3 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: EffectMatrix Ltd.
(effectmatrix.com), 12 PhotoPad Free Photo Editing Software for Mac allows you to easily edit digital photos and other pictures. PhotoPad Free Photo Editing Software for Mac OS X supports all popular image file types. PhotoPad Free Photo Editing Software for Mac OS X. Size: 5.6 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: NCH Software (nchsoftware.com), 13 WavePad Free Audio Editor is a full-featured professional audio and music editor. You can record and edit music, voice, and other audio recordings. With this free software you can cut, copy, and paste parts of recordings.
WavePad is a sound editor program. Size: 1.1 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: NCH Software (nchsoftware.com), 14 Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data. You can use Power Sound Editor Free to record/edit your own music, voice, or other audio files.
Size: 13.6 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: PowerSE Studio (free-sound-editor.com), 15 Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data. You can use Power Sound Editor Free to record/edit your own music, voice, or other audio files.
Size: 13.6 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: PowerSE Studio (free-sound-editor.com), 16 Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data. Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports. Size: 13.6 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: PowerSE Studio (free-sound-editor.com), 17 WavePad is sound editing software for Mac OS X. This program lets you make and edit voice, music and other audio recordings.
You can cut, copy and paste parts of recording and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. Size: 2.2 MB, Price: USD $79.00, License: Shareware, Author: NCH Software (nchsoftware.com), 18 Being the best music and audio recording software for Mac OS computer, Leawo Music Recorder for Mac could easily record music and audio on Mac for people to enjoy more. Leawo Music Recorder for Mac (is the best. Size: 12.0 MB, Price: USD $19.99, License: Shareware, Author: Leawo Software Co.,LTd (leawo.org), 19 Wavosaur is a free and efficient audio editor for Windows: do digital audio editing and recording, add VST effects, repair and clean your audio, perform various operations with audio data, change sound in real time, masters your track, process your.
Size: 213.0 KB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: Wavosaur free audio editor (wavosaur.com), 20 Free Audio Editor is a multi-award winning audio editing software tool. Free Audio Editor is a multi-award winning audio editing software tool. The Free Audio Editor software includes a powerful MP3 editor feature that can edit MP3 as well as WMA, WAV. Size: 19.4 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: FAE Systems (free-audio-editor.com), 21 Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data. Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports. Size: 12.8 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: PowerSE Studio (free-sound-editor.com) 22 Free Audio Editor is a multi-award winning audio editing software tool. Free Audio Editor is a multi-award winning audio editing software tool.
The Free Audio Editor software includes a powerful MP3 editor feature that can edit MP3 as well as WMA, WAV. Size: 12.8 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: FAE Systems (free-audio-editor.com) 23 New generation music editing software EZ Audio Editor is a visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows.
New generation music editing software. EZ Audio Editor is a visual multifunction digital audio editing software for Windows.
Size: 7.3 MB, Price: USD $29.95, License: Shareware, Author: EZMedia (ezaudioeditor.com), 24 Audio Editor Plus is free, fully-functional multi-track digital audio editing software for Windows operating system.With Audio Editor you can open a lot of audio files like MP3,MP2,WAV,WMA,OGG,VOX,G726,RAW,DSS,CDA,MPC,PCM,GSM and more. Audio Editor Plus. Size: 11.3 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: OneStopSoft.com (OneStopSoft.com), 25 Feature-rich audio editing software solution that's designed for ease of use. Feature-rich audio editing software solution that's designed for ease of use. Create and edit music, voice recordings. For those that want a FREE basic audio editor.
Size: 15.4 MB, Price: Free, License: Freeware, Author: Code-it Software Solutions (code-it.com),.