Top 7 Free Audio Editing Apps

An audio editor is able to record audio, cut, copy and paste selections of audios, clean up unwanted noise, mix multiple sound tracks, add effects and convert between audio formats. You may know Windows Sound Recorder which can record voice but has no editing features existent. Then what software you can find when you want to edit audios and yet for free?
 

We have selected 7 free audio editing programs listed below with the applicable platform. Although these free editors are not as capable as the commercial and professional ones, they are enough to do some basic editing and add simple effects. You can try them and may find the one you like.
 

Audacity--Cross-platform

Simple, fast and very light weight, Audacity is one of the most popular free audio editors. It can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, change the speed or pitch of a recording, cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together and more features. On the download page, there are different plug-ins available for you to add extra effects, more audio generation and analysis capability to this app, and you can import or export additional formats by adding libraries .
 

Wavosaur—Windows

Wavosaur is the only software in this list that doesn’t need installation and yet powerful with tons of features including classic editing features: cut, copy, paste, paste mix, paste replace/insert, paste to new file, trim/crop, delete, undo and many advanced features. The audio formats it can handle are wav, mp3, aif, aiff, ogg vorbis, raw binary, au/snd, ADPCM Dialogic vox, Akai S1000 sample, Amiga 8svx & 16svx and wavpack. It also supports multichannel wav and VST plug-ins.

Wavepad Sound Editor—Windows/ Mac

WavePad Sound Editor is a professional audio and music editor with full features. After the basic sound editing: cut, copy, paste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim and more, you can add effects like echo, amplification, reverberation and noise reduction. The supported audio formats include wav, mp3, vox, gsm, wma, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and more. It is capable of processing batch audios up to 3200 files and allows being extended with VST plugins.
 

Ardour—Mac/ Linux 

As a digital audio workstation, Ardour can record, mix, edit, and arrange unlimited audio tracks and buses, in a word, to get everything done for the sound you what. For editing, You can drag, trim, split and time stretch recorded regions with sample-level resolution and with redo/undo abilities you can store different versions of a session. For audio mastering, it is fully integrated with all JACK applications. Other features include MIDI CC control with 1 click, Level 2 MIDI Machine Control, MIDI Timecode (MTC) Master or Slave and Video-synced playback, pull up/pull down and more. It accepts standard file formats such as BWF, WAV, WAV64, AIFF, CAF, etc. Supports for LADSPA & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LV2 ">LV2 as well as VST plugins are also available.

mp3DirectCut—Windows/ Linux with Wine

mpaDirectCut is a fast mp3 audio recorder and editor. You can directly cut, copy, paste, fade or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing, which can save the encoding time and is lossless to the original file. It allows easily splitting long files into separate small files by Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue. However, it is not a waveform editor, which means audio clean-up like click, hiss and noise removal is unavailable; it cannot read ID3v2 tags, either.
 

Wavesurfer—Cross-platform

With easy to use interface, Wavesurfer is a straightforward audio editor for both beginners and professional users. Adapted in different tasks, it can be used as a stand-alone tool to do speech/sound analysis and sound annotation/transcription, extended with other add-ons, or embedded in other apps. Its supported sound file formats are WAV, AU, AIFF, MP3, CSL, SD, Ogg/Vorbis, and NIST/Sphere. It can read and write transcription file formats including HTK (and MLF), TIMIT, ESPS/Waves+ and Phondat. Apart from basic editing operations, you can add effects such as fading, normalization, echo, inversion, reversal, replacement with silence, and DC-removal but no flange that musicians care.
 

LMMS—Cross-platform　

With the ability to let you produce music with your computer, LMMS is a free alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio. Music can be produced by creating melodies and beats with a Beat+Bassline-Editor, editing patterns and melodies with an easy-to-use Piano-Roll synthesizing and mixing of sounds with unlimited effects, arranging of samples and playing a MIDI keyboard. Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and MIDI, it supports LADSPA and VST plugins and allows importing MIDI and FLP (FruityLoops Project Files).