For most users, the needs of audio editing software fall somewhere inbetween Sound Recorder and Adobe Audition.  Thankfully you can do much better than Sound Recorder, but without any additional cost, as seen in the free and open-source, Audacity.




Available on virtually all platforms, Audacity is the hugely popular audio eeditor intially released in 2000.  It features a substantial list of features, including noise removal, support of several audio formats and qualities, change tempo without altering pitch, among others.


As a general-purpose tool, it will cover most needs quickly and easily.

For some reason, Sound Recorder was absolutely destroyed in Vista... you can't even compare it. All you've got is a record button, and you must save every file you play before you have a chance to listen through it. Sound recorder on every previous version of Windows was great, so I don't know why they decided to cut it down to a 1-feature program. It used to even have options to reverse, speed up, slow down. Hopefully they bring it back for Windows 7.

Audacity to me is basically Goldwave without all the crashing and annoying messages to buy it. The "change pitch" option works awesome. Recently I used the Noise Removal tool for my terrible, terrible new cartoon, and it worked really well for removing the background hum in that as well.

Can you edit out farting noises?

Can GG use it as a microphone?