How come none of you told me how amazing Audacity is and I had to find out on my own?
Jerks. This may be the best piece of freeware since WinZip or LView.
Audacity
by John Cole| 38 Comments
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Audacity
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cleek
Audacity is good.
Virtual Dub is really good, too (video editing)
PhoenixRising
Audacity is too powerful for mere mortals.
I killed a 40GB drive in a MacBook dead by trying to digitize Mrs Phoenix’s tape collection with it.
Luckily it was warranted and replaced later that day, before she got home from work, but a lesson was learned: Hard drives need a lil’ bit o space to load the OS.
Who knew?
PsiFighter37
Yes, it is very good. Welcome to the party. :)
LarryB
John,
Um, WinZip isn’t free.
chiggins
I didn’t know you needed Audacity, seemed like you had plenty already. One thing I do know however is that you need this fucking poncho.
4tehlulz
7zip is free. Winzip, not so much.
Though I nominate Openoffice.org as the best freeware myself.
mantis
You think Audacity is awesome (it is), check out the Hobnox Audiotool. I can’t stop playing with this thing. If you’ve mixed music before, jump right in. If not, the tutorial gives a very good primer.
Nick
Audacity is great … I use it in my job and it’s fun to monkey around with too. I did a mean Alvin Chipmunk with it; Satan also …
T. Scheisskopf
If you think that Audacity rocks(and it does…), You need to look at
Reaper
Mary
Noiseware cleans up your pictures really nicely, but, if you like, you can clean up your pictures to the point where real live people fall into the Uncanny Valley. (Go to imagenomic.com or just Google “Noiseware”).
Ned Raggett
Another fan of Audacity here — great piece of software. There’s another one I’ve used as well but damned if I can remember the name (as I’m at work right now).
Jim
Check out Nyquist the scripting language built into Audacity, it’s from CMU. It allows you to script tools to work on waveforms. Once did a tool to inject DTMF tones into tracks to control fireworks.
Cris
Reaper may rock, but Audacity runs on OSX.
Neal
Yes, John. I have recently started using Cubase myself (it runs smoother with my interface) but Audacity is a wonderful program – and you can’t beat the price (or the lack of). I keep both on the computer. I’ll have to check out that Hobnob thing when I get home.
Open office is cool too. I’m trying to get the fiance to ditch Microsoft Office and start using it.
Birdzilla
AL GORE has the audacity to blame the burma cyclone on GLOBAL WARMING thae crook has no shame he should be stranded on a island where theres no media around and he,ll have to live like he wants us all to live while he still lives his estiavegent lifestyles. Gore deserves a swift kick in the rear real hard to
Andrew J. Lazarus
IZarc is a free Windows archiving (including zip) tool from Bulgaria.
Of course, I have recently been able to leave the forces of darkness for a new MacBook.
ThymeZone
First, Birdzilla is not the real BIRDZILLA, not even a good imitation, not even a good placeholder. You defile the memory of the true BIRDZILLA sir.
Second, where can I get THE FUCKING PONCHO?
Andrew
Audacity isn’t just freeware (winzip and lview were shareware/nagware) it’s open source software. If you like it so much you should start checking out the Gimp, open office, and pidgin. Those plus firefox can replace 90% of what people use their computers for.
Michael
Depending on what you are doing, there are some other good tools too.
See http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,69518/description.html
or
http://mashable.com/2007/07/04/podcasting-toolbox/
Billy K
Audacity kinda sucks. I did mention it when you got your Mac, so bite me. I prefer Soundstudio, though it’s a tad expensive.
Chris Johnson
Balloon Juicers into Logic, Digital Performer or whatever else can use Audio Unit plugins ought to check out my day job…
http://store.kagi.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi?storeID=6FEGJ_LIVE&&
Scroll to the bottom of any page and HOLY SHIT YO 24 FUCKING FREEBIES! YOU’RE GONNA GO CRAZY FOR THESE FUCKING PEPPERS, I MEAN PLUGINS! :D
Seriously, 24 freebies, mostly AU plugins, also reverb impulses and other such things. Go nuts. I’m only sorry Audacity doesn’t handle them, but I think Audacity is trying to be as open-source as possible and can’t incorporate AU handling code because that’s Apple property.
Ninerdave
Was wondering if that was indeed you when you started poking your head around here. :)
Robert Sneddon
I downloaded Audacity to do some basic sound editing, but couldn’t get it to do anything useful. It always gets stuck in a mode where it replays 30 minutes of sound in about four seconds and that’s all. Not intuitive.
Other good freeware stuff for PCs out there:
IrfanView is my picture viewer of choice; it will display pretty much anything although its editing functions are nothing to write home about. Thumbnails, slideshow etc. all very usable.
For editing video VirtualDub and/or VirtualDubMod depending on what I’m editing or processing (VDubMod understands .mkv containers better than VDub). It’s definitely not intuitive but worth learning if you’re wanting to chop up and reformat video.
To just watch video encoded in .ogg, .mkv or .avi I use the CCCP codec pack plus Media Player Classic, an open-source video player. Minimal cruft and runs well on limited hardware.
Billy K
Chris is awesome. I started using one of his apps about 10 years ago.
Billy K
Oh, and I would love an OS X version of “Mastering Tools.” After all this time, I still don’t see anything like it on the market.
dan robinson
check out Ardour http://ardour.org/ for sound editing. Linux and Mac, no PC.
Try ImageMagick for JPG editing (e.g., making the right size picture for your blog) or Gimp http://www.gimp.org for some photo manipulation.
Celtx http://www.celtx.org is a great screenwriting tool.
One of these days, I’ll figure out how to use Blender http://www.blender.org
Chris Johnson
Billy- everything that used to be in Mastering Tools is available in plugins or freebies, for use with AU Lab.
If you’re looking for the metering stuff that originally was a strip-chart, I use my version of ‘RMS Buddy’ now, and have doctored it to give visual feedback on the desired sound density.
Everything else: plugins and often free ones.
What comes to mind most from old Mastering Tools is: peak limiter, which is sold as a plugin now- the dithers, which I developed basically the ultimate one and sell it as Contingent Dither (might bring out some of the old faves like Ten Nines though)- certain EQs, notably the air-band stuff, which now is in the plugin Air- and sometimes, stuff like parallel compression. I use VariMu for compression instead, not parallel compression. I’ve also got a similar compressor as one of the freebies, called Pressure.
So, go get the freebies ChannelEQ, Slew, Pressure, Density, possibly Gate if you think you can use it subtly enough in mastering and want black silence, and possibly Drive if you want a slightly edgier density-adder. All that is free and makes sense for mastering purposes. Oh, and my RMSBuddy variation.
Thanks- yeah, I’m a pretty diehard Balloon Juice poster by now. My favorite politi-blog of any. Except, Michael tends to drive me up the wall :)
zzyzx
Come on, Obama wrote a whole book about this. Try to pay attention!
darms
Another audio processing tool I’ve used for some time is goldwave. While it’s not free ($45), it’s not all that much and best, in demo mode the software is fully functional with a ‘nag’ screen every few saves. I’ve “de-clicked” a number of vinyl-sourced tracks with it over the years. They also have a nice multi-track program called “MULTIQUENCE”.
lorri
Freecorder: free, easy to use, and requires no tinkering to get it to work with Vista.
Derek
Congratulations, glad you found this thing. I’ve used it for years.
slippy hussein toad
Only idiots pay for Winzip.
As for Audacity — it has its merits, but I’m not all that impressed with its compressor functions. I use outboard gear to do multitrack recording and mix down to the computer. I use Soundforge for compression. Audacity is great if you’re doing quick and dirty stuff, and I honestly don’t know what you’re using it for. But it’s not good a good mastering tool. It’s awesome, though, because when you’re recording it breaks the source tracks into many discrete blocks and only loads what you’re currently working on into memory. Soundforge loads the whole blasted thing at once which can be really inconvenient with a 40-minute file.
You used to be able to get a free version of ProTools, but the last time I Dl’d it it informed me that it only ran on Windows 98 or something silly like that. It was not fooled by compatibility mode on Xp or Vista.
But, Audacity does beat the piss out of Sndrec32. I have to give it that.
hamletta
I use Audacity for my church podcasts.
It frequently makes The Baby Jesus cry.
qkslvrwolf
Sigh.
Open source != freeware.
I know it sounds like a bogus thing to worry about, because yes, they are both free in terms of money.
But it’s not the same.
Just tryin’ to raise awareness.
You might check out the open disc.
Billy K
Thanks Chris. Someday when I have some time I’ll check out all those plugins. Honestly, I’m kind of a dummy with mastering/engineering terms and tools. I just turn the knobs til I like it, and learn a little here and there. That’s why I liked the OS9 MT!
MNPundit
My girlfriend (she of the red hair, D-cups former Mac now Linux user) told me about Audacity years ago.
Yeah my girlfriend is fucking awesome.
Suck it down bitches.
Tim Fuller
I was happy to see that Audacity was available for Mac. I used it on a PC years ago. Needed it for my Hillary-Going Out of Business Video the other day. Now at over 800 views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH0oJzT9WIg
Mississippi Custom Car Tag – OBAMA08 – Received day before yesterday. Promise pics soon. Retiring IMPEACH.
Enjoy.
Tom Levenson
I use Audacity for myself, and as a great student tool to break my science writing grad students into the wonderful world of radio/non linear editing. Works great — and the fact that it is cross platform means that with a 300 dollar Edirol RO-9 recorder and a decent mike (we use Electrovox RE 50s, which warms the nostalgia in my heart, as that was the first real mike I used almost 30 years ago), students can go from zero to fledgling radio documentary producers in a stunningly short time.
Non horrible examples of what they can do after one week of classes in the medium can be heard here: http://scopeweb.mit.edu/?page_id=5
All hail freeware.