We tested the noise reduction capabilities, file compatibility and editing tools of 15 audio editing programs that cost less than $100. Bose SoundLink Wireless Headphones deliver deep immersive sound and feature a built-in mic for clear HD calls. The standard edition works on Macs and PCs. WavePad Free Audio Editor and Music Editing Software for Mac. PROS: Supports multi-track editing, Clean tabbed interface, Allows editing of frequencies, Supports editing native 5.1 surround sound, Very fast opening time, Re-written from the bottom up for Mac, Integrated with Creative Cloud.
Working with sound on the Mac is excellent. At the lowest level you have a microphone on all the models of computer from Apple and so you don’t have to go looking for one if you need to record something quick and dirty. Apple do this now to promote FaceTime which is a video chat service. If you want to edit sound, all Macs come with Garageband which is a super audio editing software that can be used for making music as well as for recording podcasts. It allows you to do what you need to do to make it sound better for your audience.
Four sound editing softwares for the Mac
Garageband
All Macs come with this pre installed and that makes this more or less free. It has a lovely looking interface that supports drag and drop extensively. You can grab music from your iTunes or sound files from elsewhere on your hard drive. It is geared towards making the music, but is great for podcasting too. You can have a number of tracks for example one for each speaking person and one for intros and outros. You could also have another for holding all the bumpers, jingles and fancy radio sound effects.
You can see visually where the sounds are on a time line so that you can have sound coming in over the top of another if you want to. Manually adjust the levels in each track to get the audibility right for the listener, or there is a way to set tracks to automatically be louder than the background tracks. It is called ducking where tracks are set to lower automatically when someone is talking for example.
When you are making enhanced podcasts you can easily include artwork and notes to be shown on iTunes, in the iPhone or iPod. Make chapters if you want, so that listeners can skip a section or jump to a part of the podcast that they want to find. Those podcasts will go out as AAC format podcasts or m4a. A normal un-enhanced podcast will most likely be an MP3 format.
If you are going to publish you podcasts on the internet then you should not use music that should have a royalty paid on it. With Garageband you can easily create music of your own design using the Apple Loops that you will be able to publish without the worry of being chased after by the RIAA.
Audacity
Not going to say much about this as it is a free open source option that is popular with some people. I am not so keen on the interface really, which is always a drawback on open source software. If you want free, then it is better to use Garageband. If you can get used to the interface then it does do an awful lot and is quite capable. I prefer to use a software called AmadeusPro which is much better looking and is inexpensive.
AmadeusPro
There are a number of reasons that I like to use AmadeusPro which only costs about $40 and those are, the look of it, the facilities that are included, a good visual of the waveforms and the ease of use.
While it doesn’t have the complete ease of use that you get with garageband, it is simple to arrange tracks and to adjust volume of tracks individually. One track has to start at the beginning of the sound but other tracks can be moved along the time line to start where you want them too. Very easy to record sound by hitting the button for record or using Command R. There is a view of the whole sound, you can have at the top of the working window, and in the working area you can zoom in much more closely than you would ever need to.
The reason I like to edit podcasts in AmadeusPro rather than in Garageband is because when I chop a section out of a track, Garageband splits the track and I have to move the sound back together again, whereas with AmadeusPro I get a proper delete and no splitting of the track into parts. It is easier for me to use the effects in Amadeus, from the effects menu so I can apply normalise, amplify, fading, de-noising and also generate silence as required.
Lose the hiss
De-noising is useful if you have a bit of a hiss that you want to lose. You can either sample a section where there is just the hiss, then select the area where you want to remove the hiss and apply Suppress Noise. Sometimes it is easier to choose Suppress White Noise, a dialogue comes up and you use a preview of the sound and a slider to decide how much to suppress, then click OK when it is right. If you suppress too much, it damages the sound you want to hear, but with the preview you can do it so that the noise is gone and the track is still good.
Audio Units are filters that you can mould the sound with, such a the MultibandCompressor, the Dynamics processor and the Graphic EQ. All the AU Filters that are available in Garageband are also in AmadeusPro and you can find more on the internet too if you want something specific. Such as the filters from Camel Audio like CamelCrusher and CamelPhat. You can also use VST effects on your sounds too. If you want to get really fancy with it then you can set up a rack of filters and the order that the filers are stacked up will affect the overall sound.
Normalising the sound
Sometimes I will do the levelling and the normalisation of the audio file I am working on in AmadeusPro on my Apple MacBook Pro 13.3-Inch Laptopand sometimes I use a tool called the Levelator which is automatic. It depends on the sound file which works best, I might try both and have a listen to which I prefer.
You can split tracks, merge with previous track, add mono or stereo tracks, flatten it all into one track, record to a track that is already there and record to a new track. The versatility of AmadeusPro is amazing and I really recommend it as a multitrack audio recorder. There are even things in there that I have never used, like the Analyse menu with stuff like the Real-Time Spectrum.
When it comes right down to it though an important feature is stability of the application. I have been using it a lot for at least three years and it has only ever crashed once on me. The developer is called Martin Hairer and he does a great job of looking after the AmadeusPro software.
SoundTrackPro
I have used this a couple of times and it is a part of the Final Cut Studio suite, so it is more for working with sound to go with video. It is a high level audio editing tool, that I have not needed to really get into using. Another software that would be similar in professional level would be Logic Pro. If you have Final Cut then certainly give it a try to see if it does what you want.
From Recording boring lectures to capturing your baby’s first words, we’ve all used our phone to record audio at some point. If you were to edit this file you would need an audio editor, but you’d think of uploading it on your computer first, right? Well, we can edit the files on the very phone which we recorded these files in the first place. We recently discussed our top picks for best Audio editor for Android and in this one, we’ll see the best audio editing apps for iPhone.
You need an audio editor when you wish to create a sample for your piece, snip out irrelevant parts from that lecture, or if you want to just have some fun. These apps would help you record samples, edit audio, and create music. Let’s start.
Read: Beat Audio recording Software for Mac
Audio Editing App for iPhone
1. Hokusai Audio Editor
Best for – basic audio editing
When you record audio with your phone, Your iPhone can’t filter out noise and irrelevant piece of sound on its own. Hokusai Audio Editor records and lets you edit audio files with easy to follow directions which lets you snip the audio.
When you begin editing your audio file. It displays a waveform bar which has all the highs and lows of your file. You can zoom into the file up to 1/10th of a second. Snipping out parts of audio is a breeze. Just select the portion and snip it out. You won’t even realize it was there in the first place. You can insert or append new files and add a few effects like adding silence, white noise or you can synthesize your own sound with the inbuilt synthesizer.
It can save your projects and share it on social media or cloud with this app.
Hokusai is a free app on the App store and comes with a lot of features but some of them are only available in the paid version. You get panning controls, additional sound effects and presets in the upgrade.
Download Hokusai Audio Editor (free, in-app purchases)
2. GarageBand
Best for – creating music
If you’re like me who always loved music but never learned to play an instrument? GarageBand will be like a personal tutor to you. You can create sample pieces, record audio and learn the basic of many musical instruments.
Garageband lets’ you play musical instruments on your phone and produces almost real sound. You can record a piece and put it on the loop to create a beat or choose from a list of available loops. It has EDM, hip-hop, dubstep, RnB and many more live loops. There are Keyboard, drums, bass, guitar, and AMP to help you create new music or recreate your favorite song with a combination of these.
GarageBand is more than just a digital musical instrument, it’s a digital instructor that lets you learn a new instrument from scratch. It lets you make music by combining multiple instruments and audio which makes it a great tool for budding artists and garage musicians.
Download GarageBand (free, in-app purchases)
3. Opinion
Best for – creating podcasts
Podcasts are often lightly scripted and it’s natural that you’d get some dead air, stutters and unavoidable noise. If you record podcasts with your iPhone then Opinion is the best podcasting app that you can get.
Opinion is a simple audio recording app which lets you edit your recordings. Let’s say you recorded a 30-minute audio clip and now you just want to edit out a few seconds which might be a sneeze or anything. You can just tap on the file, and it starts playing; you can tap it where you want the snip and carry on and tap again when the noise part is covered. It creates a separate file which is just the noise. You can delete this part. Now even if you’ve snipped you original recording into many parts and you see snippets of your original file. There’s one limitation that it can’t do layering and add background music to your podcasts.
You can just save it or share it on the cloud. The files are appended into one m4a file. The app is free but you can upgrade to the pro version for more features.
Download Opinion (free, in-app purchases)
4. Ferrite Recording Studio
Best for – editing audio files
Let’s say you’re having a conversation for a podcast or a voice over and there is more than one person talking at the same time. You have to record two different audio files and edit both the files to sound like you’re having a conversation. This whole process may sound intimidating but Ferrite Recording studio lets you do that easily.
Ferrite displays each recording with its individual wave bar. You can add background music and set it to sound in the background of the conversation. It can snip and edit out parts of the recording and join the remaining parts. You can even add new files in the middle of a recording which is actually pretty impressive. However, this snipping of unwanted parts could have been implemented and automated to a single tap which seems tiring in the long run. You can pan the audio to give it a 3D feel which is an interesting feature and took some time to figure out. You can easily share the final cut over the cloud or directly to your SoundCloud.
Ferrite is free and you get additional features in the paid version like sharing the files in different file formats(AAC, M4A, MP3, ALAC, etc) and add tags while editing.
Download Ferrite Recording Studio (free, in-app purchases)
5. TwistedWave Audio Editor
Best for – editing audio files instantly.
TwistedWave Audio Editor is a heavy lifting audio processing app for your iPhone. It lets you edit audio files and has many additional features that weren’t available in the apps above, effects like fade, amplify and normalize.
The app has a simple layout and displays each audio file in a waveform which you can drag around and zoom in by pinching. Apart from the basic cut, copy, paste and append, you can change pitch or speed of a snippet or whole file, reverb can be added or removed from the clip with one tap. Delays can be increased or decreased. You can directly set up an FTP server and save your files there or you can choose to share it on iCloud or Drive.
TwistedWave Audio Editor is a paid app on the app store and has all the features needed by a voice-over artist for editing audio.
Download TwistedWave Audio Editor ($9.99)
6. Auria Pro
Best for: professional audio editing and post-production on iPad
Have you seen those gigantic instruments in the recording studio with a million buttons? This app is a digital mobile mixer for all your audio editing and post-production needs.
When you open the app after paying $50 for it. It shows you an array of buttons and dials which can be set to different MIDI files. You can add up to 24 simultaneous records with compatible hardware. You get flexible snapping tools to allow snapping to events, cursor, bars, beats and more.
Auria Pro is a paid app and has all the solutions to your audio editing and post-production.
you can download Auria Pro ($49.99)
Also Read: Best Video Editing Apps for iPhone
Best Audio Editing App for iPhone and iPad
There are various kinds of Audio editors available for iPhone. Budding musicians can use GarageBand to create beats and Auria Pro for Post-production and heavy audio editing. Podcast creators can use Opinion and its one of the best app for them in my opinion. What are your thoughts? Let us know.