Like Plucker and Tuxpaint we looked at previously, Audacity is a multi-platform freebie, making it even more appealing. Audacity is available for MacOS 9, MacOS X, Windows98 or higher, Linux and Unix.



Broadly speaking, Audacity does the same job as Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition), but at rather less than a fraction of the price. It can import audio, edit, mix in a multitrack environment and save the finished product as a WAV, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. It even supports VST plugins, if you have any (these are effects processors like reverb and EQ).

I haven't done what I regard as the acid test yet - mixing a four minute news radio package in anger... but I've had a muck around and it seems excellent, especially for free. I've happily used it to record (on my iBook's internal mic) me and the children making stupid noises to add to TuxPaint stamps, and to clip audio to put on web sites. The volume envelope tool doesn't seem to be as sophisticated as the CoolPro one, but it's there and it works.

You can download Audacity free of charge from audacity.sourceforge.net.