Free stuff is good. And good free stuff is even better. That’s why Audacity is absolutely great. It’s a lightweight, free (as in “freedom”), cross-platform audio recording and editing program which can handle Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.

If you’re recording and tweaking media clips for your Android or iPhone apps, it’s an indespensible tool. It goes from basic recording, trimming and fading ins and outs, to adding compression / normalization, eqs and filters, and a fair range of effects as well as pop and hiss removal, out of the box.

Depending on your audio recording hardware it can also function as a fully-fledged multitrack recorder.

Changes you’ll find in version 2.0.0 include:

• Significantly effects improved
• Multiple clips per track.
• Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard.
• New Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs.
• Timer Record feature (that’ll give you time to leg it from the computerback to the Microphone).
• New Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.
• Automatic Crash Recovery .
• Fast WAV/AIFF file import.
• FLAC now fully supported.
• Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.

Scribbled by Tom