Best All-in-One Free Music Editor: Audacity

Audacity is often praised as the best free, yet still professional, music editor on the market. It’s open-source and has tons of features any heavy music editor loves.

When it comes to basic editing, Audacity provides easy-access buttons and menu options that make it simple to delete parts of the file, record directly from a microphone, change the speed or pitch, or whatever else you need to do. There are a lot of other effects you can apply, too, like echo, fade in/out, invert, repeat, phaser, wahwah, compressor, click remover, and amplify.

Of course, it also performs as a professional music editor in many ways. The Generate, Analyze, and Tools menus are options for making noise or tones, finding beats or silence, creating macros, and more.

Something else you’ll like that’s been super helpful for me is the history menu. You can see a list of all the changes you’ve made to the file and easily discard them to jump back to a previous state.

Audacity is also an audio file converter because you can export open files to MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, MP2, AMR, and other audio formats.

This free music editor works on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Download Audacity

Soundtrap: Best Music Editor for Making Remixes

Of all the available song remixers I’ve seen that you can buy, download for free, or use online, Spotify’s Soundtrap website is by far the easiest one I’ve used. Not only that, it has tons of excellent features.

All your layers are easy to access from the side of the page, where you can add songs, instruments, and sounds. You can also plug in an instrument or mic and record directly into the program.

There are several little features that I think make Soundtrap the best choice in this list for remixes. One option can, in one click, isolate everything but the track you’re dealing with. This makes it much easier to focus on editing specific areas of the song.

Something else I appreciate is Cycle Mode, which repeats a specific time frame of the song over and over until you stop it. If you’re fine-tuning an instrument’s volume, bass, or reverb, for example, over a specific portion of the song, you want to use this mode to make sure the rest of the song doesn’t continue playing.

You can also invite friends to work with you, where you can each update the same project and chat live.

When you’re done editing, export to MP3 for free, or if you pay, your options expand to WAV, OGG, MIDI, Flat.io, and Noteflight.

The free version lets you create unlimited projects and access hundreds of instruments, over 150 thousand sound effects, and thousands of loops. For more, you can pay for Soundtrap—month-to-month prices range from $12 USD/month to $20 USD/month.

It runs directly from the website, so no download is necessary.

Visit Soundtrap

Best Online Music Editor With Effects: AudioMass

AudioMass is a web-based audio editor that’s completely free and open-source. It can open files from your computer or the web via a URL, and you can also create an audio recording with your mic.

Here are some things I liked while using it: It’s super easy to cut-and-paste clips; there are over a dozen effects to pick from, like a fade, invert, or distortion; you can append a separate file to the one you’re working on, and frequency and spectrum analyzers are available, plus tempo tools.

Your export formats are MP3 and WAV, with a few other options like the bitrate and whether you want to export the whole file or just your selection.

Visit AudioMass

Top Music Editor for Quick Tasks: Ocenaudio

Ocenaudio is a bit like Audacity in that it’s pretty straightforward and works on all the major operating systems. However, this program is even easier to use and quickly comes in handy for repetitive music editing tasks.

The user interface is simple and modern, so I found it a breeze to understand. There aren’t as many features as in Audacity, but that might be good, especially if you want an easier program.

If you work faster with a keyboard, you’ll love that it lets you assign shortcut keys to various tasks to help you get things done even quicker.

I uncovered other supported features while using Ocenaudio: plugins, importing online music files, generating noise and tones, recording from a mic, saving to an FTP server, creating iPhone ringtones, and exporting to various audio file formats.

In short, if you’re new to music editing but need something more advanced than the first few above, try this one before any of the more advanced programs in this list. The features are helpful but not overwhelming.

It works with Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP; macOS; and Linux. If you’re using older operating systems, you can download earlier versions of the software.

Download Ocenaudio

Best Online Music Editor for Creating Ringtones: MP3Cut.net

Many music editors can convert a song into a ringtone, but I prefer MP3Cut.net because it runs online and doesn’t include many confusing features.

Upload the song from your computer, a URL, or your Google Drive or Dropbox account, and then clip out the ends you don’t want to be part of the ringtone. There’s also an equalizer section you can play with, plus options for adjusting the volume, speed, and pitch.

MP3Cut.net should be able to make ringtones for all phones. After editing the song, the supported export formats include MP3, M4R (for iPhone), M4A, WAV, and FLAC.

This free music editor works from any computer running a web browser.

Visit MP3Cut.net

Most Comprehensive Music Editor: FL Studio

FL Studio is a feature powerhouse for any music editor. While it wasn’t as easy for me to just “get it” right off the bat as some of the other less complex editors in this list, it didn’t leave me wanting much more.

You get an extensive list of free and paid plugins that you can use to expand the program’s functionality, a multitouch user interface, a large sound library, the FL Studio forum, and FL Studio’s video tutorials.

You can purchase four FL Studio editions for Windows (11 and 10) or macOS (Catalina or later), all with free lifetime upgrades. The cheapest option, called Fruity, is $99.

Download FL Studio

Best Editor for Joining Song Files: Audio-Joiner.com

Most music editors let you copy and paste songs into one file to join them, but it’s not always easy. This online music merger is dead simple: Upload the music, pick which parts to clip and which to merge, and then save it back to your computer.

When you join songs, you can make song compilations of your favorite music and merge several smaller clips into one larger file.

I love how easy Audio-Joiner.com is to use. Clipping is as simple as dragging the tabs left and right, and you get a preview each time to make sure you’re starting and ending each file exactly where you want to.

You can even fine-tune the selection with your arrow keys. Track organization before or after others is easy, and a fade-in/out button is available for each clip.

Something else that makes this music merger a favorite of mine is that once you’ve saved the mix—to MP3, M4A, WAV, or FLAC—you can return to the editor with the same setup you were working with. This makes creating similar sound mixes using the same files easy, but without re-uploading everything each time.

You can use it from any computer that supports a modern web browser.

Visit Audio-Joiner.com

Best Voice Editor for Singing: Adobe Audition

Adobe Audition does an excellent job of balancing user-friendliness with functionality. It’s a robust music editing platform, but unlike similar programs, it’s not hard to use.

One area where Audition CC excels is when editing music for singers. The program helps to remove silence, hums, instrumentals, and noise. The vocal enhancer tool can be used to target male or female voices. The automatic pitch correction tool comes in handy for musicians, too.

You can buy Adobe Audition for Windows or macOS by itself or as a bundle with other Adobe software. For example, the price is as low as $23 USD/month for just Audition, or you can grab Adobe’s whole collection of over 20 apps for $70 USD/month.

Download Adobe Audition

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