The best free Audacity Alternatives

[harlan4096]

Audacity is a popular open source audio editor that is available for Windows, Mac and Linux devices. It is free to use and supports a wide range of editing features. It is used for a wide range of activities, from mixing YouTube video sounds to creating soundtracks or audio samples, or analysis of audio files.

Other features include converting audio files, ripping tracks from audio CDs, or cutting, splitting or joining sounds.

Project ownership of Audacity changed in 2021 and one of the first planned changes to the project was the introduction of Telemetry. The plan was abandoned, but the controversy continued with the publication of a new Privacy Notice.

Alternatives to Audacity

Audacity is an excellent audio editor. It is free, open source and available as a cross-platform application. An alternative should offer a similar feature set, which means that the list that follows does not include commercial applications.

All alternatives listed below lack at least one of the main characteristics of Audacity. They are either only available for one operating system, e.g. Windows, not open source, don't offer the same set of core features, or lack in other departments.

Audacity Forks

Audacity is an open source project, and developers started to fork the application as soon as the announcement hit the Internet that the project team changed.

Forks match all main characteristics of Audacity, but there is no "main" fork yet that all disgruntled developers and users switched to.

Here is a link to a promising forks (because it is updated regularly)

• Audacity fork by Cookie Engineer
  

Ocenaudio

Ocenaudio is a cross-platform audio editor with an impressive set of features. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, and free to download and use.

Ocenaudio's core features are:

• Support for VST plugins (Virtual Studio Technology).
  
• Real-time previews of effects to adjust effects until the desired result has been achieved.
  
• Multi-selection support.
  
• Support for the editing of large audio files.
  
• Fully featured spectrogram.
  
• Analysis options.
  
• Support for effects such as silence, reverse or normalize.
  

Wavosaur

Wavosaur is only available for Microsoft Windows devices. It has a small file size and you may download a quick start guide that is also available.

Wavosaur's main features are:

• Support for VST plugins.
  
• Support for main editing features such as cut, copy and paste.
  
• Lots of processing options, e.g. conversion from stereo to mono, or changing the volume.
  
• Batch processing of files.
  
• Advanced features support that includes resampling, pitch shifts, vocal removals, or slence removals.
  
• Support for ASIO.
  
• Frequency analysis and detailed statistics.
  

Other Audacity alternatives

• Audiodope is a free audio editor for Windows that supports major sound editing features. Downside is that it has not been updated since 2018.
  

Now You: did we miss an application? Let us know in the comments below!
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