[luau] REVIEW: Audacity Multi-Track Audio Editor

[Warren Togami]

Wow!  Open Source Audio editor for Linux, Windows and MacOS.  The
screenshot here is Audacity running in Windows XP.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1179

Audacity is a multitrack/recording free audio editor. It started a few
years back as a simple sound editor, but since then it has evolved in a
powerfull modern editor, by supporting multi-track recording. The stable
1.0 version was released only a few days ago. 

Audacity is written using the multiplatform wxWindows C++ API, and today
runs on most Unices, including Linux, and Windows and MacOS 9/X.
Audacity is licensed under the GPL. 

You can import Ogg Vorbis, WAV, Mp3, Midi and other sound formats and
then select to do your manipulation with the ease of cut, copy and paste
(and with unlimited Undo), you can mix tracks together, or apply effects
to your recordings. The great thing about Audacity is that there are no
limits on the number of tracks or the length of any track, except the
size of... your hard disk. 

The application has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable
spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis
applications. There are some built-in effects like Amplify, Echo, Fade
In/Out, FFT filter, Reverse, Phaser, Bass Boost, Wahwah, Noise Removal
and others. 

Audacity not only includes many high-quality effects built-in, but also
lets you use plug-in effects in the VST format. There are many free,
shareware, and commercial VST plug-ins online that do everything from
Reverb to Noise Reduction (these need to be specifically recompiled for
Linux or MacOS though).

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