Need to do sound recording or editing, but find most audio software daunting due to complicated interfaces or price? Then take a look at Audacity: it's free, open source, and packs a bunch of professional-level sound editing features, all under a very intuitive, friendly user interface (Figure 1). By design, Audacity is a user-friendly but still powerful alternative to other sound editors that tend to be complicated to use. What's more, it comes in Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows versions.
