Audio editors let you cut, edit, and process individual audio files. Unlike digital audio workstations, they aren’t optimized for multitrack recordings. Instead, they can fix individual recordings and let you analyze audio files more thoroughly.
Audacity
Audacity is the most popular free audio editor, with approximately 100 million users worldwide. It works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, offering high-quality audio support (up to 32-bit/384kHz) and multi-track audio editing.
It supports multiple plugin formats (VST, LADSPA), which means you can expand its capabilities with third-party plugins.
You can use Audacity to apply real-time, non-destructive effects, which isn’t typically seen in free audio editors. A recent update also introduced tempo-based beat grids, which is a feature typically seen in DAWs.
Audacity works best for recording podcasts, sampling, and basic editing. It is lightweight and well optimized, so it works without any performance issues, even on modest hardware. Pros include cross-platform availability, extensive community resources, and a robust feature set at zero cost.
Ocenaudio
Ocenaudio is a free audio editor designed for user-friendliness and efficiency. We prefer its modern user interface over Audacity’s somewhat dated design.
We also prefer Ocenaudio’s workflow. It’s much faster to zoom in and edit an audio file precisely. We often use it as the final tool in my sound design process to double-check the sounds and fix rough edges.
Similar to Audacity, it includes real-time effect previews, non-destructive editing, VST plugin support, and a helpful spectrogram view. It efficiently handles large audio files, making it ideal for podcast editing, voiceover cleanup, and general audio processing.