Friday Freebie - Make Some Noise, And Then Record It

It used to be that computers came bundled with some type of audio recording software beyond Windows' woefully underpowered Sound Recorder. But that was in the days of the separate sound card. In today's world, where 99% of computers are using sound chips integrated directly onto the motherboard, there's no more bundled audio software.

So what are you supposed to do if you feel the need to lay down some wicked tracks? You could buy a tape deck, but that's way too 1980's. You could drop $100+ on some software, but you're a cheapskate. And that's where the freeware comes in - check out Audacity:



Audacity is a fully functioning sound recorder and editor. With it, you can record some brand new sounds, or tweak out some old recordings. You can even use it to transfer your old cassettes to digital format (guess you'll need that tape deck after all).

Supporting a wide variety of codecs, you can cut, trim, equalize, alter pitch, and apply effects to your music. It supports sampling rates up to 96 KHz, and you can even mix tracks with different sampling rates - Audacity will automatically convert them to match.

And best of all, the program is completely free. It's covered under the GNU General Public License, which means you can install it on as many PCs as you want, give it to anybody, and even improve the program if that's your thing. Go nuts.

Visit the Audacity homepage here, and download Audacity here - it's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux OS's. As for you FreeBSD guys out there - you're on your own.