R
ReviewerVerified
6 months ago
Audacity has all the effects and recording tools a hobbyist could want, and I love that it's open source. But it crashed on me twice mid-edit and I hadn't saved, so I lost an hour each time. When it's stable it's great, when it isn't it's frustrating. Genuinely mixed feelings.
Rich effects, open source
Occasional crashes, weak autosave
Audacity handled recording, noise reduction and multitrack editing for my entire podcast without costing a rupee. The noise reduction effect cleaned up my room's hum beautifully. Only minor gripe is the interface feels a bit old-school and takes a while to learn where everything is.
Free, powerful noise reduction
Dated, steep-ish learning curve
I record narration for training videos and Audacity makes editing breath sounds and normalising levels straightforward. The keyboard shortcuts speed things up nicely once memorised. My only complaint is that the labels and macros documentation is a bit thin, so I learned through trial and error.
Great for voice editing, shortcuts
Thin documentation
I digitised some old family cassette tapes and used Audacity's noise removal and click repair to clean decades of hiss and pops. The result was astonishing and brought voices back to life. That a free tool can do studio-grade restoration like this is incredible. Endlessly grateful.
Excellent restoration tools, free
For a free open-source editor Audacity does almost everything I need, from trimming voiceovers to applying EQ and compression. Exports to MP3 and WAV without issues. The toolbar layout could be modernised and dragging clips around is fiddly, but I can't argue with the price.
Full feature set, free
Fiddly clip editing