Manipulating audio tracks has changed from something requiring thousands of dollars of dedicated equipment in a commercial studio to something that anyone with even a netbook caliber machine can do almost anywhere.  One of the most mature FLOSS offerings in this realm is Audacity.  Available pre-compiled for Windows, Mac, and UNIX/Linux, the software is also available in source code form if you have a platform without a pre-built installer/executable.

Audacity is to Audio as Adobe Photoshop is to images: you can edit to your heart’s content, and every step of the process is un/re-doable.  Once you’ve got your audio exactly as you like, you can then produce Ogg, MP3, or other formats for the final result.  Like so much other software, there’s a plugin system to allow for additional functionality without having to have someone rebuild the software.

As always, software is more interesting with a screen shot, so here you go:

Audacity Screen Shot

Tony Miller Software FLOSS Friday, free software, Software