Audio editing tools

• CDex [GNU GPL]
  CDex can extract the data directly (digital) from an Audio CD, which is generally called a CD Ripper or a CDDA utility. The resulting audio file can be a plain WAV file (useful for making compilation audio CDs) or the ripped audio data can be compressed using an audio encoder. Many encoders are supported, to name a few:
  
  Lame MP3 encoder
  Internal MP2 encoder
  APE lossles audio format
  Ogg Vorbis encoder
  The Windows MP3 encoder (Fraunhofer MP3 encoder)
  NTT VQF encoder
  FAAC encoder
  Windows WMA8 encoder
  In addition, WAV files on the hard drive can be converted to a Compressed Audio File (and visa versa). CDex also supports many audio file tag formats like the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags, which can be automatically inserted as part of the ripping process.
  
  
  
• Ogg Vorbis
  Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.
  
  
  
• Musepack [GNU LGPL, BSD]
  Musepack is an audio compression format with a strong emphasis on high quality. It's not lossless, but it is designed for transparency, so that you won't be able to hear differences between the original wave file and the much smaller MPC file.
  
  It is based on the MPEG-1 Layer-2 / MP2 algorithms, but since 1997 it has rapidly developed and vastly improved and is now at an advanced stage in which it contains heavily optimized and patentless code.
  
  
  
• Audacity [GNU GPL]
  Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information.
  
  
• LAME [GNU GPL]
  LAME is a high quality MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) encoder licensed under the LGPL. LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR, mostly thanks to the dedicated work of its developers and the open source licensing model that allowed the project to tap into engineering resources from all around the world. Both quality and speed improvements are still happening, probably making LAME the only MP3 encoder still being actively developed.
  
  
  
• AudioCoding
  AudioCoding.com's goal is to provide the community with free MPEG-4 audio codecs. Currently implemented are MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC. The supported AAC profiles are HE, Main, LC, LTP and LD. It also supports all these profiles in there ER (Error Resilient) equivalent.
  This decoder can be used for DRM (Digital Radio mondiale) without any big changes.
  Latest addition in the 2.0 version of the FAAD2 decoder library is the ability to decode HE AAC (High Efficiency) files.
  
  
  
• Mp3splt [GNU GPL]
  Mp3Splt-project is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It's very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks. If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds. For mp3 files, both ID3v1 & ID3v2 tags are supported. Mp3splt-project is split in 3 parts : libmp3splt, mp3splt and mp3splt-gtk.
  
  
  
• Mp3Wrap [GNU GPL]
  Mp3Wrap is a free independent alternative to AlbumWrap. It's a command-line utility that wraps quickly two or more mp3 files in one single large playable mp3, without losing filenames and ID3 informations (and without need of decoding/encoding). Also with the possibility of including other non mp3 files, such as PlayLists, info files, cover images, inside the mp3. This means that you obtain a large mp3 that you can split in any moment just using mp3splt and in few seconds you have all original files again! It's useful because files created with Mp3Wrap are easy to download. Infact who downloads has not to know each single song name and easy to play and even if you don't have mp3splt to split file, you can listen to it anyway.
  MP3Wrap the Free AlbumWrap.
  
  
  
• Alba Extractor [GNU GPL]
  The free alternative to albumwrap
  This tool wraps a set of mp3 files into a single mp3 album, for ease of sharing on WinMx, NapShare and similar programs.
  
  
  
• PeerCast [GNU GPL]
  PeerCast is a simple, free way to listen to radio and watch video on the Internet. It uses P2P technology to let anyone become a broadcaster without the costs of traditional streaming. This means you get to hear and watch stations not normally found on commercially funded sites.
  
  
  
• GNUMP3d [GNU GPL]
  GNUMP3d is a streaming server for MP3s, OGG vorbis files, movies and other media formats.
  
  
  
• GramoFile [GNU GPL]
  GramoFile is a computer program, running under the Linux operating system (and some other UNIX-like OSses -- and even DOS/Windows now!), with the main goal of putting the sound of for example gramophone records on CDs. It is able to record hours of CD quality music, split long sound files in separate tracks, and remove ticks and pops from recordings.
  
  
  
• FFmpeg [GNU LGPL]
  FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - the leading audio/video codec library.
  
  
  
• JAZZ++ [GNU GPL]
  The Jazz++ Midi Sequencer is an excellent application for recording and mixing MIDI sequences, and for many years was the only stable application like it that ran under both Windows and Linux.
  
  
  
• Mixere [GNU GPL]
  Mixere is a free, open-source application for mixing audio files. It runs on Windows NT/2000/XP, and supports WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Flac, and Mod audio files.
  
  
  
• Open Sound World
  [Other/Proprietary License]
  Open Sound World, or OSW, is a scalable, extensible programming environment that allows musicians, sound designers and researchers to process sound in response to expressive real-time control. OSW combines a familiar visual patching paradigm with solid programming-language features such as a strong type system and hierarchical name spaces. OSW also includes an intuitive model for specifying new components using a graphical interface and high-level C++ expressions, making it easy to develop and share new music and signal-processing algorithms.
  
  
  
• split3pm [No
  license]
  split3pm is a tool to extract music segments from a larger MP3 file. For example, you might have a long radio capture in MP3 format and you want to cut out a piece of music from it. Before split3pm you would have had to convert the file to Wave and edit it there; now, you can just tell split3pm the time and duration of one or more audio segments and it will extract the files for you.
  
  
  
• BonkEnc [GNU GPL]
  BonkEnc is a free audio converter and CD ripper which integrates various popular formats and encoders. It currently supports MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC and Bonk files.
  
  BonkEnc makes it easy to convert your audio CDs to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files which you can use in your hardware player or with your favorite audio software. The program supports the CDDB/freedb online CD database and CDText and automatically writes song information to ID3v2 or Vorbis comment tags.
  
  
  
• Hydrogen
  Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It's main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming.