The best free and paid programs to create and edit digital music.
Audacity
It is probably the best free (and open source) program for create and edit music in digital format. It has graphics structured in graphs that allow easy navigation within the tracks and a very wide range of effects that allow you to adjust (volume, tempo, equalizer, etc.) or transform (flip, phaser, remove vocals, etc.) the tracks selected.
It supports WAV and MP3 files but to save songs in compressed format it requires the installation of a free additional plug-in called LAME MP3. Download from here.
Adobe Auditions
It is one of the most famous programs for creating music in the world. Being a professional solution based on the old Cool Edit Pro, it offers all the tools and functions that professionals need to record, process audio in multi-track modeedit and correct songs down to the smallest detail.
The full version of the software is quite expensive but there is a free trial version which can be used freely for 30 days before purchase. Download from here.
Crystal Audio Engine
A free program for creating, recording and processing multi-track audio. It’s not very intuitive at first glance, but after studying well its structured interface in graphics and panels for adjusting audio channels it turns out to be a resourceful software.
The software can be used free of charge only for non-commercial purposes, it is also an excellent solution when you want to mix several music tracks together. Download from here.
Microsoft Songsmith
A very special software that intelligently creates music tracks based on the user’s song. To simplify the concept, one must imagine having a reverse karoke in which it is not the person who has to follow the backing track but it is the backing track (chosen when starting the software) that follows the person’s song.
The program is paid but a free 6-hour trial version is available. Not much, but enough to test all the potential of this tool. Download from here.
Sony Sound Forge
Another highly professional solution for workers in the audio-music world. It supports all major audio file formats but also videos and allows you to edit songs in multi-track mode also using different equalizers.
The program is quite expensive but there is a free 30-day trial version available. Download from here
Virtual DJ Home
The free version of one of the world’s most popular programs for create and mix music. Its full-screen interface represents a real DJ console through which it is very simple to create new music.
Of course, you may not use this version of the software for commercial or profit-making purposes. For that you have to resort to the paid version of VirtualDJ which also includes other advanced features. Download from here.
Salvatore Aranzulla is the most read blogger and IT popularizer in Italy. He is known for discovering vulnerabilities in Google and Microsoft sites. He collaborates with computer magazines and takes care of the technological section of the newspaper Il Messaggero. He is the founder of Aranzulla.it, one of the thirty most visited sites in Italy, in which he simply answers thousands of computer-related questions. He has published for Mondadori and Mondadori Informatica.