Best Audio Manipulation Utilities for Windows

Windows provides Windows Media Player which acts as a music player and has very limited functionality: it facilitates playing audio tracks, ripping of CDs and burning of audio tracks to CD. Even as a music player, it has, however, been eclipsed as by iTunes on the grounds of usability and arguably a superior quality codec in AAC compared with Windows use of MP3 and Lossy Windows Media Audio (WMA).

One of the major limitations of Windows Media Player and iTunes are the number of audio formats that they support. Apple has a tradition of using proprietary formats, and iTunes is no exception. Windows Media Player can handle a wider range of formats if external add-ons and codecs are uploaded.

dBPoweramp Convertor is only designed to do one thing: to convert audio files from one format to another, However, it does this very well with good reliability and performance and provides a very simple interface to do it.

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dBPoweramp Convertor is complemented by dBPoweramp CD Ripper to rip audio tracks from your CD collection. Its unique selling point is its integration of Accurip technology to check that the ripped copy provides an accurate copy of the original. This is combined with good performance with ripping at high speed, up to 24 x real time and a simple interface.

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Audacity is a freeware audio editor. It offers a remarkably wide range of facilities including splitting and joining tracks, spectrum analysis and adding effects including fadeouts. It has an intuitive graphical interface: overall usability is marred by the limited integration of the MP3 codec, which is a consequence of the licensing of the MP3 codec. There is also limited explanation of some of its more complex facilities.

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The Windows operating system has never been strong in the area of audio facilities. The utilities highlighted are in my view best of breed, they are all available free of charge, and together with a music player such as iTunes or Songbird, provide a comprehensive suite of audio management facilities.