When software works well it becomes invisible, and you can forget that you are using technology at all. At number ten in my list of the top ten best most forgettable software apps is Audacity, a free audio editor.
Audacity is a digital audio editor application. It is cross-platform, using a standard software library of components to achieve a similar graphical user interface on different operating systems, including versions of Windows and Linux.
Audacity was created by a graduate student whilst at Carnegie Mellon University, who now works at Google, but is still the main developer and maintainer of the software, with help from many others around the world.
The software is hugely popular. By 2008, it had been downloaded over 40 million times. It is free software and is licensed under the GNU General Public License although the licensing requirements for MP3 require the separate acquisition of the MP3 codec.
The inclusion of Audacity is mainly because of its intuitive graphical interface.Audacity screenshot 
The graphical representation of the sound clip allows for easy editing. It provides a strong metaphor of the job of splicing the more traditional audio tape. You can literally see what you are doing. Sections of audio to be moved may be identified visually and the user reassured that they are cutting the right part of the audio track. Refinements like fading in and out can add a professional feel and user satisfaction.
It represents good value for money being free and quickly learnt with little loss of productivity.
So if it’s so good, why is it only at no.10?
First off, it’s a bit of a niche application. Not everyone needs an audio editor. Secondly, although it happily imports a whole range of digital formats, it is built around its own in-house format, and this means that the start and the finish of the editing process are marked by a conversion process. And finally, just occasionally, it catches me out when converting formats and produces some strange results.
Audacity is a free audio editor which has a very intuitive interface which ensures that the software does not form a barrier between you and the editing. It is only at no.10 because of its niche application and one or two occasions when I have made errors because it has not behaved in the way I thought it should.
