Wavepad is a feature rich sound editor for Windows. You can record from audio inputs, like a microphone or a record player, import and edit sound files. It is good for making mixes, or digitizing vinyl. The range of options in WavePad basic - there is a commercial "Masters" version - is impressive. You can add effects, fades, split tracks, merge tracks, and much more. Performing all of these tasks is easy, and easy to undo if you make a mistake. It's certainly user friendly, and the fact you can import more or less any sound file format makes it incredibly accessible for anyone (there's no need to mess around with file conversion).

As well as importing from your hard drive, you can also import directly from CD, and there's a tool to burn whatever you want. There is a tone generator, and even a text to speech generator, so you can express yourself with a robotic voice.

There are tabs at the bottom of the edit window for you to move easily between open files, a zoom tool so it's easy to highlight exactly the part you want when editing, and the highlighting itself is really intuitive, allowing you to apply effects with precision. The one function I think WavePad is missing is a BPM analyzer - although this is sometimes unreliable in other programs, it's a nice feature to have.

Features of WavePad:

- Sound editing functions include cut, copy, paste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim and more
- Audio effects include, amplify, normalize, equaliser, envelope, reverb, echo, reverse and many more
- Integrated VST plugin support gives professionals access to thousands of additional tools and effects
- Includes free sound effect and music library
- Supports almost all audio and music file formats including mp3, wav, vox, gsm, wma, au, aif, flac, real audio, ogg, aac, m4a, mid, amr and many more
- Batch processing allows you to apply effects and/or convert thousands of files as a single function
- Tools include spectral analysis (FFT), speech synthesis (text-to-speech) and voice changer
- Audio restoration features including noise reduction and click pop removal
- Supports sample rates from 6 to 196kHz, stereo or mono, 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits
- Includes its own CD ripper with 'ultrafast' rip mode and cddb music database lookup
- Works directly with MixPad multi-track audio mixing, Express Burn CD Recorder and Zulu DJ software
- Easy to use interface will have you editing in minutes