Audacity is the free editor most people start with, and it goes further than most people take it. These walkthroughs show the exact menus and settings, from realtime effects to AI-assisted cleanup.
Install plugins through MuseHub, validate them in Audacity, and use them as realtime effects on a track or the master, or as one-off destructive edits — with the formats Audacity 4 loads, the mistakes that make a plugin ‘not work’, and free plugins to start with.
Audacity gets five AI tools — noise suppression, stem separation, transcription, music generation and audio upscaling — through the free OpenVINO AI Tools plugin. Here is what each one does, where to find it, and how to install it from MuseHub.
Remove hum, hiss and room noise in Audacity — the classic three-step Noise Reduction method, what each slider really does, the free AI alternative that needs no noise profile, and the noises none of them can fix.
Ten free audio editors that are genuinely free — for Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile. What each one is best at, where the free tiers hide limits, and how to extend a free editor with plugins.
Digitise your vinyl with free software — which of the three hardware setups you have, why a phono preamp matters, the Audacity settings that matter, and how to split a side into individual tracks.