For compiling CDs, I think Nero (www.nero.com) is tops.  Plenty of features
available, covering most of what you're looking for, including normalization
(setting roughly equivalent volume levels), trimming by editable index
points with fade-in and fade-out capabilities (though I find the behavior of
the indexing is a little kludgey), and a decent-enough audio editor.  What
I'd love to see is for Nero to have the same kind of ripping-to-standardized
directories that Windows Media Player and RealOne.  I end up ripping via
Media Player or RealOne and burning via Nero.

As for mashups, the audio editor with Nero probably isn't robust enough for
that; I'd go with CoolEdit (www.syntrillium.com), uh, which I see was bought
by Adobe last year and is now called Adobe Audition.  And they no longer
differentiate between a "standard" version and a "professional" version, so
it's pretty steep to purchase ($299).

Them's my two cents.

Christopher

-----Original Message-----
From: audities-owner@smoe.org [mailto:audities-owner@smoe.org]On Behalf
Of Dale_ThisIsPop
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 10:28 AM
To: Audities
Subject: MP3 editing software


Can somebody help me with a recommendation on an audio editing program? I'm
not getting anywhere reading the features on the back of boxes at computer
stores.

I'm looking for a program that will allow me to edit audio files on my
computer. I currently use Roxio software to burn songs from my hard drive to
disc, but it's very limited. I can't control the volume (which means the
levels on mixes made on my computer are all over the place) or edit the file
lengths.

I'm looking for something that:

1) works on a Windows PC (I'm not a Mac guy)

2) allows me to edit sound files - namely getting rid of silence at the
beginning or end of a song to tighten up the mix

3) can control the over all volume levels on a disk to even out the audio
levels of a mix

4) would allow me to edit together a montage of elements of various audio
files

5) I'd like to try my hand at making a mashup based around power pop
elements rather than dance stuff, but I'm thinking that that may require a
different software program.

Doe anybody have any suggestions or know of a good site to find more info on
this type of thing?
Thanks
Dale

np: Peter Soboroff's excellent SOTT 17 mix disc