The 3 best Audio Editors at a glance

This comparison charts shows you the most important features of the most popular audio editors and tells you instantly what they can do for you.

  1. Sony's Sound Forge 7 and 8

  2. Steinberg's Wavelab 5

  3. Adobe's Audition 1.5 and 2.0
     

But this is not the only benefit of this page. It can help you in many ways if you use it the right way. I will give you some ideas of how else you could use it:

  • It saves time as a tutorial. You might be new to the subject of recording and editing audio on a PC. Here you can easily find out the basic essence of what an audio editor can do without having to wade through tons of information.

  • It saves time as a dictionary. There are lots of abbreviations and hard to find expressions in comparing such a kind of software. You can get their definitions just by clicking on them.

  • It delivers reliable buying decisions. You can be so impressed by one or two features of a software that you might forget about the rest and buy it. This chart brings you back to the floor and lets you decide on a more realistic basis.

  • It gives you a comparison basis you can start from. Even if you're flirting with another editor that is not listed on this chart you can easily compare them by printing this chart and making your own marks and remarks beside the listed features.

  • Additional information for software users. It might be interesting even for some longtime owners of the software to see all the features at a glance and compare them to similar software.

  • It even helps software developers. They can see at a glance what their products should be able to deliver and what the competition does.

How to navigate and get most out of this chart:

  • Look for the features that interest you most and find out which program can deliver it.

  • Click at the words and abbreviations you don't fully understand and a page will pop up instantly with the right definitions. You just close this page to continue.

  • You will see a few numbers (1) instead of a button (●) . If you click on this number you come to an explanation at the bottom of the page. To go back just click on back to 1.

When you are familiar with the chart and the audio editors I would be happy if  you'd come back here and answer me that question (Of course you don't have to. It just would be nice) :-)

You can also do that more often, whenever you find something's missing that you want to see implemented in the future.
 

"What are the most wanted and still missing features of audio editors?"
 

 

 

 

 

Audio Editors Feature Chart
by music-software-reviews.com		 Sound
Forge
7		 Sound
Forge
8		 Wave
-lab
5		 Adobe
Audition
1.5		 Adobe
Audition
2.0
Technical Specifications
Minimum System requirements
Computer platform PC PC PC PC PC
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows 2000 ● ● ● ●  
Windows XP Home or Professional ● ● ● ● ●
Mac OS 9x
Mac OS 10
Processor speed (MHz) 400 500 500 400 1000
Hard-disk space for program installation (Mbyte) 60 150 10000 75 700
Recommended RAM (Mbyte) 128 128 256 64 512
Recommended color depth of display (bit) 24 24 24 24 24
Microsoft DirectX® 8 or later ● ●
Microsoft DirectX® 9 or later ● ● 9
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 ●
Supported sound driver
Standard Windows Drivers (MME, WDM, etc...) ● ● ● ● ●
Asio  - Steinberg's low latency driver ● ● ●
GSIF  - Tascam's low latency driver for Gigasampler
ReWire - Steinberg's internal audio routing ● ●
General file handling
Maximum bit-depth/samplerate 64/192 64/192 32/192 32/192 32/192
Direct use of compressed formats without conversion ● ● ● ● ●
Recording into temporary file (choose format later) ● ● ● ● ●
Recording into final file (better for big files) ● ●
Audio Database for file preview and sorting media ● ● ● ● ●
CD audio extraction ● ● ● ● ●
XMP metadata support         ●
Nondestructive editing / Undo functions
Undo past saving the file ● ● ● ●
Real-time nondestructive audio editing ● ● ● ● ●
Crash recovery tools ● ● 1 ● ●
Unlimited undo/redo ● ● ● ● ●
Undo/redo history window ● ●
Saving paths in rendered media ●
Supported audio file formats/extensions (r=read, w=write)
64 bit doubles (RAW) / dbl r/w r/w
Amiga IFF-8SVX / iff svx r/w r/w
Creative Sound Blaster / voc r/w r/w
Diamond Ware Digitized / dwd r/w r/w
DVI/IMA ADPCM / wav r/w r/w
Microsoft ADPCM / wav r/w r/w
Audition Loop / cel r/w r/w
Sample Vision / smp r/w r/w
Sonic Foundry audio / sfa r r
Scott Studios Wave / wav r/w r/w r/w r r
Audi Interchange File Format (AIFF) / aif aiff snd r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
NeXT/Sun (Java), PCM, u-Law / au snd r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
Sound Designer 1 / dig sd r/w r/w
Sound Designer 2 / sd2 r/w
Ensoniq Paris / paf r/w
Intervoice (ADPCM) / ivc r/w r/w
8-bit signed / sam r/w
U-Law (US telephony format) / ivc r/w r/w r/w
A-Law (EU telephony format) / ivc r/w r/w r/w
A-Law, U-Law Wave / wav r/w r/w
MPEG-1 Layer 2 (Audio) / mp2 mpampg mus r/w
MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Audio) / mp3 r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
MPEG-1 Layer 3 PRO(Audio)  / mp3         r/w
Original Sound Quality / osq r/w
Ogg Vorbis / ogg r/w r/w r/w r/w
Sony Pictures Digital Perfect Clarity™ Audio / pca r/w r/w
Raw PCM files / raw pcm bin r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
RealNetworks RealAudio® 8 / rm w w
RealNetworks RealAudio® 9 / rm w w
ADPCM Microsoft / vox adpcm r/w
Dialogic VOX (ADPCM) / vox r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
Sony Pictures Digital Wave 64™ / w64 r/w r/w
ACM waveform / wav r/w r/w
Microsoft Wave / wav r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
Microsoft Wave 6-channel / wav         r/w
Microsoft Windows Media® V8 Audio / wma r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
Microsoft Windows Media® V9 Audio / wma r/w r/w r/w r/w r/w
Microsoft Windows Media® V9 Pro Audio / wmp         r/w
CD Audio / cda r r r r r
DVD Audio r
Macromedia Flash / swf r
Special audio file import ignoring header r
Text file with numbers representing sample values / txt r/w r/w
Supported video file formats/extensions (r=read, w=write)
24fps DV video files r r
MainConcept MPEG-1 / mpg mpeg mmv m1p m1a mp1 mp2 mpa r/w r/w r r r
MainConcept MPEG-2 / mpg mpeg mmv m2p m2a mp1 mp2 mpa m2t r/w r/w r r r/w10
RealNetworks RealVideo® 8 / rm r/w r/w
RealNetworks RealVideo® 9 / rm r/w r/w
Microsoft Video für Windows / avi r/w r/w r r/w r/w10
Quicktime 5 / mov qt dv gif tif r/w r/w r r r/w10
Microsoft Windows Media® V8 Video / wma asf r/w r/w r r r/w10
Microsoft Windows Media® V9 Video / wma asf r/w r/w r r r/w10
Additional file types besides audio and video/extensions
Sound Forge project files / frg r/w r/w
Sonic Foundry impulse files / sfi r r
Sonic Foundry Playlist files / sfl r/w r/w
Session 8 file / prm r/w r/w
Windows Media Script file / txt r/w r/w
Wavelab Audio Montage / mon r/w
Wavelab Basic Audio CD / cd r/w
Wavelab DVD Audio Project / dvda r/w
Wavelab Data CD/DVD / cdp r/w
Wavelab CD/DVD Label Set / lab r/w
Wavelab Audio Cd Report / rtf r/w
Wavelab Audio Database / dba r/w
Wavelab Workspace / prj r/w
Wavelab Backup Plan / bkp r/w
Wavelab Backup Archive / zip r/w
CD Cue sheets / cue txt r/w
Import AES 31 project / adl r/w
Adobe multitrack session / ses r/w r/w
Adobe FFT files / fft r/w r/w
CD List (Playlist of audio CD) / cdl   r/w
MIDI file / rmi mid   r/w
User interface
Look and feel, Orientation
Styles for Audio Windows ● ● ●
Support of Windows Themes ●
Tabbed docking windows ● ● ● ● ●
Drag-and-drop operations ● ● ● ● ●
Effects previewing ● ● ● ● ●
Snapshots of scenes with exact zoom factor and position ● ● ● ●
Separate graphical waveform overview ●
Customization
Customizable toolbars ● ● ● ● ●
Customizable keyboard shortcuts ● ● ● ●
Midi remote control ● ● ● ●
Application scripts ● ● ● ●
Preset colors ● ● ● ● ●
Preset workspaces (window layout) ● ● ● ●
Preset zoom factors ● ● 2
Effect presets ● ● ● ● ●
Metering, Sound Analysis
VU-meters ● ● ●
PPM-meters ● ● ● ● ●
User selectable characteristics ● ● ● ● ●
Phase Meter ● ● ●
Bit Meter ●
Spectrum analyzer ● ● ● ● ●
Analyze input in real-time ● ● ● ● ●
Clipped peak detection and marking ● ●
Click/Pop detection and marking ● ●
Glitch detection and marking ● ●
Audio file comparer ●
Amplitude statistics   ●
Spectral Pan display   ●
Spectral Phase display   ●
External controller hardware supported
Hardware controller, fader-box ● ●
Midi controller ● ● ● ●
General functions and tools
Transport functions
Record ● ● ● ● ●
Play from cursor ● ● ● ● ●
Play from user selectable point ● ● ●
Play entire file (from beginning to end) ● ● ● ● ●
Stop at end of file ● ● ● ● ●
Stop at user selectable point ● ● ●
Loop selection ● ● ● ● ●
Loop between user selectable points ●  
Pause ● ● ● ● ●
Go to start ● ● ● ● ●
Go to end ● ● ● ● ●
Forward ● ● ● ● ●
Rewind ● ● ● ● ●
Remote control per definable key commands ● ● ● ●
Remote control per MIDI commands ● ● ● ●
Setting pre- and post-roll ● ● ● ●
Audio Scrubbing (Jog/Shuttle functions) ● ● ●
Synchronization
Midi time code master ● ● 3 3
Midi time code slave ● ● ● 3 3
Sample accurate synchronization 4 4
SMPTE start offset possible ● ● ● ● ●
Per MIDI-clock and song position pointer
Defining Regions
Define regions (cues) by cursor selection tool ● ● ● ● ●
Setting start and end markers with labels ● ● ● ● ●
Defining regions (cues) by clicking between markers ● ● ●
Automatic creation of regions (cues) by user definable parameters ● ● ● ● ●
Setting markers
Drop markers while recording ● ● ●