Friday Favorite: Audacity 2.0 delivers free audio editing for Mac

Audacity, the venerable and much loved open source audio editor, has a 2.0 release out (as of March 13) in versions for OS X, Windows and GNU/Linux.

Here's a rundown of what has changed:

• Many effects are significantly improved, especially Equalization, Noise Removal and Normalize. Vocal Remover is now included, plus GVerb on Windows and Mac. VAMP analysis plug-ins are now supported.

• Improved label tracks with Sync-Lock Tracks feature in the Tracks Menu. Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard and there can be multiple clips per track. There are many more keyboard shortcuts.

• A new Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs, a Timer Record feature and a new Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.

• Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.

• Fast "On-Demand" import of WAV/AIFF files if read directly from source. FLAC now fully supported. Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.

Audacity is great for recording live audio, converting analog sources into digital recordings or CDs, and changing the speed or pitch of a recording. For many podcasters, Audacity is the go-to tool for recording and editing. You can edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.

Audacity runs best with at least 1 GB RAM and a 1 GHz processor (2 GB RAM/2 GHz on OS X 10.7 or later). When Audacity is to be used for lengthy multi-track projects, the hardware requirements are bumped up to a minimum of 2 GB RAM and 2 GHz processor (4 GB RAM on OS X 10.7 or later).

You can get all the info you need on Audacity at this link, and a complete feature list is available too.