Adobe Audition 2.0 is highly recommended for people looking for audio tools that are powerful yet fairly intuitive too.

Thank heavens for the tutorial system, as Audio Studio is a tough program to get into, especially if you’re one of the comparative novices at which it’s aimed. But persevere and you’ll see that this program has a strong feature set for the money.

Magic GarageBand is the flashiest, but certainly not the richest new feature in GarageBand '08. Multi-take recording, arrangements, expanded effects, and automation make this version a more capable tool for musicians. While we found little kinks in some of these features, overall they're quite useful. Though not specifically intended for podcasters, those producing podcasts benefit from such new GarageBand features as enhanced and expanded effects and automation.

It's refreshing not to have to pay top whack for audio-editing software. With Sony Sound Forge 9.0's range of tools you can produce decent results on a budget.

For new users, Roxio Creator 2009 is a good deal. Roxio Creator 2009 is a massive installation (3GB of disk space is required) and a bit slow to switch between modules, but the look and the feel of the content it produces are excellent. If you already have Roxio Media Creator, take a close look to see whether Creator 2009 offers anything you urgently need. If not, wait for the next iteration.

We run MP3Gain on all new music that gets added to our digital audio library — and if you want consistent levels of volume, so should you.