Wave Pad Sound Editor

NCH Software offers fantastic, affordable apps

We’ve all played the “desert isle” game before: If you were stranded on a deserted island and could only bring one — insert commodity here — what would it be? OK, I’ll go first. If the topic was music and movies, I’d pick the complete works of Steely Dan and Martin Scorsese. If I had to choose one catalog of PC applications, I’d probably go with NCH Software, this week’s spotlight publisher.

Originally named NCH Swift Sound, the company was formed in 1993 in Canberra, Australia, later changing its name to NCH Software. In 2008, the publisher opened an office in Denver to accommodate its growing U.S. presence. It now boasts a catalog of more than 60 Windows products, as well as many for Linux, Mac, iPhone and iPad. The company’s primary focus is audio and video software, but it also creates apps for business, dictation, transcription, telephony tools, graphic utilities, music and much more.

Below are just a handful of NCH Software’s best products, each available for download to try before you buy. Unlike many publishers that charge high prices for all-in-one suites that do more than you probably need, NCH Software takes a modular approach, designing smaller apps that do specific tasks, usually for a lot less money. It’s simply a smarter way to work.

A good place to begin is with the company’s best-known product, WavePad , a full-featured audio editor for PC and Mac. The sparse interface makes it easy to find common functions such as cut, copy, paste, delete and insert. The program supports every music file format you’ll likely encounter, including mp3, wav, wma, au, flac, ogg, m4a, mid, aif and real audio. Built-in audio effects let you amplify, equalize, normalize, reverse, echo and reverb, while integrated VST plugin support opens the door to hundreds of third-party effects and audio tools. Batch processing allows you to apply effects or convert audio formats on hundreds of files with a single click.

Like many of the company’s products, WavePad works directly with other NCH audio apps, including: MixPad , a very nice multitrack audio mixer; Zulu DJ , a stunning real-time mixer and performance app; and Express Burn CD Recorder , for burning your creations to disc.

In all, NCH makes more than a dozen audio applications. One of my favorites is called Golden Records , a fantastic app designed for use with an analog-to-digital audio converter. Beyond the basics, such as restoration tools — scratch removal and volume normalizing — the software can rip entire LPs and automatically split each track, convert 78 rpm records from a 45 rpm player and transfer the resulting mp3 files directly to portable music players. If you’ve got an old record collection you’d like to preserve, this is the software to get.

NCH WavePad Sound Editor v4.59-LAXiTY - FREE SOFTWARE

This audio editing software is a full featured professional audio and music editor for Windows and Mac OS X. It lets you record and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings then add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. WavePad works as a wav or mp3 editor but it also supports a number of other file formats including vox, gsm, wma, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and more.

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