Audacity is a multi-platform, open-source sound editor. It is a very complete but compact suite of tools for recording and editing sound on your Mac. It can be used to record sound from a variety of sources. It can record audio from your line-in, your microphone or other sources. It has on-screen level meters that show volume levels and pitch during and after a recording. Being able to capture from almost any audio source on your Mac, it makes for an excellent tool for digitalizing tape audio.
Perhaps Audacity's forte is audio editing. The application has several tools that allow you to completely edit an audio track. You can cut it, trim it, mix different tracks, play with the volume and pitch, and use the more advanced tools like the drawing tool to alter individual sample points. There are also a variety of filters and effects that can be used to enhance audio recordings.
I am not a sound professional but I have used Audacity in the past to trim MP3 songs to fit the time allowed for ringtones. I have also used it to create a soundtrack for a few videos that I have made. In my experience, I found that Audacity is not the most intuitive software that you can find. But it was the one that I sticked with, because it allowed me to do what I wanted quite easily. The user interface is a little too crowded, as for me, but everything you need is there. Audacity proved to be a very powerful, and absolutely fast tool for recording, editing and converting audio files.
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