Links

This has become my default music player in recent years. It is much faster, "lighter" and more resilient than stupid old iTunes, and with the huge number of available plug-ins you can get it to do almost anything (including sync to your iDevice.) The down side is that it takes a lot of fiddling to get it set up the way you want it -- recommended for "power users" only. For PC.

A sound-file editor with multitrack capabilities. I use it for volume adjustments, fades, etc., but it seems designed as a serious tool for electronic composition and recording. Available for Linux, Mac, and PC.

Quickly chop up an Mp3, alter volume, add a fade-out, etc. Works directly on the Mp3 file so it is fast and "lossless." For PC.

Adjusts the volume of Mp3 files. It analyzes average volume, not just the loudest point, for more practical results (though such an approach could easily distort a particularly dynamic piece of classical music.) It can work through a list of files and set them to a uniform volume, and it works directly on the Mp3 code so it is "lossless." For PC.

A nice standalone tag editor. Can shape up a folder of mp3s very quickly. For PC.

Speeds music up, slows it down, can attempt to "kareoke" it by knocking out the parts balanced in the center. For PC.

Quickly encode .WAV files to Mp3 using the free LAME codec. A little difficult to configure, at first, and you have to install the lame .dll. But, once you've got it, fast, trouble-free encoding is just a few clicks away. For PC.

Renders MIDI files as WAVs, and, as the title implies, can use a varied palette of synthfonts (collected waveforms and samples) to do it. For PC.

Another MIDI->WAV program. I actually never got this one to work, went back to synthfont instead. Some people do recommend it, though, difficult configuration notwithstanding. It apparently exists for PC, Mac, and Unix.

Back in the day I was a big fan of Cakewalk Music Creator, an inexpensive MIDI sequencing program that was stable and powerful to do real work. It looks like now they've replaced it with this free program.