HOLLYWOOD, CA - With more than forty sound editing software packages to choose from, what's the right tool?

Let's take a look at some great free and open source tools, a selection of inexpensive audio tools in the under $200 category, and check on the most popular (and expensive) professional tools. Along the way, we'll gain insights from some of the top editors in the business, experts from PBS's NOVA, NBC's Community, Showtime's Nurse Jackie, National Geographic's March of the Penguins, Warner Bros. Sex and the City 2, Universal Pictures Love Happens, and Paramount Pictures Dinner for Schmucks.

Free and Open Source Audio Editors

Audacity and Ardour are the most popular free open source software (FOSS) programs. When editing a documentary or a promo, often some temporary narration is needed. Audacity is a handy tool to record yourself for temp narration. Many picture editors do that.

"I always do scratch first, which is hard because I have the voice of a 13-year-old child," says PBS NOVA picture editor Rebecca Nieto. "Sometimes it's hard to sell drama or mystery with that voice-over, but luckily my executive producer is used to hearing it."

Ardour is a much more complex tool, a digital audio workstation (DAW). Harrison Consoles, a company that makes million-dollar studio audio mixing consoles installed at Universal and Sony, bundles Ardour with some of their products. A key feature of Ardour is sync-to-picture, that it can lock audio to motion picture playback. Without that, you can't monitor lip-sync when editing sound for film or video.

Traverso is a new DAW that presents a clean keyboard-centric interface. You may find this easier or harder to master than a traditional DAW design.

Audio Editing Software Under $200

Before setting out to buy audio software, we should mention that you may already have a sound editor included with software you already own. For example, if you have Final Cut Pro, that has a nice audio editor and mixer built in. Adobe Soundbooth is included in the CS5 Production Premium and Master Collection suites (or may be purchased standalone for $199).

Apple GarageBand, bundled with Mac OS X, is great for recording audio and MIDI tracks. It does editing and mixing, too. With GarageBand, you can create soundtracks or record voice-over from your Mac's microphone.

March of the Penguins ADR supervisor Willy Allen uses Pro Tools LE ($150) on a Mac Powerbook with an Mbox ($449), a device that plugs into a Mac or PC to provide the necessary analog, digital and MIDI i/o ports for professional audio work. (To make LE work with Avid OMF files, Allen uses DV Toolkit 2, cost $1,295.)

"Some people think the Mbox is too small to handle a lot of jobs, but I don't," says Allen. "I've cut effects with it... Foley... ADR... done sound design with it. It's very portable. I can go to the mixing stage with my Mbox and have it hooked up to the stage in less than five minutes. I can have it online quicker than they can get the stage online."

"One thing I like about Peak is it's a Swiss army knife," says Dinner for Schmucks sound effects editor Scott Jennings. "It can open about any kind of format. It can convert to any type of file. It has pitch and sample rate conversion. When I'm doing field recording I'll usually put it into Peak first and clean it up with Peak."

Jennings uses Peak for destructive editing, not for building a show soundtrack. (For that he uses Pro Tools and Nuendo.) Peak hasn't been able to do film soundtracks because it doesn't sync to picture. That may be changing. The latest version of Peak supports Jack, open source software that enables syncing to a multitude of external tools. Jack-supported applications include xjadeo, an open source video player that syncs to external audio. Audacity, Ardour and Traverso also support Jack.

Mixbus is based on the open source Ardour software. "I spent my $80 and downloaded Harrison Consoles Mixbus," says Sex and the City 2 re-recording mixer John Ross. "They proved many things are possible." Because it's tried-and-true, most pro sound editors choose Avid Pro Tools.

Living in a Pro Tools World

"Pro Tools is an industry standard," says NBC Community supervising sound editor Mark Binder, who's also the sound supervisor and re-recording mixer for Fox Wilde Kingdom. "Wherever you're going, you'll run into Avid Pro Tools. It looks very simple, but is filled with complexity. With a tactile surface such as the ICON it becomes a very powerful mixing console."

"Pro Tools feels very immediate, a system for making fast editing decisions," says Showtime Nurse Jackiesupervising sound editor Steve Borne, who's also the supervising sound editor for the AMC series Rubicon. "For ADR recording there's a plug-in called VocALign. That's a fantastic little program that will take a guide track and compare it to the ADR you've recorded. It will time-stretch and compress and move the loop around so that in energy and placement it's in perfect sync with the guide track."