There may not be many of us out there that actually remember a time before digital files came into our lives. It seems that it has only been the last decade and a half that world of technological advances has seemingly exploded.

We can chat online with our friends and family around the world with just a click of a button. We can share our photos without having to wait for them to be returned from the photo processing facilities. We share information and files on an almost instant basis using programs like File zilla and Ares p2p.

One of the greatest advances is audio technology. No longer are we stuck with poor sound quality or having to struggle to place audio into our video files. We can even take those old vinyl records, record them, clean up the pops and scratches and record them to digital CDs.

One such program that allows users to do this is Audacity. This program is designed to record and edit audio. It is a free software program developed by the Open Source community. Because of its open source development background this program is available to anyone free of charge. It is also available on numerous computing platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Users of Audacity have the ability to:

-Take vinyl records or audio tapes and convert them to CD format
-Edit audio files in Vorbis, MP3, AIFF or Ogg formats
-Splice, mix, copy or cut audio files as desired
-Perform live audio recordings
-Dub existing tracks
-Record in a multi track format
-Change an audio files pitch
-Adjust file volumes
-Use effects such as reverse, wah-wah, echo and more

With Audacity you can now take all those vinyl records and transfer them to CD and not have to worry about finding a turntable!