Audacity is a free, multiplatfrom audio editor (Windows, Mac OS 9/X, Linux/Unix). You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST plug-in effects. There's also localization support, full-duplex mode, and a lot-lot more!

A really nice oldskool-style MIDI-capable virtual synth and tracker (song composer) in one, ported from the good old DOS to Windows! It has it's own style user interface (fixed window size, F5/F6 or mouse to choose/scroll between the two program screens), fortunately it's easy to use. To create a song you can use drumbanks (built of WAV samples, you can even save the banks for later use) and eight channels of generated sounds (with echo, reverb, filtering, envelopes and more!) There are tons of presets and a nice randomizing feature. The .AXS file format the editor produces can also be played with a WinAmp plugin. Unfortunately the documentation is missing from this version. You gotta try this, it's great even if you just wanna have some fun ;)

CDex is a really outstanding piece of tool to do all sorts of things audio related. Mainly focused on ripping and converting, things like turning your home Compact Disc collection into an mp3 collection on your hard drive become extremely easy. With built in support for many encoders you wont find any shortage of options for your media files. Below is a more in-depth explination of CDex features.

• Mature, professional, easy-to-use interface
• Media File Player
• Create PLS and M3U playlist files
• Advanced jitter correction
• Support for many file formats/audio encoders (WAV, MP3, OGG, VQF, APE, etc) and on-the-fly encoding
• Support for ID3 V1 and V2 tags
• Support for normalization of audio files
• Support for transcoding of compressed audio files
• Support for local and remote CDDB
• Support for recording from the analog input line

A really great free CD grabber tool with tons of features!

• both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported
• Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)
• Secure, fast (probably not exact) and burst (no synchronization) extraction methods selectable
• Read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction in secure modes, as far as possible
• Output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these positions
• Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks
• Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards
• Normalization of extracted audio
• Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression e.g. to MP3 waves
• Support for the BladeEnc DLL that is usable like an ACM Codec for online MP3 compression
• Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression after extraction
• Batch compression and decompression of/to WAV files
• Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression
• Detection of pre-track gaps, Detection of silence in pre-track gaps
• Automatic creation of CUE sheets for CDRWin, including all gaps, indicies, track attributes, UPC and ISRC
• CD player functionality and prelistening to selected ranges
• Automatic detection of drive features, whether a drive has an accurate stream and/or does caching
• Sample Offsets for drives with no accurate streams, including the option of filling up missing samples with silence
• Option for synchronizing tracks for non-accurate stream drives
• Filename editing with local and remote CDDB database and cdplayer.ini support and more features like ID3 tagging
• Browse and edit local database
• Local CDDB support
• Record and Loop Record functions for recording from LP, radio, etc.
• Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag
• Catalog extraction function
• Multisession (CD-Extra) support
• CD-Text support
• CD-Write support for some drives
• ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and database
• Glitch removal after extraction
• Small WAV editor with the following functionality: delete, trim, normalize, pad, glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise reduction, fade in/out, undo (and more)
• Program is Cardware, so feel free to copy

If you're not a real beginner in digital music creation, you must have been met with programs called "trackers". These programs help you to easily create music with the computer, by loading sound samples (eg. sound of a piano) and playing them in different pitches on multiple channels. The files trackers create are called modules, and are really popular - that's why there are tons of different trackers, module and sample formats. ModPlug Tracker is one of the best trackers under Windows, with professional features: tons of known module and instrument formats (existing modules can be used as instrument banks, which makes intrument ripping a piece of cake :), built-in sample editor, tons of effects (bass expansion, reverb, pro-logic surround, graphic eq, automatic gain control, DirectX and VST plugin support per channel, configurable keyboard layout (with FastTracker 2/Impulse Tracker presets), MIDI support, and a lot more! Well, ModPlug Tracker is simply great - and has all the features need to create an award-winning album. But remember, the best computer and/or program might not be enough if you do not have a little bit of talent :)

An amazing tracker stuff, continuing the all-time-favourite FastTracker 2 style. This is a simple must-try one, although it's not yet complete. Features right now:

• Graphic Track Edition.
• 64 Tracks / 256 Virtual Tracks when playing.
• Selectable Sample Compression
• WAV rendering (8, 16, 32 bits)
• Full Midi IN/ OUT
• Configurable Sample Rate (from 8KHz to 192KHz)
• High Quality Mixing: 32bit float point mixer for Impressive Output Quality
• Support for VST Instruments and Effects
• Support for built-in filters and effects
• Stereo Samples
• New Note Actions Support
• Multi-envelope support
• Sample Editor for basic Sample Actions (loop, edit, etc)
• DirectSound Output
• XI instruments support and also SKI (Skale Instruments)
• FX Routing
• Effects and filters Groups

...it was "only" a module player (XM, S3M and the like) in the past, now it's grown up, and plays even MP3, OGG - and anything you may want! You can install your favourite WinAmp input plugins to play anything that's possible, and Sonique vis-plugins to enjoy endless multimedia pleasure. Reading M3U playlists is a piece of cake for the player (you can also create and save your own tracklist if you want to). Though it has tons of cool features, why I'm using XMPlay is is it's superb sounding moduleplayer-engine with reverb, surround and equalizer options. A two-seconds hacking on the Output options screen makes your modules sound like if they were recorded in a studio. Ofcourse all the Impulse Tracker's .IT effects/NNA/DCA/filters are supported, and the FastTracker 2 .XM playing is simply perfect - not to mention the player's MOD, MO3 (MP3/OGG compressed MOD), MTM and UMX knowledge. It has to be enough for now, if you still don't want to download XMPlay, I'm gonna surrender :)