In the sidebar links I’ve replaced the Audacity audio editor with the fine freeware Ocenaudio. About the only one worth having, and thankfully it’s a very nice bit of desktop Windows freeware. Easy to use, too, and there’s no ‘you must now install some FFmpeg codecs, etc’ (which was always a hassle, with Audacity) after install. The only drawbacks I’ve found so far is it takes about 30 seconds to load. And, though it’s supposed to be “multitrack”, I’m still utterly baffled about to how to get two tracks side-by-side. That is not at all obvious, though the UI is very easy otherwise.
Update: After a good deal of searching, I don’t think it’s actually possible to multitrack edit with Ocenaudio. If it is, no-one can show me how to do it.
Update: Yes, here’s audio expert Steven Jay Cohen… “Both OcenAudio and TwistedWave were not designed to be multi-track editors.” Stupid reviewers said it was multi-track! Grrr. Turns out, it’s not!!
I’ve also discovered the wonderful automatic transcription feature of Nuance Dragon Professional 15. I hadn’t been following the fortunes of the old Dragon Dictate, having tried it on and off since 2005 and always uninstalled it due to lack of use. But in recent years I see it has got AI and has lost the ‘Dictate’ bit of the name. It now has an auto-transcriber built in, which works surprisingly well from a clear .MP3 with a speaker who has good diction and English. Maybe only 85% as good as a YouTube transcript, but quite usable with a bit of manual editing after hearing the original. The software does not need online or cloud access, making it the only viable offline desktop solution I know of. The drawbacks for some will be the cost, and that Mac development has apparently been abandoned (because… Apple).
Also note iZotope RX 7 Audio_Editor Advanced, which uses AI to remove background hum, clicks, and other problems with spoken audio.