The old threads, though, make for some great reading and people usually come back to see what the new question is.

This thread has answers from several Mudcat regulars. JohnInKansas is long gone, but he always had technically clear and complete answers. And I think some of the folks who participated in these threads before would point you to Audacity. BillD is still around and he still has a lot of those handy obscure program links to share.

Poking through a couple of those old threads I found dead links, but I also found this from a few years ago that still seems viable: links to various tech resources that might include something helpful now.