Alive

If you've got a SoundFont sound card, this is a decent download for editing music and isolating beat loops as samples. Although easily loaded and launched, Alive might intimidate with a chaotic interface that's got a lot of its most useful features hidden in the main menu. The player window is divided into three functions: browsing, playing, and editing. In editing, you can manipulate amplitude or pitch, modulation, effects, and filters. We were able to tweak a few music files during testing, but generated our fair share of error windows, too. Mix masters familiar with music software shouldn't have too many problems with Alive, but given its hardware limitations, it won't have wide appeal.