there are a few free audio editors you can try, like Krystal and Audacity. After than for about a hundred bucks there's Sonc Foundry's Sound Forge and Adobe Audition. But my I just stick with good ol' Pro Tools...nothing can beat that :)
Pro Tools is pretty much the top of the line, it doesn't get much better. Basic editors like Audition and Sound Forge are pretty much consumer level, where as Pro Tools is professional. Other pro audio software includes Logic, Reason, and Cubase.
Pro Tools is made by a company called digidesign, which is the sister company of Avid, maker of the professional editing systems. Pro Tools is used extensively in the music recording industry, all the way to the tv and film industry. from recording basic vocals to surround sound encoding, Pro Tools can do it all. You can start basic and get an MBOX (2 channel in/out USB 1.1 48K w/ SPDIF) that comes with Pro Tools 6 for under $500. It goes all the way up to around $350,000 for a full-blown Pro Tools HD setup.
I currently have two 002 racks (Pro Tools requires its own hardware to run...so you can't use your basic computer sound card) which combined have 16 channels in/out at 24 bit 96K. I just got a new c24 console not too long ago, which is quite fun to play with.
I've been using Pro Tools for almost 6 years now, and teaching it for the past 2. It is truely a dream come true to get paid for playing with Pro Tools all day.
Here's some pics off digidesign's website. First one is a screen shot of pro tools, and the second is the audio console I currently use. Check them out if you want, www.digidesign.com. LOTS of fun lol.
