Amadeus on Sonoma and Apple Silicon
The latest version (2.8.13) is fully compatible with macOS Sonoma and runs smoothly on Apple Silicon Macs.


icon lite
title lite

The intuitive yet powerful wave editor

  • Amadeus Lite is an intuitive and powerful wave editor supporting a variety of sound formats including AIFF, Wave, MP3, WMA, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless, and many others. Click on one of the thumbnails below to see a larger version of it.

    wave editor

    Wave Editor

    Amadeus Lite is a fully featured wave editor featuring smart editing, automatically preventing the appearance of cracks when performing editing operations. It also allows to paste a sound "over" an existing sound, performing a mix and has extensive built-in support for markers, facilitating the navigation in large documents.

    audio units

    Audio Units

    Besides having many built-in sound effects, Amadeus Lite comes with full support for Apple's Audio Units. These are sound effects developed by third parties (a few of them are developed by Apple and are built into OS X) that allow to extend Amadeus Lite's possibilities without limits. Some free Audio Units can be found here (direct download link to the mda suite of plug-ins), at Destroy FX, at Sound Consulting, and on Michael Norris's website

    file conversion

    File Conversion

    Amadeus Lite converts audio files from and to no less than 13 sound formats, including AIFF, Wave, Mp3, Mp4, M4a, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, FLAC, and CAF.

  • This page contains a non-exhaustive list of features of Amadeus Lite. It is intended to give you a flavour of its possibilities, but of course nothing is worth the real thing, so please, by all means, download it and try it out by yourself. Don't forget that a manual is available from the "Help" menu in the program.

    Easy and intuitive editing

    • Amadeus Lite's smart editing function ensures that your edits always sound good and never create the cracks typical from discontinuities in the waveform created by some other audio editors.
    • Easily mix several sounds with the handy Paste over function.
    • Integration with iTunes: drag songs from iTunes directly onto Amadeus Lite to edit them or take advantage of the Export to iTunes Library function to save your creations directly to iTunes.

    Convert vinyls or tapes to CD

    • Amadeus Lite's powerful denoising and repairing functions make it easy to remove that annoying hiss on your favourite tape recordings or the scratch on that old vinyl recording.
    • Split your recording into multiple files with one handy function, for use by iTunes for example.
    • Burn your recording to an Audio CD straight away from within Amadeus Lite with a simple click of the mouse.

    Sound effects

    • Full support for Audio Unit plug-ins means that the functionality of Amadeus Lite can be extended and tailored to suit your particular requirements perfectly.
    • The most commonly used effects (multiband graphic equalizers, volume normalization, fade in/out, echo, speed and pitch change, etc) are built into the program and therefore benefit from a nice MacOS X - like user interface.
    • Amadeus Lite allows you to maintain a list of favorite actions, so that your commonly used tasks are always only one mouse click away.
  • Please click any question below to see the answer.

    • Does Amadeus Lite run on Apple Silicon Macs?

      Yes, starting from version 2.8.4. It currently runs under Rosetta 2, but performance is indistinguishable from native and this allows it to use Audio Units that have not yet been ported to Apple Silicon.

    • Is Amadeus Lite compatible with macOS Ventura?

      Yes, starting from version 2.8.9. If you are using an earlier version, please upgrade to the latest version.

    • How do I transfer Amadeus Lite to another computer?

      If you purchased it on this website, just download Amadeus Lite to the new computer and reenter the license code that you received when you first purchased Amadeus Lite. If you lost your license code, please send me a short note from the email address used when originally purchasing the program.

      If you purchased it on the App Store, just reinstall it on the new computer from the Purchased tab of the App Store.

    • What is your upgrades policy?

      Amadeus Lite 2.x is a free upgrade for all registered users of Amadeus Lite.

      As a general rule for future upgrades, minor upgrades will always be free of charge to existing users. I reserve myself the right to charge for major upgrades.

    • Why didn't I get a license key?

      If you purchased Amadeus on the Mac App Store, you will not be issued with a license key. Indeed, applications purchased on the Mac App Store do not require a license key to run. If you still have the demo version of Amadeus installed on your computer, you can simply move it to the trash bin and then reinstall it from within the Purchases tab of the App Store application.

    • Is there an educational discount available?

      Yes, a 20% discount is available for students and faculty. Just send an email from your university address to Martin@HairerSoft.com asking for a discount coupon.

      It is unfortunately not possible to offer educational discounts through the Mac App Store, so this voucher only works on the HairerSoft webstore.

    • Why does Amadeus Lite refuse to create an Mp3/AAC file from my recording?

      This can happen if you try to create a high-quality compressed file from low-quality uncompressed audio, which is something that you would not want to do on purpose. Just decrease the bitrate in the Mp3/AAC settings to a lower value.

    • Can Amadeus Lite record the output from another program?

      Not without any third-party software. The free programs SoundFlower and Jack OS X allow you to route the output of any program (like iTunes for example) into Amadeus Lite for recording. Please refer to the corresponding programs for instructions or look at Section 13.4 in the manual.

    • What are the terms of the user license?

      You can find the terms of the single-user license here The upshot is that the license is valid for one user (so if you and your partner use it that would require two licenses) but can be used on up to three different computers (so if you have a desktop computer at home and a laptop for travelling, you can have the program installed on both).

    • Could you add a key shortcut for function XYZ?

      Go to the "Keyboard and Mouse" system preferences panel. On MacOS 10.3 and later, it allows you to assign key shortcuts to arbitrary menu items.

    • The sliders for the record levels are greyed out and the input level is inappropriate, why?

      These sliders directly control the hardware. Therefore, they are only active if your hardware actually does provide gain control and the driver of your hardware implements it correctly. If your particular hardware doesn't support it, there's nothing that one can do about it. You should be careful to adjust the level of the signal to the correct level before it reaches your hardware (or using the controls of the hardware if it has some). Also, make sure that you are actually using the correct sound input device. You can check whether a particular device supports gain adjustement with the "Audio MIDI Setup" application in your Applications/Utilities folder (select the device and check whether the input sliders there are greyed out).

      Note that the iMic has a little black switch that allows you to switch between microphone level input and line-in level input. Make sure that this switch is in the appropriate position.

    • Do you accept PayPal payments?

      Yes, if you purchase Amadeus Lite by clicking on the Store link, you will see that PayPal is one of the accepted means of payment.

    • Amadeus attempts to make an internet connection at startup! What the heck?

      Occasionally, Amadeus makes an http query to see whether a new version is available. What happens is exactly the same as what happens when you click on this link and this link (i.e. it just retrieves two pieces of text). If you are concerned about this or choose not to believe what I say, you can disable version checking in the "Updates" section of the Amadeus Lite preferences.

    • Is there a manual for Amadeus Lite?

      Yes! Select the menu item "Amadeus Lite Help..." in the "Help" menu. You can also download the manual here.

    • I cannot open m4p files purchased on the Music Store with Amadeus, why?

      Apple decided to forbid third-party applications the access to m4p files. One workaround is to play the files in iTunes and to use Jack to record the output from iTunes. Another workaround is to burn the file on an Audio CD and to open it from there.

  • To download one of the software packages available on this page, just click on the corresponding link, the download should start automatically.

    Download Amadeus Lite 2.8.13 for macOS 10.10 or later



    Older versions

    The current version of Amadeus Lite requires macOS 10.10 or later and runs only in 64 bit mode.

    Amadeus Lite 2.6.2 is the last version to run in 32 bit mode and is available here.

    Amadeus Lite 2.3.1 is the last version to run on Mac OS X 10.6 and is available here.

    Amadeus Lite 2.0.8 is the last version to run on Mac OS X 10.5 and is available here.

    Amadeus Lite supports a variety of Audio Unit Plug-Ins, some of which can be downloaded below.

    Note that the software available further down on this page has not been developed by HairerSoft. User reports indicate that these Plug-Ins are compatible with Amadeus Lite but no exhaustive testing has been performed.

    A collection of free Audio Units can be downloaded by clicking on the following link:


    You can find more free plug-ins at destroyFX, at Sound Consulting, and on Michael Norris's website