I'm looking into buying some audio editing software. I tried a few free programs but I was kind of unhappy that I had to DL additional programs because the free ones didn't contain key codecs.

All I need the software for is editing wav and mp3 files... basically chop off annoying, additional outros on certain tracks or add fade in/fade outs.

I originally used a program on my old computer called Cool Edit Pro do do this, but the version I have is so old that it won't run on Windows 8 and I really don't want to transfer the files between computers twice. It's time I look for a replacement for CEP.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Again, I'm not looking to do anything too radical with these music files.

i believe audition 3 is free for anyone to use now.

Goldwave is simple to use, and I've used it for exactly what you want.

Audacity is my program of choice. Like you mentioned there is like one additional thing to download but its not difficult, and kinda self explanatory on the site. Very powerful, lots of cool features built in.

I've used Goldwave in the past as well, and it worked great. It's free for a limited number of uses per session, but you can close the program and start it up again to get around that.

I dunno why anyone wouldn't use Audacity.

Audacity is free and open source and fairly full featured. It's what I always used for the samples on this site.
It and Goldwave have always been the best free options I've known of so unless something new has come along in the last year or so I'd give them a try.

And yeah I used to use Cool Edit back in the day too

I was curious about this, whether of not CEP was still around. It appears to be but know goes by the name WavePad. I got the free version and it allows me to do what I need to do.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I still use cool edit pro,  Windows 10 too...may want to try right clicking and running as administrator.  That works for me