My primary editor

I really like to use Audacity as an external editor in Reaper mainly for cleaning up recordings or restoration purposes. The spectral editing is simple (compared to Sony Sound Forge) but effective for enhancing or equalizing parts of the spectrum. I also do the last steps of mastering with it. The sound of the tools is good. But a bummer for me is that the settings (of tools/plugins) cannot be changed while listening.

The upcoming version 4 (early 2026) looks very promising.

Happy with it

For all of it's flaws, it still holds up well. It is a bit tacky at times and prone to crashing, but in my honest opinion, you can never expect everything to go down smoothly, especially if we're talking about a computer software.

Great freeware DAW, but caution when renaming your project!

I've been a long-time user of Audacity, and it hasn't been until now that I've started to take advantage of the third party VST's such as Rosen Digital cabinet IR's, LePou amp sims, Variety of Sound and Kjerhaus plugins. The DAW functions great for a freeware VST - you can actually monitor your input level before you hit record, and it also allows you to create click tracks right on the get-go.

However, a word of caution - if you save the project by the Audacity file, then there is a data folder that will be created in the same location as the project file you've saved. This data folder contains all the progress that you've made on your recording project, and if you rename the project file, delete the data folder or locate either the project file or data folder (not both!) to someplace else, then the next time you open that project file, you'll be hit with an error message and lose all your data on it.

If you intend on backing up your project, make sure you copy BOTH the data folder AND the project file at the same time. If you don't, you'll be looking forward to hours upon hours of re-doing all the precious takes you've made so far.

But if you're the kind of person who is into serious recording and you don't have the budget to stretch for a Cockos Reaper DAW, give Audacity a serious look. It'll be a great freeware DAW to help you get started as a recording engineer.

okay okay okay

This is a really simple, bare bones, FREE multitracking program with solid editing features... I have it, sometimes its nice to do simple work in a simple environment. Its also not much of a CPU or RAM hog for slow systems.

the true enemy of originality

once upon a time the audacity team saw the midi file format and decided instead of making a sequencer, they should just make their software show you what a midi file looks like instead. basically all you can do is import files, do some sick tricks, and spit it back out as a wave file. what's that? you want mp3 export? you have to download a library manually. it's like installing a vst plugin but a few thousand times more painful.

A nice little noise generator.

I used to use this just for recording my vocals, as well as converting my .wav files to MP3. Recently, I learned about importing raw data, and I've been able to make some great glitch sounds, and even some sounds for noise music. Try it sometime if you're into those kind of sounds.

Robust but not at all beginner friendly

I have only limited experience with Audacity and it was a fucking nightmare to use, there are like 100s of options and they apparently do something but you can't actually tell. Besides that it felt very accurate but I remember having a bit of trouble because it didn't let you zoom in that much, maybe that has since been fixed. Either way I highly recommend it for mixing music

Great. Not for music production (my fault)

I tried to use this for music production, BAD IDEA. Great for simple audio recording and analysis.

Bottom line: I recommend for starting out with audio recording.

Easy to use and always trusty

The main software for recording that i use when i play my music through my Zoom G3,really to use and i love the interface on it,i can create multiple layers for a song and never fails me,and to be honest for me this one kills the other DAW.

Very simple and powerful

I know this is primarily a music website, but I feel the need to point out this software. I used to use it for recording my vocals, and then I would export them into Fruity Loops. However, now my vocals are recorded in Fruity Loops itself. However, I still find use in Audacity, just not for my music. I often use it for recording my lines when I do my voice acting, and adding various effects before I export it into Cool Edit Pro for editing. So, yes, this is very good for audio editing and recording, but not really that much else.