When comparing Audacity vs Waveform, the Slant community recommends Waveform for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs? ” Waveform is ranked 14th while Audacity is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Waveform is:
Runs great on Linux(except LV2 Support).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free, open source and cross-platform
Audacity is available for free on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux with source code available here.
Pro Well maintained
Audacity is constantly updated.
Pro Great community backing it
Pro Great for vocal track editing
Pro Linux support
Runs great on Linux(except LV2 Support).
Pro Free version available
Older releases are available for free when new versions come out.
Pro Clean interface
Pro ARM/ARM64 support
Runs on SBC (single board computer) systems like the Raspberry Pi3, Pine64, and ODroid development boards, as well as systems like the Pinebook and Chromebooks with ARM based SoC CPU's that have been reformatted with a Linux OS.
Pro Easy to understand
Very logically structured.
Pro Creative Tools
Has a Chord Track, MIDI pattern creator and great included tools.
Pro Very stable
Pro Ideal for beginners
Self-explaining interface.
Cons
Con Not seen as a full DAW
Audacity doesn't have the capabilities of popular DAWs and generally isn't considered to be good option.
Con Doesn't retain audio integrity
Audacity uses destructive editing, meaning applying effects, cutting, etc is non-reversable after you've saved a project.
Con No real time effects
Users are unable to change effects in real time with Audacity. If effects are to be changed, no sound can be playing or recording.
Con Unable to use Synthesizers / virtual instruments
You can only use effect plugins or record live with this DAW.
Con No native 64-bit version, therefore does not support 64-bit VST plugins
Audacity is available only as a 32-bit application, therefore even when running on 64-bit machines, it only supports 32-bit VST plugins unless they are converted to 32-bit using an application such as JBridge.
Con Crashes a lot
Con Not open source
Con Not suited for live performance
No session based Workflow (like Live/Bitwig), hiccups upon loading projects.
Con No option to easily cut a file
There is no scissors tool or similar....