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Add to SafariWhen comparing Audacity vs Harrison Mixbus, the Slant community recommends Harrison Mixbus for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs? ” Harrison Mixbus is ranked 17th while Audacity is ranked 21st.
Specs
Question 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 Has a great overall sound
Pro Great/intuitive interface
Many parts of the interface are designed as one function per control for ease and simplicity, and are modeled after physical consoles and mixer controls to further that end
Pro Based off of Ardour
Modified version of the open source Ardour DAW, with Harrison's proprietary interface and software tweaks
Pro In-Line/Built in analog summing
tube and transistor emulation, based on physical consoles made by Harrison
Pro Proprietary software that contributes to open source
provides features and bugfixes to upstream Ardour project, and also provides a portion of sales revenue to Ardour's development and administrative maintenance.
Pro Crossplatform
has support for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, for 32 and 64 bit. Works with CoreAudio, ASIO, and ALSA, as well as integrated 3rd party/open source routing software support, I.E. jackd on Windows and Linux.
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 Can't fully zoom in and see those eq knobs
Con Proprietary software
This software tramples your freedom.
Con Limited/buggy MIDI support
A problem inherited from Ardour dev base.
