Ardour vs. Audacity?

[AG Schnozz]

Hello, first post here, but a long-time audio engineer.

A friend of mine just got me started with Ardour. Honestly, I haven't
found anything not to like about it yet (except for a couple
non-standard edit aspects). It is very powerful and as far as I can
tell, it is as complete as I could expect in a computer-based unit
costing less than a new vehicle.

Rosegarden is also new to me, but I've been using midi-sequencers for
years, so the learning curve is pretty normal.

Audacity?  Well, I'll have to admit that I've been using Audacity on
Windows machines for a couple of years now and it is more often than
not my primary axe.  There is so much that I do which is the
modern-day equivelent of a 2-track reel-to-reel. Audacity is
extremely fast to use.  The recordings are up to an hour long and I
can whack the beginning, end, yank out some coughs, correct a few
'plosifs, normalize and save as an MP3 in no time. It's my computer
equivelent of the razer-blade and splice-tape.

I wouldn't use Audacity in a multi-track environment not because it
won't do it, but because it isn't the best at it and I have better
tools available. For example, I have the Yamaha AW4416.

Programs like Rosegarden are catching up to the dedicated MTEs
(Multi-track editors), but I have found that in almost every case,
the software has an operational bias towards the MIDI environment and
audio is an add-on.  It's not that these programs can't do
everything, but that there are nuances which can bug you once in a
while.  For example, I would lean towards Ardour over Rosegarden when
doing audio for video. Voice-over work, foley, etc., just work easier
in an environment like Ardour. But if Rosegarden was my primary tool,
I'm sure it would work just fine too.

Ken Norton




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