Range of features
What makes them special?
Ardour, one of the most popular DAWS, also boasts of rudimentary video editing capabilities in addition to working with audio files. Although not as full of features as dedicated applications (see Roundup LXF243), you can still use it to remove the start/end, add blank frames, extract sound, etc.
Editing audio files can be a cumbersome process, depending on the final product you’re aiming for. You’ll no doubt work your way through a variety of effects and other changes. More often than not, the process involves quite a lot of trial and error, especially for new users. Thankfully, both Ardour and Audacity provide unlimited undo and redo options, so you can test the different effects.
LMMS is a full-featured DAW, primarily designed to help you create your own music. It ships with a song editor, beat editor, support for piano input, MIDI keyboards, and a number of other instruments, which work out of the box.
Ocenaudio often gets labelled as the easiest audio editor to use, especially for novices. This is because it has far more limited capabilities than advanced editors such as Audacity. While
Ocenaudio provides a live preview of effects, the same feature is available for only a limited number of Audacity effects. For the rest
Audacity provides a preview button, which can be used to listen to a portion of the file to hear the effect in action.
As with Ardour and Audacity, Qtractor supports almost all of the major audio formats, including MP3, WAV, AIFF, AU, OGG, FLAC, etc.