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Introduction

Audacity is one of the big names of open source software. So much that it is hard to find competitors for it! Because it is free and has a wide array of tools and features, competition is hard (for the competitors).

This software came to tell the market "hey, you don't really have to spend that much money to get work done". Audacity comes with many tools and features, but it lacks "specialization". It can do a little bit of everything. But for some specific tasks, like recording MIDI instruments, you would need to use other software. Of course, by using more specialized software, you will miss on the diversity.

A few examples from my own experience:

I use video editors at least once or twice a month. When I have to edit something on the audio of a video, it is always hard to decide where to do it. If I edit the audio on the video editor, I can view the audio synchronized with the video, but I will have just basic audio tools. If I edit the audio on Audacity, I will have many tools at my disposal, but I won't be able to simultaneously see the video preview! Of course, a professional that does this for a living probably has a workflow that makes this more efficient. Maybe a high-end editor even knows how to achieve Audacity quality audio editing on a video editor. But for me, I have to use two software for that.

Other situation where I feel bottle-necked is when I am playing with music creation. Of course, I am not a big musician, I do this just for fun, I don't even post my music anywhere. A professional probably has a workflow that makes it more fluid and easier. For me, I record the song, the instruments and the MIDIs on GarageBand(free, but sadly proprietary) on my laptop. But I am a beginner, so I don't really know how to do the effects I want, change pitch and equalize on GarageBand. So, again, just like in the previous situation, I need two software for one production.

Probably there is a way to do everything on just one program, but as I don't know how to do that, Audacity is my backup. I delegate to it all the general audio editing because it is easier than learning how to do those effects on the other apps! I probably could do great editing on Kdenlive or on GarageBand, but if I know how to do that on Audacity, why bother?

That said. On this post, I will cover the alternative for Audacity on what it does, which is general audio editing. As for that, I only know one program that does something similar, but it is paid, and not as well known as Audacity! It is nothing we see every day! Free and open-source software that is better and more popular than the paid proprietary competitors!

After that, I will also show a little bit of how I integrate Audacity with my work on the "alternatives", that is, Kdenlive and GarageBand. I just want to make clear that they are not really "competitors". They can be considered that because they are all free and you can do basic audio editing on them. But I don't do that, have tried, and prefer to edit audio on an audio editor, even though the video editor, for example, can do about the same.

What actually is Audacity?

Audacity is a free and open-source audio editor. It works on all three major desktop operating systems. Also, it is one of the most well-known and widely used audio editors.

It is a generalized editor, so, it is not specifically for editing video audios, or for recording and editing MIDI audio, but I can use it for that. More on that in the next sections.

There are competitors, but this program grew so much, due the accessibility and quality, that it is considered a professional grade editor. It is probably not used to edit live radio, but I know many podcasters and even YouTubers that use it!

If you have a computer and you happen to edit audio, you can get it right now. If you are not sure if you need an audio editor, I can help you.

Have you had to edit the video before? If yes, you possibly have to do some work on the audio side. I know from my own experience that it is much better and effective to do that on Audacity.

Do you like to play by making songs? FL Studio? GarageBand? Ableton? I, personally, think that it is easier to make the "final touches" on pitch and equalization on Audacity.

Overall, if you have to work with multiple software that uses audio, it is easier to learn a general program, like Audacity, to do that work, than learn how to do the same thing on all software you use! Of course, Audacity might not be specialized, but it pays off with a variety of tools!

The competitor

It is hard to think of any alternative. Simply there are not many other on the market because Audacity dominates the non-live audio editing industry.

But that hasn't held Adobe form trying! That is actually great. You might have never heard of Adobe Audition CC. But it exists, and is a bit pricey:

From the image above, you might have noticed one thing, I hope. It does not support Linux! I understand Adobe probably does not have a Linux team or a meaningful Linux user base, but their biggest competitor is free and runs anywhere! It is kinda shot on their own feet not being completely multi-platform.

They try to compensate that by offering perks from the Adobe creative cloud, like 20GB of cloud storage. I don't think their perks pay off. I mean, for $240 you can get Audacity, donate half the money to Audac, buy a subscription for Microsoft 365 with 1TB of storage and still have dozens of dollars left! It is hard to justify the price...

But I am not an Adobe Creative Cloud user myself. Possibly people that are already "locked" on their ecosystem, or that subscribe to the full CC package might find it a handful.

The pseudo-competitors

I wouldn't say that this software is direct competitors to Audacity. But they do have audio editing capabilities. And I prefer to use Audacity even for basic things that could be done on the other "main" programs!

Kdenlive is the one I use the most.

When I need to edit a video, chances are high that the audio will be edited on Audacity. My workflow is as follows:

I edit the video and cut the audio on Kdenlive, so they are synchronized.
I export the "audio only" final version to Audacity.
Correct the pitch, normalize, equalize and remove the background noise (not in this order).
Export the audio from Audacity.
Import the audio to Kdenlive and render the final project

I have made a quick edit to illustrate that.

Imagine the timeline of the editor full of cuts and synced steps that need video preview for me to align with the audio:

The edited audio is exported as one whole thing to Audacity:

Then I can import the audio back to Kdenlive, edited, as a whole, and synced with the video!

GarageBand is the other program I use that does have many audio editing tools. But still, I prefer to use Audacity to do some edits.

The workflow is very similar to Kdenlive. But on this, actually, I export each instrument timeline separately. Then, I import them to Audacity and do the editing of pitch, equalization, normalization.

The only difference in the workflow of GarageBand and the one of Kdenlive is:

On Kdenlive I import back to export with the video.
On GarageBand, this step is unnecessary, as I use GarageBand just to record the instruments and MIDIs, so the final exporter is Audacity.

The biggest one

I believe that now it is a bit clear why Audacity is the "king" of audio editors. Used by amateurs and professionals. The "main" competitor costs a lot more, and for other programs, it is easy to delegate the audio editing to Audacity.

At under 4MB and with a linear learning curve. It is worth it giving it a try for your next song or video. For this, go ahead to their website to see how to download it to your operating system. It runs on any desktop or laptop with Windows, macOS or Linux!