I teach classes about audio recording, editing, and podcast production. I’ve been working in audio for over 25 years.
I often have to mention or demo Audacity because it is free, and because many people start with it.
However, I am continually disappointed in one feature of Audacity that makes the app difficult to recommend: The inability to independently record multi-channel audio, even if your interface supports it.
All other editors/DAWs allow me to independently select inputs. Not Audacity. Why is this?
I’ve even run tests against other apps, and I think the way Audacity is programmed to access audio interfaces is just plain wrong. We should have independent access to channels/inputs - not whatever Audacity is doing now, which appears to be merging them together when making a Mono recording, or panning hard L/R.
Anyone with a Scarlett Solo or similar device can test this for themselves. Go ahead, use the options Audacity gives you currently, and you will see that you have no independent control. A mic input in channel 2 recorded in Audacity is not going to give you the same waveform as you’ll get in Ableton or another DAW.