Hello all,
Audacity 2.03 in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (desktop) serves for initial recordings. My KDE Mint laptop isn’t equipped with mic/line In, though, so Audacity 2.05 in there is predominantly used for mastering (balancing & reverb, mainly).
I also own an auxiliary Windows 7 laptop on which I keep several commercially available musical instrument sample banks (Sibelius, for instance, comes in handy here: it’s incredibly simple, with a MIDI controller, to play any of those as real-time instruments!). A MIDI interface between MIDI controller and Windows 7 laptop, plus an audio cable (stereo minijack at both ends) from my Windows 7 laptop to my preamp - and Bob’s your uncle!
Audacity is surprisingly good, too, at enhancing audio quality, in my personal experience. Tracks freshly recorded usually go through Amplify (+ or -) first, followed by Equalization and - sometimes - Normalize and Leveler (in Effects drop-down menu).
tnob