Hi all, so I’ve been using Audacity for a good 15 years now, and I’ve used a couple DAWs (Ableton and Reaper) and they just have way too many features I don’t need and seem to have a steep learning curve that requires watching a bunch of tutorials and stuff that I don’t care about. I don’t need quantizing, pitch correction, VSTs, hell I don’t even need a click track, all that stuff feels like cheating, I just want to record and occasionally add a fade out or a hint of reverb or compression. I like raw and low budget recordings. So I just use this as a barebones recorder that does everything I want it to but any time I mention it to guys with actual recording experience they just laugh, like they tell me the compressor is trash or the quality is crap and to even do this basic level recording I should still use a VST like Reaper. I’ve mentioned I use audacity many times and everyone seems to be of the opinion that it’s for basic non-musical editing, simple vocal recordings for a podcast or something, not a full recording of musical instruments with overdubs and panning. Yet here is a forum full of guys recording with Audacity who seem to find no problem with it. I’m a multi instrumentalist with drums and guitar and like making my own recordings that sound like a full band, and I want to get a record going but really don’t want to fuss around with a different program. So, kind people, am I being misguided by using this program? I’m basically looking for reassurance that I’m not. 
Thanks!
It’s not broken or sub-standard if that’s what you’re looking for.
It’s good to match the tools with the job. I’ve shot broadcast radio, broadcast television, and movie tracks with Audacity and never noticed anything wrong.
I’m not doing post. My stuff goes to the high-octane editors for incorporation into a final mixed show. That’s way beyond me.
This was a voice recording session I shot for an animated movie.
Most shoots have stories and this shoot featured, among others, a nice Asian woman with perfect diction, pitch, and swing and her only difficulty was her volume never got above a whisper. Even speaking forcefully (which was in the script) I couldn’t make level. Many tricks later I got a working track. Those are the shoots you earn your pay.
Koz
I’m not a fan of that field sound mixer. It’s just OK, but it’s noisier and more awkward than it needs to be. On the other hand, the FP33, seemingly a cousin, is world famous for quality sound.
It’s successful. How can you tell?
Most of the paint is gone, it has at least one dent, you can’t read the knobs and dials any more, and you can’t have it right now because it’s out on a job.
This particular one got soaked in Biscayne Bay salt water onboard a cigarette boat sound shoot.
I have a picture of the front panel stuck to the bottom. I don’t remember what all the switches do. The right channel doesn’t work anymore. I use the left.
Koz
…has at least one dent.
Koz
A lockdown recording by NY Philharmonic Musicians: https://youtu.be/D3UW218_zPo
Everyone recorded themselves while listening to a metronome in headphones. The two of us musicians that put this together had no video making experience, just a lot of determination! All the software we used is available for free. We used VLC player to extract all the audio from the video and Handbrake to convert and compress the videos if they were too large or in a strange format. > We used > Audacity > to remove background noise, align and balance all the audio, and mix it all down into one track. > Finally, we used HitFilm Express (‘Express’ is the free version of HitFilm and similar to iMovie) to align all the video clips and chop them up into different groupings. You could use any video program though and there was nothing about HitFilm that made any of the group shots easier. Using a newish laptop it took 6 hours just to render the video of the 20 second group shot at the end but it can be done without super-fancy equipment.
I mention it to guys with actual recording experience they just laugh, like they tell me the compressor is trash or the quality is crap and to even do this basic level recording I should still use a VST like Reaper.
First, your choice of recording application doesn’t affect recording quality (assuming no “glitches” or “problems”). It just has to capture the digital audio stream and send it to the hard drive.
Lots of people use Audacity for voice-over or audiobooks. There a couple of special-purpose audiobook plug-ins for Audacity so Audacity MIGHT be the BEST application for audiobooks. It can also be good for music mastering (or any mono or stereo work) but most pro mastering engineers use commercial software (and expensive hardware).
Audacity is very-good at what it does. It’s well-supported and stable and one of the top open source applications of any kind. If it does everything you need, there’s no reason to “upgrade”. Upgrading to a DAW is a BIG learning curve and it costs money.
There are tons of 3rd-party compressor plug-ins and other 3rd-party plug-ins and many of them work with Audacity. IMO Audacity’s limiter (which is a kind of compression) is GREAT!
FYI - REAPER is a DAW (digital audio workstation) not a VST. 
There are VST effect plug-ins and VSTi virtual instruments (MIDI). Audacity has VERY limited MIDI capabilities and it does not support VSTi. VST plug-ins can be hit-or-miss. Most commercial VST developers don’t officially support Audacity. I assume that’s because most Audacity users don’t want to pay more for a plug-in than they paid for the host software so there isn’t much demand.
I’m a multi instrumentalist with drums and guitar and like making my own recordings that sound like a full band, and I want to get a record going but really don’t want to fuss around with a different program.
If you were multi-track recording Audacity is not the best choice. Audacity is OK at mixing* but for multi-track mixing, a DAW with level-sliders and meters for every track, plus a master level control and master meter, plus volume automation, is more convenient (once you learn to use it).
If you have a particular plug-in that you like, you need a host application that supports it. If you want to use Auto-Tune, Audacity isn’t for you.
And in situations where low-latency monitoring is needed, an application (and hardware) that supports ASIO might be an advantage. But, the best solution is an interface with direct zero-latency monitoring (where the monitoring doesn’t go through the computer) or a separate mixer for monitoring.
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- Mixing is just summation so again, your choice of software doesn’t affect quality.
To be pedantic, software can affect quality, even when “just” mixing, if there’s any gain changes on any of the tracks because it can introduce quantization noise if it’s done naively. Of course, Audacity supports (and uses by defaults) Shaped dither, which is about as good as you can get.
(to be pedantic ) By default, Audacity does not use dither when mixing, because (by default) it’s all 32-bit float. Dither is only required on export if the export format has a lower bit depth.
Touche. 
Yes, I meant when exporting to a format with a lower bit depth (I was thinking of the common case of exporting to a 16-bit format).
PDNFTT