Audacity

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If you want to automate editing, and especially if you want to do precise or unusual things with editing, it has to be Reaper. But, the learning curve is immense. More on reddit.com

I use audacity (free) to record my raw audio, if you use discord as your main lil meeting place I highly recommend Craig Bot for backup audio, and I use Davinci Resolve (free) for editing. It’s pretty simple and tons of tutorials are online (I’d be up to showing you over discord how I go about editing an episode of my podcast as well!) any other ways I can help or questions I can answer just hit me up! More on reddit.com

It’s hard to really say which one is the “best”, since it depends a bit on what exactly you’re doing with it, what you have access to, and what you’re willing to spend. If you want something cheap, you can do a lot with GarageBand, just remember it’s Apple only. You won’t really find pros using it but a lot of them did start out with it. It comes with Apple Loops and a lot of their software instruments which is great for someone just starting out. Audacity and Adobe Audition are not really for music production so I wouldn’t bother with those at all. The industry standards (what the pros use) are mainly Pro Tools and Logic. If you have a Mac, go with Logic, it’s got everything you need for only $200, and it’s a one time purchase plus it’s definitely the more beginner friendly of the two. It’s similar in UI to GarageBand but a lot more powerful. It is typically better for sampling if you plan to do that. It also has more stock instruments and MIDI effects if you plan to use synths and MIDI. Pro Tools has a few different levels. If you plan on fully producing tracks you’ll probably want Pro Tools Studio. It is a lot pricier in the long term since it is subscription based rather than just being a one time purchase. Pro Tools beats out Logic when it comes to tracking and comping. Ableton and FL Studio are also big ones. Both have free trials so you can definitely try those out if you’re interested. Overall I’d say go with Logic if you have a Mac since you’re interested in using software instruments. Yea, software instruments are infinitely cheaper than renting studio time, instruments, and a sound engineer since there are literally thousands of them included in Logic. More on reddit.com