Best Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) for Linux

REAPER's full, flexible feature set and renowned stability have found a home wherever digital audio is used: commercial and home studios, broadcast, location recording, education, science and research, sound design, game development, and more. REAPER's full, flexible feature set and renowned stability have found a home wherever digital audio is used: commercial and home studios, broadcast, location recording, education, science and research, sound design, game development, and more. From mission-critical professional environments to students' laptops, there is a single version of REAPER, fully featured with no artificial limitations. You can evaluate REAPER in full for 60 days. A REAPER license is affordably priced and DRM-free.

Free, open source, cross-platform audio software. Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Developed by a group of volunteers as open source. Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from other media. Import, edit, and combine sound files. Export your recordings in many different file formats, including multiple files at once. Supports 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit. Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality resampling and dithering. Support for LADSPA, LV2, Nyquist, VST and Audio Unit effect plug-ins. Nyquist effects can be easily modified in a text editor – or you can even write your own plug-in. Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete. Also unlimited sequential Undo (and Redo) in the session to go back any number of steps. Real-time preview of LADSPA, LV2, VST and Audio Unit (macOS) effects. Plug-in Manager handles plug-in installation.

Rosegarden is a music composition and editing environment based around a MIDI sequencer that features a rich understanding of music notation and includes basic support for digital audio. Rosegarden is an easy-to-learn, attractive application that runs on Linux, ideal for composers, musicians, music students, and small studio or home recording environments. Rosegarden is currently an application for Linux only. Now that we have ported to Qt 4, and now that Qt is freely available for all platforms without a commercial license, there are fewer obstacles standing in the way of eventually becoming a cross-platform application. Rosegarden uses the Qt 4 libraries for various common controls, but you can run it under any window manager or graphical environment you like. The Open in Notation Editor option on the main view's Segments menu will open all the currently-selected segments together in a single editor.

Compose music on Windows, Linux and macOS. Compose songs, create sequences, mix and automate in one simple interface. Play the notes with a MIDI controller or using your computer keyboard. Consolidate instrument tracks using the Rhythm + Bass Editor. Fine-tune patterns, notes, chords, and melodies with the Piano Roll Editor. Full automation based on user-defined tracks and computer controlled automation sources. Import MIDI files and Hydrogen projects. Built-in support for 64-bit VST instruments via 32-bit VST bridge (Windows 64-bit). Support for LADSPA plugins. Support for VST® Effects Plugins (Linux and Windows). Built-in compressor, limiter, delay, reverb, distortion, and bass booster. Graphic and parametric equalizers included. Built-in spectrum analyzer / viewer. Create music with your computer, making melodies and rhythms, synthesizing and mixing sounds, arranging samples, and much more.

Waveform is a rapidly evolving application specifically designed for the needs of modern music producers. Specializing in creative and inspirational workflows and avoiding features not explicitly needed to allow the app to remain surprisingly fun and intuitive. While other apps try to appeal to broad user groups, for example film score, live sound, performance – we are laser focused on music production. Waveform Pro introduces the Arranger Track, a remarkably simple yet powerful tool for manipulating regions of your arrangement. Simply create an arrange clip in the arranger track to control the entire region of your arrangement. The arranger track has contemporary features such as magnetic movement, commonly found in video editors, that automatically open and close regions of the arrangement based on your selections. Experimenting with your arrangement and song structure has never been easier.

Very user-friendly, modular, fast and intuitive graphical interface based on QT 4. Sample-based stereo audio engine, with import of sound samples in .wav, .au and .aiff formats. Support of samples in compressed FLAC file. Pattern-based sequencer, with unlimited number of patterns and ability to chain patterns into a song. Up to 192 ticks per pattern with individual level per event and variable pattern length. Unlimited instrument tracks with volume, mute, solo, pan capabilities. Multi layer support for instruments (up to 16 samples for each instrument). Time-stretch and pitch functions via rubberband cli. Require the rubberband-cli package. Director Window with a visual metronome and song position tags. Export/Import single patterns into song projects. Midi learning via Shift+MouseClick on many gui-cotrollers combined with a midi settings editor. Unique human velocity, human time, pitch and swing functions.

Helm runs in GNU/Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Run Helm as a standalone synthesizer or as an LV2, VST, VST3 or AU plugin. Comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This means you are free to run Helm anywhere without the pains of DRM, you can study and change the source code and redistribute exact or modified copies of Helm. Helm is a software synthesizer. You use it to create electronic music on your computer. Helm is free as in freedom. This means you control this software, it doesn't control you. In terms of money, Helm is pay what you want. So you are free to pay nothing. Any sound that comes out of Helm belongs to the person who played it. You are the copyright holder to any sound you create with Helm. You can turn some modules on and of. They have little power buttons in the top left that you can click to turn them on or of. The SUB module is one of the three sound producers in Helm. It controls a single oscillator that by default plays one octave below the currently played note.

Bitwig Studio inspires you to take greater control of your music, giving you access to every aspect of your production. Streamline your creative process and quickly evolve your ideas into complete songs, tracks, and compositions. Record and arrange, improvise and perform, or do it all at once. Linear and non-linear workflows for sound design, recording, live performance, and beyond. Enjoy over 10 GB (and counting) of world-class sound content from Bitwig and selected partners. The modulation system in Bitwig Studio allows you to use Macro controls, Note Expressions, LFOs, and Envelopes to modulate any device, VST plug-in, or hardware parameter. With 30+ modulators (and counting) the potential for creative expression is endless.

Grab yourself a nice audio interface. Plug in a microphone or a keyboard. Add a track, press record, and you got it. Cut, move, stretch, copy, paste, delete, align, trim, crossfade, rename, snapshot, zoom, transpose, quantize, swing, drag, drop. Import audio or MIDI from your hard drive or the Freesound database. All with unlimited undo/redo. All in the same window. Mute, solo, fader, automate, EQ, dynamics, insert, send, pre-fader, post-fader, sync, monitor, isolate. Floating point fidelity, the most flexible mixer architecture in the industry, hundreds of plugins, and external control surfaces. Ardour's core user group, people who want to record, edit, mix and master audio and MIDI projects. When you need complete control over your tools, when the limitations of other designs get in the way, when you plan to spend hours or days working on a session, Ardour is there to make things work the way you want them to.

Renoise is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) with a refreshing twist. It lets you record, compose, edit, process and render production-quality audio using a tracker-based approach. In a tracker, the music runs from top to bottom in an easily understood grid known as a pattern. Several patterns arranged in a certain order make up a song. Step-editing in a pattern grid lends itself well to a fast and immediate workflow. On top of this, Renoise features a wide range of modern features: dozens of built-in audio processors, alongside support for all commonly used virtual instrument and effect plug-in formats. And the software can be extended too, with scripting, you can use all of your MIDI or OSC controller to control it in exactly the way you want. Whether you're an audio veteran or just starting out, Renoise is a fantastic addition to any bedroom or professional studio. Combine the best aspects of both trackers and sequencers!

Pyramix is a digital audio workstation used by professional studios and engineers the world over for music production, mastering, TV and film post-production. Pyramix, in combination with its networked audio interfaces offers the only end to end solution on the market to produce music digitally with an audio format that sounds like analog to humans. We enable music producers to give no compromise to their music throughout the whole production chain, and give them all the tools needed for a broad outreach including latest “Next Generation Audio" streaming formats such as Dolby Atmos ®. Merging Technologies has worked with companies such as Flux Audio to bring into Pyramix astounding plugins available in any resolution and at near zero latencies. Pyramix not only provides the most transparent analog-like DAW, it also provides you with cutting edge editing tools, such as the very unique source/destination mode which allows editing of huge multi track recordings at the speed of light.