Shipped standard as part of the iLife suite with the purchase of a Macintosh computer, GarageBand is a common entry level sound editor. Allowing users to layer and mix tracks in a straightforward drag-and-drop interface and create and sequence a variety of MIDI (digital synthetic) instruments, it provides casual musicians a platform to record basic tracks. However, it doesn't bring the muscle needed for more sophisticated recording projects. Its MIDI controls lack fine tuning, it can't support external MIDI instruments and it requires that effects be manipulated in real time as a song plays.
With more than 63 million downloads, Audacity promotes itself as the most popular audio mixing platform in the world. It is able to run on all operating systems and freely distributed under a General Public License. It supports on-board and external MIDI controls and instruments, with the ability to import and manipulate a variety of audio files and from a line in for instruments. With a limited toolbox of digital effects such as beat analyzers and noise removal, Audacity is a favorite for podcasters, even through it offers no publishing capabilities.
One of the older–and more re-engineered–audio editing suites on the market, Sony Creative Software's Sound Forge Pro is aimed squarely at professional musicians with heavy demands of their software. Its visual, event-based system makes arranging and understanding song structure simple. Able to incorporate multiple events into a single sound file, Sound Forge eliminates the need to reload a file in several instances for numerous manipulations on it. Sound Forge doesn't allow for the recording of multiple live tracks simultaneously, which limits the potential for live band recordings.
Where many audio editing applications are geared toward recording, Native Instruments' Traktor is designed to be used lived by a working DJ. With the ability to cross-fade and mix multiple tracks from numerous sources, Traktor's interface is built to resemble a set of decks and mixing board. Beat-matching technology makes it easy to align beats and avoid audio train wrecks, while its index of audio files by BPM makes sorting and locating your next track easy. Some of Traktor's more intense processes require a lot of computing power, though, and may slow down older laptops and derail a live mix in the process.
The industry standard for Digital Audio Workstations, Digidesign's Pro Tools is used by studio engineers for use in commercial music recordings and scoring films. The high end version comes with a hardware package that allows for multi-track recording, while more entry level versions operate on a single line-in approach. Able to integrate with traditional recording studios, Pro Tools offers flexibility for editing, mixing and sound manipulation unavailable to producers using traditional editing methods.