Studios choose their working environment the way a carpenter chooses a bench: by what the work demands, not by habit. This page sets out an objective technical comparison of four audio workstation environments that appear regularly in scoring, editing and mastering rooms. It describes published technical characteristics only and ranks nothing.
An audio workstation is the environment where recording, editing and mixing are assembled into a finished piece. The four environments below differ most in how they are licensed, how much they expect of the operator, and what kind of session they suit. The table gives the published technical facts; the notes after it explain what those facts mean in practice.
| Environment | Operating platforms | Licence type | Audio engine & sample-rate support | Supported plugin formats | Multi-track capability | Typical use case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audacity | Cross-platform; builds are published for several major platform families. | Openly licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later. | Internal 32-bit float processing; project rates typically 44.1–192 kHz, with higher rates supported by the host hardware. | VST2, VST3, LV2 and Audio Units where the host provides them. | Multi-track editing with an unlimited number of audio tracks; both destructive and non-destructive edits. | Audio editing, restoration work, podcast assembly and simple multi-track building. |
| Ocenaudio | Cross-platform across the major platform families. | Proprietary; offered at no cost for personal use. | Real-time effect audition on long files; standard PCM rates up to 384 kHz. | VST2 and VST3 through its effect chain. | Multi-track editing oriented toward fast audition rather than large session routing. | Quick editing and analysis of long recordings and field material. |
| Ardour | Cross-platform across the major platform families, with a strong following on openly licensed systems. | Openly licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later. | Non-destructive multi-track recording and mixing; 44.1–192 kHz typical, higher with supported hardware. | VST2, VST3, LV2 and Audio Units where provided. | Unlimited tracks, buses and routing in a session-based project model. | Recording, mixing and mastering sessions and full album production. |
| Reaper | Cross-platform across the major platform families. | Proprietary; a discounted licence tier is offered for personal and small-scale use. | 64-bit float internal engine; sample rates to 192 kHz and beyond. | VST2, VST3, LV2, Audio Units and CLAP. | Unlimited tracks and buses with extensive routing in a project-based model. | Composition, editing, mixing and mastering across small and large projects. |
Reading the table
The licence column separates two philosophies. Openly licensed environments publish their source and invite inspection; proprietary environments are sold or offered under a producer's terms. Neither is inherently better for a scoring room — it depends on whether a production needs to inspect or modify the environment, or simply to rely on a vendor's support.
Sample-rate support matters most in mastering and restoration, where a session may need to preserve a high-rate transfer without resampling. For scoring, the practical numbers are 44.1 and 48 kHz for picture, with 96 kHz reserved for sessions that specifically demand it. All four environments handle those rates comfortably.
Plugin format coverage decides which third-party processors a session can call on. Every environment in the table reads VST2 and VST3; the differences appear in the additional formats each one accepts, which can matter when a session has to open material prepared elsewhere.
What the comparison does not say
A table of technical characteristics cannot rank how an environment feels to work in, how steep its learning curve is, or how well it suits a particular composer's habits. Those are matters of taste and training. We include the table because productions sometimes ask what a studio runs and why, and because a fair, factual comparison is more useful than a favourite.
To see how a workstation fits into a wider commission, read our process and the page on mixing a score. To talk about a project, send a brief.