I can only weigh in on one side of this debate, since I only use Audacity, but I thought I'd offer a review of my experience.

I should start by saying I'm nontechnical and untrained, and have no background in sound or musical theory, so I'm sure 98% of what Audacity can do is totally lost on me.

When I first started using it, I found everything really difficult. It's got quirks and it's not particularly intuitive. Learning Audacity was a little bit like learning irregular verbs in French or Spanish, you've just got to memorize it in order for it to start to feel natural. The tutorials were not particularly helpful, though they did point in the right basic direction.

But it was free, and my budget was $30, just enough to buy a very basic microphone.

After making two or three podcasts very slowly, things started to get easier. Now, I'm very comfortable using it, and don't feel hindered much at all by the program. However, there are things I wish I could do in Audacity (for instance, the equalizer doesn't really work and I can't figure out if there's a way to lock together the different tracks so that if you slide one over you don't lose the relationship between the two).

Based on the fact that it was free and that I'm a person who does not pick up technical things very quickly but have managed to make between three and six podcasts a month for the last six months, I give Audacity a B+.

We debate back-and-fourth about this quite often. Do we teach the version which is a little buggy and not quite as powerful but FREE, or do we teach the more powerful vetted version which comes with backing and support, but for an enormous costs for individuals and small newsrooms.

I can see an arguments being made both ways.

I've used Audacity, and I found it quite good actually. I was surprised. My biggest issues was that the Sound Envelope was different than most other audio editing tools, and there was some bugs in the sampling rate. (if you import a file at a different sampling rate than what the track is set at, you can actually stretch out the sound).

Other than that, I like it, and we do recommend it as a free alternative. Although, there are plenty of features and reasons why Pro Tools/SoundTrack Pro are the way to go if you can afford it.