DAW
The multitrack app where audio actually gets built: stacked tracks on a timeline, a mixer, plugins, and an export button.
See it
What it is
A DAW (digital audio workstation) is the application where audio gets recorded, arranged, processed, and exported. The shared shape: a timeline of stacked horizontal tracks, a mixer with a channel strip per track, plugin slots for EQ and compression, and automation lanes that draw level or pan changes over time.
Which one depends on the job. Audacity and Reaper for cheap general editing, Adobe Audition and Hindenburg for spoken word and podcasts, Descript for transcript-based editing, Logic Pro and Ableton Live and Pro Tools for music and film post. Plugin support varies by app: most host VST3 or AU, Pro Tools runs AAX natively, and transcript-first editors may host a fixed set of effects and nothing else. Check the format before you buy anything. The processing knowledge transfers regardless, even when the interface and the plugin format do not.
Gotcha: the DAW project file is not the audio. It points at media files sitting elsewhere on disk, so moving or renaming a source recording breaks the session with 'media offline'. Consolidate or collect files before archiving a project.
Ask AI for it
Set up a spoken-word DAW session for a two-host interview: one mono track per host at 48 kHz / 24-bit, a stereo music bed track, and a stereo master bus. Route both voice tracks to a dialogue bus carrying a high-pass filter at 80 Hz, a de-esser, and a compressor at 3:1, and audition the de-esser both before and after the compressor since the right order depends on how sibilant the raw takes are. Sidechain the music bed to duck 8 dB under the dialogue bus, and put a limiter on the master at -1 dBTP. Export a 48 kHz WAV plus a 192 kbps MP3.