Alternatives to Tenacity
A fork of Audacity created after the 2021 telemetry row, built to record and edit audio with nothing phoning home. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Tenacity
A fork of Audacity created after the 2021 telemetry row, built to record and edit audio with nothing phoning home.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Tenacity.
Audacity
A multi-track audio editor and recorder that has been the free default for twenty-five years.
Audacity is the upstream project under GPL-3.0, with newer features and the redesigned Audacity 4 interface, but it is run by Muse Group, which markets paid plugins in its installer.
Ardour
A full digital audio workstation for recording, editing and mixing, with no subscription and no dongle.
Ardour is a full open-source DAW with unlimited tracks, MIDI and a flexible mixer, though official prebuilt binaries are paid and the learning curve is steeper.
REAPER
Full digital audio workstation for multitrack recording, editing, mixing and MIDI.
REAPER is a paid, closed-source DAW for Windows, macOS and Linux with multitrack mixing, MIDI and deep scripting, far beyond Tenacity's editor-focused scope.
Tracktion Waveform Free
Free full-featured DAW with no track limit for music production.
Tracktion Waveform Free is a free but closed-source DAW with no track limit and native Linux support, oriented to music production rather than simple editing.
ocenaudio
A free, cross-platform audio editor built for fast, straightforward editing of audio files.
ocenaudio is a free cross-platform editor with a simpler interface for quick edits, but it is closed source and not a multitrack workstation.
Adobe Audition
A professional audio workstation for recording, editing, mixing and restoring audio for video and podcasts.
Adobe Audition adds multitrack, spectral editing and restoration tools inside Creative Cloud, but it is subscription only, needs an Adobe account and has no Linux version.
Fission
A Mac audio editor for trimming, joining and splitting files without quality loss, plus batch conversion.
Fission is a paid macOS editor for lossless trimming, joining and batch conversion, with a simpler interface and no multitrack or heavy effects work.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Tenacity as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Amadeus Pro
Paid multitrack audio editor and sound recorder for macOS with batch processing.
Tenacity is a free, open-source Audacity fork with no telemetry, running on Windows, macOS and Linux, though development is slow and its interface is the older Audacity one.
iZotope RX
An audio repair and restoration suite for removing noise, clicks and other problems from recordings.
Tenacity is a free GPL-2.0 Audacity fork with no telemetry or account, supporting VST, LV2 and AU plugins, but development is slow and the interface is older.
Kwave
A KDE sound editor for recording, playing and editing audio files on Linux.
Tenacity is a free, open-source Audacity fork with no telemetry and plugin support, running on Windows, macOS and Linux, though development is slow.
Steinberg SpectraLayers
Spectral audio editor for noise removal and AI-assisted source separation.
Tenacity is a free GPL-2.0 Audacity fork with no telemetry and FFmpeg format support, trading SpectraLayers' spectral editing and AI separation for a simpler waveform editor.
Steinberg WaveLab
Mastering suite with phase scope, multimeter and loudness analysis tools.
Tenacity is a GPL-2.0 Audacity fork with no telemetry, running on Windows, macOS and Linux, but it has no specialist mastering or loudness analysis tools.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Sonic Visualiser
Inspect the contents of audio files through waveform and analysis displays.
Spek
Drops an audio file on the window and draws its spectrogram, so you can see where the quality really stops.
