i have used audacity before, but it has been many years. the thing about it that i remember being a nightmare was ANYTHING after hitting the record and stop button. i could record just fine, but it did not want to cooperate in any way when it came to editing. Thrifty uses Audition, which is solid software, and I use Magix Samplitude, which is what I learned on. I think you're goign to be better off using a little bit better software. I don't know if Sound Forge still exists, but I remember it being pretty simple for the most part, even though it's made by Sony, and they're the devil. Audition is a good one too, even though I have little to no experience with it. When it comes to audio quality, I can't speak for Audacity because I used it in high school, and back then I just thought it was cool that i could use a microphone and record to my computer.