Cockos Reaper

Cockos' Reaper is the single greatest return for your investment of any DAW. For most users, it's a paltry $60 (compare that to the $900 price tag on the full version of Pro Tools), and it gives you unlimited tracks, dozens of superb effects, and monumentally powerful editing features. Additionally, it supports 32 bit and 64 bit VST effects, which exponentially expands the sonic arsenal you command. Knowledgeable users can use Reaper to gain much of the same result one could with Pro Tools, and it's not an uncommon sight in professional tracking and mixing facilities. While the learning curve can be steep, Reaper boasts a huge online community and an encyclopedic forum to help users learn and troubleshoot. Reaper's weak point, however, is its user interface. But while it lacks the visually appealing design of other DAWs, at a mere 5 MB download it punches well above its weight without bogging your hardware down.