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OK, first off, DAW's or better known as Digital Audio Workstations, this is a list of some DAW's that I found to be free,,, it's not a long list by far, but there may be some that I don't know about that someone else may post what they are, how to obtain them and how they perform compared to others. Personally I use the paid version of Cakewalk Sonar X3 PE, and Adobe Audition CS5.5

1..........Zynewave Podium(free) for Windows:- http://zynewave.com/podium-free/
2..........MuLab:- http://www.mutools.com/mulab-downloads.html both free and user mode available for Win and Mac
3..........Tracktion T5:- https://www.tracktion.com/products/t5-daw available for Mac, Windows, and Linux
4..........Audacity:- http://www.audacityteam.org/ available for Windows, Linux and Mac
5..........Ardour:- http://community.ardour.org/download Available for Windows, Linux and Mac

That's about all I can remember, and now for free VST's
I always use this site for free VST's they have 32bit as well as 64bit:-

http://www.vst4free.com/

If there's anymore please add to the list for others to check out.

Cool post. I posted something similar on our blog a while back and went hunting for some free DAWs at the time too. Another two I found were:

1/ PreSonus Studio One 3 Prime - https://shop.presonus.com/products/studio-one-prods/Studio-One-3-Prime
2/ Cockos Reaper - http://www.reaper.fm/download.php

Didn't try any of them out, though. I've been a loyal Cubase user forever haha.

https://blog.procollabs.com/home-recording-idiots-guide

I tried out podium free,,, the only difference between podium free and paid version is the audio engine, the paid version allows multiple core CPU's, which means a good deal of VST's can be used and audio processing uses all the CPU cores, which means very little latency, and the free version only allows a single core, which means limited use of VST's, I only managed to get to use 3 VST's and that's 1 VSTi, and 2 audio processing VST's, before ASIO started dropping samples making the sound very choppy.

The design of Podium is very flat, and one has to create a new VST db every time a new project is created, I also tried Reaper, didn't like it, I then tried Cubase on a friends system, I wasn't able work it and I had to keep searching the net, and reading printed manuals, but with Cakewalk Sonar X3, I was able to (just by reading the quick setup guide) create a project and start recording instantly, and I was able to use it with no prior knowledge of DAW's.

The one thing I can say about Podium is that it has something that no ther DAW has, (believe me, I checked), Podium is able to use 64bit VST's even if the host (Podium) is 32bit, because it has jbridge built in and fully automatic.

Another point with a lot of DAW's is people say it's better to use 64bit if one has a 64 bit system, but, IMO, unless one uses jbridge, about 80% of all VST's are 32bit, so it's better to install a 32bit version of a DAW and use 32bit VST's than to be limited by 64bit VST's when using a 64bit host. My Cakewalk sonar and Adobe Audition are both 32bit even though my OS, is Windows 7 64bit, and all my VST's and I do have a lot, are 32bit.

I do have Audacity installed, but I only use that to auto convert formats using a chain, which means I don't have to load up the sound file first, Audacity does it, then applies the conversion, then re-saves it with the appropriate extension, or to cut off the sync tones from beginning of final mixes and also to remove a lengthy silence at the end of a sound file.

Oh, and there's something else too,,,,,ASIO4ALL, if anyone uses it, then I would advice to disable all windows sounds, by setting the windows sound schemes to 'No Sound', because ASIO4ALL exclusively takes over the sound hardware and if windows has a sound port open, then ASIO4ALL will fail, also, while using ASIO4ALL, any application that uses the windows sound device will be blocked, and that means one can not listen to a youtube video or any other sound file, while using a DAW that uses ASIO4ALL.

With all due respect I do not agree with turning off Windows sound schemes if you are using Asio drivers. I tried doing this once and it makes everything worse; you get a recurring noise that shows the absence of the Windows Sound. Hard to explain but you do.