Amped Studio vs Qtractor

Amped Studio is an online music production platform for recording, arranging, editing, and mixing music in a browser. Its AI assistant can generate a composition in a selected style and tempo for later editing. The stem splitter separates songs into two, four, or five stems, including vocals, drums, bass, piano, and other instruments. Audio and MIDI tools include audio-to-MIDI conversion, pitch and gain editing, stretching, cutting, MIDI editing, effects, and parameter automation. A VST Remote bridge connects locally installed VST and VST3 plugins to browser sessions, with downloads for Windows and Mac. Projects can be shared, and two or more Premium members can work together on a shared project. The studio works in Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Brave, but the FAQ says it does not function fully in Firefox or Safari and is not currently available on mobile. The Starter plan lists 5 projects, 16 tracks, and 0 GB external audio storage. Premium costs $6.99 a month with a 7-day trial; Premium + AI costs $12.99 a month with a 7-day trial.

Qtractor is a Linux desktop application for multitrack audio and MIDI sequencing and recording, aimed especially at personal home studios. Its non-destructive, non-linear editing supports unlimited tracks, overlapping clips, and unlimited undo and redo. Audio clips can use fades, cross-fades, gain, normalization, export, time-stretching, and pitch-shifting. MIDI work includes a piano-roll editor, Standard MIDI file formats 0 and 1, controller mapping, and SysEx setups. Qtractor supports OGG, MP3 playback, WAV, FLAC, and AIFF, as well as LADSPA, DSSI, VST2, VST3, LV2, and CLAP plugins. It uses JACK for audio and ALSA for MIDI and includes connection patchbay controls. Tracks can be mixed down, rendered, and merged; session and project descriptions are stored in XML files. Qtractor is free, open-source software under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. The site lists version 1.6.4, released 2026-09-06, and provides binary downloads and CMake build instructions. The project says bugs remain while describing the software as production/stable.