As I just said, DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. It’s a piece of software that allows you to record multiple tracks, edit them, and mix them together, resulting in a single audio file (i.e. a song).
There are also audio editors, but those are slightly different than digital audio work stations and often can’t do as much. The unique thing about a DAW is it allows for multiple track recording and audio editing, while an audio editor is mainly just for (you guessed it) editing audio.
You can get a DAW whether you have a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer (although some of them work only with certain operating systems). We’ll get into the best DAWs for beginners in a bit.