What does Audacity do? Would it be helpful in my above recording activity?
What does Qsynth do that ZynAddSubFX doesn't?
Qsynth plays soundFont banks (sf2). More often then not, these would contain sound libraries (banks) with sounds ordered following the MIDI standard (Pianos, basses, strings etc ). These sf2 fonts can be either downloaded for free from Internet (
http://tinyurl.com/ycnkkal) or purchased (
http://tinyurl.com/yaeo4d9). Bad, good and better imitations of real instruments, basically.
ZynAddSubFX generates its own sounds using sophisticated tone-generators.
What is the difference between Jamin and GCDMaster?
Jamin is a Mastering program. Once you have recorded your midis on Rosengarden using either Qsampler for soundfonts or ZynAddSubFX as sound engines, and you have composed your drums in Hydrogen, and recorded your vocals/guitars in Ardour, you want to make a nice balance of the recording, and even it out dynamically and frequency-wise (make a Master recording). So you run all those apps through jamin, and record its output as a track in say, Ardour. You put this track in GCDMaster to get it ready for burning on disk.
Jamin has a compressor and EQ, GCDMaster doesn't.
and also between Timemachine and Ardour?
Time machine is a basic recorder of everything that goes in or out of jack.