I haven’t done any audio for animation yet, but coming from music, I really love REAPER. It runs natively on windows, mac, and linux. It isn’t a free program, but I think that currently there is a free trial for 30 days, and a discounted license for (USD $60) for personal use/commercial use under USD $20,000 yearly gross profit. The license you purchase lasts for the current and next version.
It comes with its own set of EQ’s, compressors, reverb, etc. Like other DAWs, you have the option of installing your own plugins as well for effects. Although, if you happen to be running a linux distro, getting external plugins to work can be a bit challenging, since there is currently not a lot of commercial support for linux native plugins.
That might seem like a sales pitch (I don’t have any connection with the company.) I’ve just been using it for years and really love the simple workflow it provides for recording and editing music, and I think it would also work for your purposes.
Hope this helps to at least give you more info and options 🙂
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