Ardour is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW ) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pr ...

and

hard disk recorder A hard disk recorder (HDR) is a system that uses a high-capacity hard disk to record digital audio or digital video. Hard disk recording systems represent an alternative to reel-to-reel audio tape recording and video tape recorders, and provide ...

that runs on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. Its primary author is Paul Davis, who is also responsible for the JACK Audio Connection Kit. Released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, it is intended to be suitable for professional use.

Features

Recording

Ardour's recording abilities are limited by only the hardware it is run on; there are no built-in limits on the number of tracks the user can record to. When recording on top of existing media, it can perform latency compensation, positioning recorded material where it was intended to be when recording it. Monitoring options include self-monitoring, external hardware support (dependent on

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

support), and specialized hardware support (e.g. JACK Audio Connection Kit). Self-monitoring makes it possible to apply plug-in effects while recording. Using the JACK audio, Ardour can record concurrently from both the audio card and compatible software.

Mixing

Ardour supports an arbitrary number of tracks and buses through an "anything to anywhere" routing system. All gain, panning and plug-in parameters can be automated. All sample data is mixed and maintained internally in

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

floating point format.

Editing

Ardour supports dragging, trimming, splitting and time-stretching recorded regions with sample-level resolution, and supports layer regions. It includes a crossfade editor and beat detection, unlimited undo/redo, and a "snapshot" feature for saving the current state of a session to a file.

Mastering

Ardour can be used as an

audio mastering Mastering is a form of audio post production which is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device called a master recording, the source from which all copies will ...

environment. Its integration with the JACK Audio Connection Kit makes it possible to use mastering tools such as JAMin. Its mixer's output can be sent to third-party audio processing software for processing and/or recording. It can also export TOC and CUE files for creating

audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the '' Red Book'' technical specifications, which is why t ...

Compatibility

Ardour attempts to adhere to industry standards, such as SMPTE/MTC, Broadcast Wave Format, MIDI Machine Control and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

. It has been tested on

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

and ARM (for at least version 3) architectures; Solaris,

on Intel and PowerPC,

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

on Intel architectures and

. It takes advantage of all of these systems'

multiprocessor Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...

, multicore SMP and real-time features. Pre-built binaries of Ardour are available for purchase for Linux, macOS and Windows. It is also possible to build Ardour yourself for free from the freely available source code.

Plug-ins

Ardour relies on plug-ins for many features, from audio effects processing to dynamic control. It supports the following plugin format and platform combinations: LV2 on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows;

Audio Units Audio Units (AU) are a system-level Plug-in (computing), plug-in architecture provided by Core Audio in Apple Inc., Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems. Audio Units are a set of application programming interface (API) services provided by t ...

on macOS; Steinberg's VST2 on Linux, macOS and Windows; LADSPA on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows. It is theoretically possible to use plugins created for Windows in the VST2 format on Linux with the help of

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

, but the project team does not recommend it. Since version 6.5, it also supports VST3 plugins on all supported platforms. Unlike most modern 64-bit DAW's, Ardour does not run 32bit VST's natively.

Import and export

Ardour can import audio clips into sessions from many common audio file formats, including WAV,

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

, Vorbis, AIFF, CAF, W64, BWF and MP3; SMF files are supported for

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

import. Ardour can export whole sessions or parts of sessions, and import audio clips into sessions, using its built-in audio file database manager, or directly from an ordinary file browser.

Supporting companies and future

The SAE Institute provided corporate support for Ardour until February 2009, an initiative for providing a more integrated experience on

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and the development of a simpler version for students and others new to audio processing. Solid State Logic employed Paul Davis to work full-time on Ardour during the development of version 2, until the end of 2006. Harrison Audio has supported the Ardour project since early 2005. Harrison's Mixbus DAW, LiveTrax front-of-house multi-track recorder, and their destructive film dubber, the Xdubber, are based on Ardour. Mixbus extends Ardour to add Harrison's own proprietary DSP and a more console-like workflow. The Xdubber was a customizable platform for enterprise-class

(DAW) users. Waves Audio privately supported Ardour development in 2009. It also developed the Waves Track Live software in collaboration with Ardour developers, with most of the source code changes becoming part of Ardour's codebase.

References

Articles

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ardour (Software) 2005 software Audio editing software that uses GTK Audio software that uses GTK Audio software with JACK support Cross-platform free software Digital audio editors for Linux Digital audio workstation software Free audio editors Free music software Free software programmed in C++ MacOS audio editors Software that uses GStreamer Software using the GNU General Public License