3 title: Understanding Playlists
7 A <dfn>playlist</dfn> is a list of regions ordered in time. It defines
8 which parts of which source files should be played and when. Playlists
9 are a fairly advanced topic, and can be safely ignored for many types
10 of audio production. However, the use of playlists allows the audio
11 engineer more flexibility for tasks like multiple takes of a single
12 instrument, alternate edits of a given recording, parallel effects such
13 as reverb or compression, and other tasks.
16 Each audio <dfn>track</dfn> in Ardour is really just a mechanism for
17 taking a playlist and generating the audio stream that it represents.
18 As a result, editing a track really means modifying its playlist in
19 some way. Since a playlist is a list of regions, most of the
20 modifications involve manipulating regions: their position, length
21 and so forth. This is covered in the chapter
22 <a href="/working-with-regions/">Working With Regions</a>.<br />
23 Here, we cover some of the things you can do with playlists as objects
27 <h2>Tracks are not Playlists</h2>
29 It is important to understand that a track <em>is not</em> a playlist.
30 A track <em>has</em> a playlist. A track is a mechanism for generating
31 the audio stream represented by the playlist and passing it through a
32 signal processing pathway. At any point in time, a track has a single
33 playlist associated with it. When the track is used to record, that
34 playlist will have one or more new regions added to it. When the track
35 is used for playback, the contents of the playlist will be heard.
36 You can change the playlist associated with a track at (almost) any
37 time, and even share playlists between tracks.
40 If you have some experience of other
41 <abbr title="Digital Audio Workstation">DAW</abbr>s, then you might
42 have come across the term <dfn>"virtual track"</dfn>, normally defined as a track
43 that isn't actually playing or doing anything, but can be
44 mapped/assigned to a real track. This concept is functionally
45 identical to Ardour's playlists. We just like to be little more
46 clear about what is actually happening rather than mixing old and
47 new terminology ("virtual" and "track"), which might be confusing.</p>
49 <h2>Playlists are Cheap</h2>
51 One thing you should be clear about is that playlists are cheap. They
52 don't cost anything in terms of CPU consumption, and they have very
53 minimal efforts on memory use. Don't be afraid of generating new
54 playlists whenever you want to. They are not equivalent to tracks,
55 which require extra CPU time and significant memory space, or audio
56 files, which use disk space, or plugins that require extra CPU time.
57 If a playlist is not in use, it occupies a small amount of memory, and