3 title: Working With Plugins
8 <p>Plugins are bits of software that get loaded by Ardour in order to:</p>
10 <li>Create various audio or MIDI effects
12 <li>Generate audio by functioning as "software instruments"
16 <p>Ardour does not come with any built-in signal processors of its own
17 (other than volume faders) and it also generally doesn't ship with any
18 plugins. They are written by 3rd parties, though we do provide <a href="/working-with-plugins/getting-plugins/">some
19 information on how to get them</a>.
23 Ardour supports a variety of different plugin standards:
25 <dl class="narrower-table">
28 <dd>An early, simple, lightweight plugin API, audio effects only,
29 plugins have no editors/GUI of their own (Ardour provides one, however).</dd>
32 <dd>An extensible, full-featured plugin API, audio and MIDI, plugins can provide their own editors/GUIs</dd>
35 <dd>OS X only, full featured, audio and MIDI, plugins can provide their own GUI</dd>
38 <dd>Plugins using Steinberg's VST plugin standard but compiled specifically for Linux</dd>
41 <dd>Plugins using Steinberg's VST plugin standard but compiled for
42 Windows. <em>Support for this plugin format is not available in
44 Ardour. <a href="/working-with-plugins/windows-vst-support">Read
49 <h2>Adding/Removing/Copying Plugins</h2>
51 <p>Within Ardour, plugins are just another type
52 of <code>Processor</code> and so the techniques for
53 adding/removing/copying/moving processors apply to plugins as
54 well. These techniques are covered on
55 the <a href="/working-with-plugins/the-processor-box">Processor