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"
15 <p>Plugins are written by 3rd parties, and Ardour supports a variety of different plugin standards:</p>
16 <dl class="narrower-table">
18 <dd>An early, simple, lightweight plugin API, audio effects only, plugins have no editors/GUI of their own</dd>
20 <dd>An extensible, full-featured plugin API, audio and MIDI, plugins can provide their own editors/GUIs</dd>
22 <dd>OS X only, full featured, audio and MIDI, plugins can provide their own GUI</dd>
24 <dd>Plugins using Steinberg's VST plugin standard but compiled specifically for Linux</dd>
26 <dd>Plugins using Steinberg's VST plugin standard but compiled for Windows. <em>Support for this plugin format is not available in regular builds of Ardour. <a href="/working-with-plugins/windows-vst-support">Read more...</a></em>
29 <h2>Adding/Removing/Copying Plugins</h2>
30 <p>Within Ardour, plugins are just another type of <code>Processor</code> and so the techniques for adding/removing/copying/moving processors apply to plugins as well. These techniques are covered on the <a href="/working-with-plugins/the-processor-box">Processor Box</a> page.</p>