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