--- title: Transport Bar ---

The Transport Bar groups all the actions regarding the control of playback and recording.

The transport controls

This bar is made of (from left to right):

Midi Panic
Immediately stops all midi output.
Enable/disable Audio Click
Toggles (on/off) a click track (metronome) along the tempo. Right clicking brings up the Click submenu from the Preferences.
Go to Start of the Session
Jumps back at the beginning of the session, as defined by the start marker.
Go to End of the Session
Jumps forward to the end of the session, as defined by the end marker.
Play Loop Range
Repeats the defined loop as defined by the Loop range, until the "Stop playback" button is pressed. Clicking the "Play loop Range" button while already active switches to normal Play mode, which exits the loop without stopping and restarting playback.
Play Range/Selection
If a range has been defined using the Range Mode button, plays the range, of if an audio or MIDI region is selected, plays this region. In both cases, the playback stops at the end of the range or selected region.
Play from playhead
Starts the playback and optionally record (more below).
Stop
Whatever the playing mode (loop, range, …) stops all playback. Depending on other settings, some effects (like chorus or reverb) might still be audible for a while.
Toggle Record
Global switch button to activate/deactivate recording. While active, the button blinks red. The button doesn't start recording by itself: if one or more tracks are marked as record-enabled, pressing the "Play from Playhead" starts recording on those tracks. See Recording.

All these actions are bound to keyboard shortcuts, which allows for speedier use and more focused work.

If you synchronize Ardour with other devices then some or all of these control methods may be unavailable—depending on the synchronization protocol, Ardour may respond only to commands sent from its master device(s).

Under these buttons is the Shuttle Speed Control that allows to scrub through the audio quickly.

The Shuttle Speed Control supports 2 operating modes, that can be chosen with right click > Mode:

The mode is displayed on the right of the control. The current playback speed is shown by a green slider, that is square and centered when the playback speed is normal (1X) and becomes a circle when its changed. The further from the center the slider is set, the faster the playback will scrub in both directions, as displayed on the left of the control.

The 3 vertical buttons on the right of the transport bar control the behaviour of the playhead:

Using Key Bindings

Ardour has many available commands for playback control that can be bound to keys. Many of them have default bindings, some do not, so the list below shows both the default bindings and internal command names for some of them.

Space
switch between playback and stop.
Home
Move playhead to session start marker
End
Move playhead to session end marker
Playhead to next region boundary
Playhead to previous region boundary
0
Move playhead to start of the timeline
Go to the Transport and Transport > Playhead to find more.