About Ardour

About Ardour

Ardour allows you to record and edit both audio and MIDI data, add many different kinds of effects and mix.

Things you might use Ardour for include:

• Digitally record acoustic/electric instruments or vocals

About Ardour documentation

About Ardour documentation

Conventions Used In This Manual

This section covers some of the typographical and language conventions used in this manual.

Keyboards and Modifiers

Keyboard bindings are shown like this: s or x. Ctrl-x means "press the Ctrl, keep it pressed and then also press the x key. You may also see key combinations such as Ctrl-Shift-e, which mean that you should press the Ctrl key, then while keeping it pressed also press the Shift key and then while keeping them both pressed, finally press the e key.

Note that different platforms have different conventions for which modifier key (Control or Command) to use as the primary or most common modifier. When viewing this manual from a machine identifying itself as running OS X, will see Cmd- where appropriate. On other machines you will see Ctrl-

Menu Items

Menu items are indicated like this: Top > Next > Deeper Each >-separated item indicates an item on a nested (sub) menu.

Preference/Dialog Options

Choices in various dialogs, notably the Preferences and Properties dialog, are indicated like this: Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some Option Each successive >-separated item indicates either a (sub) menu or tabbed dialog navigation. The final item is the one to choose/select/deselect, etc.

Notes

Important notes about things that might not otherwise be obvious are shown in this format

"Context-click"

Many times the term context-click is used to indicate that you should (typically) right-click on a particular element of the graphical user interface. Although right-click is the common, default way to do this, there are other ways to accomplish the same thing - this term refers to any of them, and the result is always that a menu specific to the item you clicked on will be displayed.

Mouse Buttons

We refer to mouse buttons as Left, Middle and Right. Ardour can use additional buttons, but they have no default behaviour in the program.

"The Pointer"

When the manual refers to the "pointer", it means the on-screen representation of the mouse position or the location of a touch action if you are using a touch interface.

Additional Resources

Additional Resources

In addition to this documentation, you may to check a variety of other resources.

Release Notes

The Ardour Forums

Information about Ardour Support

The Ardour Users Mailing List

Creating Music with Ardour

Creating Music with Ardour

Ardour can be used in many different ways, from extremely simple to extremely complex. Many projects will be handled using the following kind of workflow.

Stage 1: Creating Your Project

The first step is to create a new session, or open an existing one. A session consists of a folder containing a session file that defines all the information about the session. All media files used by the session can be stored within the session folder.

More details on sessions can be found in Working With Sessions.

Stage 2: Creating and Importing Audio and MIDI data

Once you have a session, you will want to add some audio and/or MIDI material to it, which can be done in one of 3 ways:

• Record incoming audio or MIDI data, either via audio or MIDI hardware connected to your computer, or from other applications.
• Create new MIDI data using the mouse and/or various dialogs
• Import existing media files into the session

MIDI recordings consist of "performance data" ("play note X at time T") rather than actual sound. As a result, they are more flexible than actual audio, since the precise sound that they will generate when played depends on where you send the MIDI to. Two different synthesizers may produce very different sound in response to the same incoming MIDI data.

Audio recordings can be made from external instruments with electrical outputs (keyboards, guitars etc.) or via microphones for acoustic instruments.

Ardour uses the JACK Audio Connection Kit for all audio and MIDI I/O, which means that recording audio/MIDI from other applications is fundamentally identical to recording audio/MIDI from your audio/MIDI hardware.

Stage 3: Editing and Arranging

Once you have some material within the session, you can start to arrange it in time. This is done in one of the two main windows of Ardour, the Editor window.

Your audio/MIDI data appears in chunks called "regions", which are arranged into horizontal lanes called "tracks". Tracks are stacked vertically in the Editor window. You can copy, shorten, move, and delete regions without changing the actual data stored in the session at all - Ardour is a non-destructive editor. (Almost) nothing that you do while editing will ever modify the files stored on disk (except the session file itself).

You can also carry out many transformations to the contents of regions, again without altering anything on disk. You can alter/move/delete MIDI notes, and remove silence from audio regions, for example.

Stage 4: Mixing and Adding Effects

Once you have the arrangement of your session mostly complete, you will typically move on to the mixing phase. Mixing is a broad term to cover the way the audio signals that your session generates during playback and processed and added together into a final result that you actually hear. It can involve altering the relative levels of various parts of the session, adding effects that improve or transform certain elements, and others that bring the sound of the whole session to a new level.

Ardour will allow you to automate changes to any mixing parameters (such as volume, panning, and effects controls) - it will record the changes you make over time, using a mouse or keyboard or some external control device, and can play back those changes later. This is very useful because often the changes you need, even for just one track, will vary in one part of a session compared to another - rather than a single new setting for the volume, you will often need increases followed by decreases (for example, to track the changing volume of a singer). Using automation can make all of this relatively simple.

Stage 5: Export

Once you are really satisfied with the arrangement and mix of your session, you will typically want to produce a single audio file that contains a ready-to-listen to version of the work. Ardour will allow you to export audio files in a variety of formats (simultaneously in some cases). This exported file would typically be used in creating a CD, or be the basis for digital distribution of the work.

OI course sometimes you will want to do export material that isn't finished yet, for example to give a copy to someone else to try to mix on their own system. Ardour will allow you to export as much of a session as you want, at any time, in any supported format.

Understanding Basic Concepts and Terminology

Understanding Basic Concepts and Terminology

This section will help you get acquainted with the basic terminology and concepts associated with Ardour. More detailed information on each aspect of the program is provided in later chapters.

Sessions

An Ardour session is a container for an entire project. A session may contain an arbitrary number of tracks and busses consisting of audio and MIDI data, along with information on processing those tracks, a mix of levels, and everything else related to the project. A session might typically contain a song, or perhaps an entire album or a complete live recording.

Ardour sessions are held in directories; these directories contain one or more session files, some or all of the audio and MIDI data and a number of other state files that Ardour requires. The session file describes the structure of the session, and holds automation data and other details.

Ardour's session file is kept in XML format, which is advantageous as it is somewhat human-readable, and human-editable in a crisis. Sound files are stored in one of a number of optional formats, and MIDI files as SMF (standard MIDI format).

It is also possible for Ardour sessions to reference sound and MIDI files outside the session directory.

Ardour has a single current session at all times; if Ardour is started without specifying one, it will offer to load or create one.

More details can be bound at Working With Sessions.

Tracks

A track is a concept common to most DAWs, and used also in Ardour. Tracks can record audio or MIDI data to disk, and then replay it with processing. They also allow the audio or MIDI data to be edited in a variety of different ways.

In a typical pop production, one might use a track each for the kick drum, another for the snare, more perhaps for the drum overheads and others for bass, guitars and vocals.

Ardour can record to any number of tracks at one time, and then play those tracks back. On playback, a track's recordings may be processed by any number of plugins, panned, and its level altered to achieve a suitable mix.

A track's type is really only related to the type of data that it stores on disk. It is possible, for example, to have a MIDI track with a synthesizer plugin which converts MIDI to audio. Even though the track remains ‘MIDI’, in the sense that its on-disk recordings are MIDI, its output may be audio-only.

More details can be bound at Working With Tracks.

Regions

A track may contain many segments of audio or MIDI. Ardour contains these segments in things called regions, which are self-contained snippets of audio or MIDI data. Any recording pass, for example, generates a region on each track that is enabled for recording. Regions can be subjected to many editing operations; they may be moved around, split, trimmed, copied, and so on.

More details can be bound at Working With Regions.

Playlists

The details of what exactly each track should play back is described by a playlist. A playlist is simply a list of regions; each track always has an active playlist, and can have other playlists which can be switched in and out as required.

More details can be bound at Working With Playlists.

Busses

Busses are another common concept in both DAWs and hardware mixers. They are similar in many ways to tracks; they process audio or MIDI, and can run processing plugins. The only difference is that their input is obtained from other tracks or busses, rather than from disk.

One might typically use a buss to collect together the outputs of related tracks. Consider, for example, a 3-track recording of a drum-kit; given kick, snare and overhead tracks, it may be helpful to connect the output of each to a bus called ‘drums’, so that the drum-kit's level can be set as a unit, and processing (such as equalisation or compression) can be applied to the mix of all tracks.

Plugins

Ardour allows you to process audio and MIDI using any number of plugins. These are external pieces of code, commonly seen as VST plugins on Windows or AU plugins on Mac OS X. Generally speaking, a plugin is written using one (and maybe more) standards. Ardour's plugin support is for the following standards:

LADSPA

the first major plugin standard for Linux. Many LADSPA plugins are availble, mostly free and open-source.

LV2

the successor to LADSPA. Lots of plugins have been ‘ported’ from LADSPA to LV2, and also many new plugins written.

VST

Ardour supports VST plugins that have been compiled for Linux.

AudioUnit (AU)

Mac OS X versions of Ardour support AudioUnit (AU) plugins.

Ardour has some support for running Windows VST plugins on Linux, but this is rather complicated, extremely difficult for the Ardour developers to debug, and generally unreliable. If it is at all possible, you are strongly advised to use native LADSPA, LV2 or Linux VST plugins on Linux, or AU on Mac OS X.

More details can be bound at Working With Plugins.

The Right Computer System for Digital Audio

The Right Computer System for Digital Audio

It would be nice to think that you could just go and buy any computer, install a bit of software on it and start using it to record and create music. This idea isn't wrong, but there some important details that it misses.

Any computer that you can buy today (somewhere around the end of 2012) is capable of recording and processing a lot of audio data. It will come with a builtin audio interface that can accept inputs from microphones or electrical instruments. It will have a disk with a huge amount of space for storing audio files.

When you are recording, editing and mixing music, you generally want to work with very little delay between the time that a sound is generated and when you can hear it. When the audio signal flows through a computer, that means that the computer has to be able to receive the signal, process it and send it back out again as fast as possible. And that is where it becomes very important what computer system you have, because it is absolutely not the case that any computer can do this job well.

Routing audio through a computer will always cause some delay, but if it is small, you will generally never notice it. There are also ways to work in which the delay does not matter at all (for example, not sending the output from the computer to speakers).

The delay or "latency" that you want for working with digital audio is more typically in the 1-5msec range. For comparison, if you are sitting 1m (3ft) from your speakers, the time the sound takes to reach your ears is about 3msec. Any modern computer can limit the delay to 100msec. Most can keep it under 50msec. Many will be able to get down to 10msec without too much effort. If you try to reduce the delay on a computer that cannot meet your goal, you will get clicks and glitches in the audio, which is clearly extremely undesirable.

Many, many things can affect the lowest latency that a computer can support.

Hardware-related Considerations

Video interface

Poorly engineered video interfaces (and/or their device drivers) can "steal" computer resources for a long time, preventing the audio interface from keeping up with the flow of data

Wireless interface

Poorly engineered wireless networking interfaces (and/or their device drivers) can also block the audio interface from keeping up with the flow of data

USB ports

If you are using an audio interface connected via USB, and sometimes even if you are not, the precise configuration of your system's USB ports can make a big difference. There are many cases where plugging the interface into one port will work, but using different USB port results in much worse performance. This has been seen even on Apple systems.

CPU speed control

Handling audio with low latency requires that your processor keeps running at its best performance (speed) at all times. Many portable systems try to regulate processor speed in order to save power - for low latency audio, you want this totally disabled, either in the BIOS or at the OS level

Excessive Interrupt Sharing

If your audio interface is forced by your computer to share an "interrupt line" (basically a way to tell the CPU that something needs its attention) with too many, or the wrong, other devices, this can also prevent the audio interface from keeping up with the flow of data. In laptops it is generally impossible to do anything about this. In many desktop systems, it is possible at the BIOS level to reassign interrupts to workaround the problem.

System Management Interrupts (SMIs)

SMIs are interrupts sent by the motherboard to tell the computer about the state of various hardware. They cannot be (safely) disabled, but they can also take a (relatively) long time to process. It is better to have a motherboard which never sends SMIs at all - this is also a requirement for realtime stock trading systems, which have similar issues with latency.

Excessive (bass) vibration

This doesn't affect the flow of data to/from the audio interface, but it can cause the flow of data to/from your disk storage to become much slower. If you are going to use a computer in an environment with live sound, make sure to place it so that the disk is not subject to noticeable bass vibration. What actually happens is that the vibrations cause the mechanism inside the disk to detect read errors, and this forces a retry of the reading from the disk itself. Retrying over and over massively reduces the rate at which data can be read from the disk. Avoid this.

 

The Mouse

The Mouse

Ardour is designed to work best with a 3 button mouse equipped with a scroll wheel.

It can be used with a 2 button mouse or touchpad, but at least 2 key operations will not (easily) be available to you:

• time-constrained region copying
• MIDI bindings created by "learning" them from incoming MIDI

You are strongly encouraged to invest in a 3 button mouse. You will find that a good quality mouse (especially one with a weighted, latchable scroll wheel) will make your use of Ardour vastly more efficient. They are cheap, and time is not.

Using External MIDI Devices

Using External MIDI Devices

Connecting Audio and MIDI Devices

Connecting Audio and MIDI Devices

MIDI on OS X

CoreMIDI is a part of any OS X system and provides the device drivers and libraries needed by MIDI applications.

You will need to ensure that you are running a version of JACK for OS X that has a working CoreMIDI - JACK MIDI bridge. This first appeared in version 0.89 of JackOS X.

MIDI on Linux

Ensure that a2jmidid is running

a2jmidid is an application that "bridges" between the system MIDI ports and JACK.

First you should be sure that there is no ALSA sequencer support enabled in jack. To do that open qjackctl's Setup window.

In the Settings tab set the MIDI Driver drop down to the none option.

Then go to the Misc tab and uncheck the Enable ALSA Sequencer support option.

Now it's time to restart your jack server before going on.

Checking for a2jmidid availability

First thing is checking if a2jmidid is already installed in your system. To do it first start your jack server and then call

a2jmidid -e

from the command. If a2jmidid is there go on with Checking surface control MIDI ports. Otherwise install the newest a2jmidid available and try again.

Checking surface control MIDI ports

After starting a2jmidid your control surface MIDI ports should appear in qjackctl's Connections window on the MIDI tab under a2j. If it does go on to the next step: Automatically calling a2jmidid when starting jack. If it doesn't you have to troubleshoot why it didn't. (How to troubleshoot a2jmidid?)

Automatically calling a2jmidid when starting jack

It's troublesome to have to manually start a2jmidid by hand each time you start jack. Here is one way to do it automatically. This step isn't mandatory, it's just a convenience. If you are not interested you can go on to the next step Enabling Ardour's mackie control ports in qjackctl.

Create a script that calls jack if you aren't using one yet. In it change the line that calls jack to have an ampersand at it's end like that:

/usr/bin/qjackctl &

In this case I call qjackctl that starts jack so I include the ampersand in qjackctl's call. If you call jack directly, put the ampersand at the end of it's call line.

Now include the following lines after the line that calls jack:

/usr/bin/sleep 5
/bin/bash -c "/usr/bin/a2jmidid -e" &

All you have to do now is use your new script to call jack.

Starting Ardour

Starting Ardour

There are several ways of starting Ardour, which may vary depending on which platform you are using it on.

• double-click the Ardour icon in your platfom's file manager (e.g. Nautilus on Linux, Finder on OS X)
• double click on an Ardour session file in your platform's file manager
• on Linux, you can also start Ardour on the command line

When Ardour is run for the very first time, a special dialog is displayed that will ask you several questions about your setup. You will not be asked these questions again, but you can always modify your choices via the Preferences dialog.

In general, it is sensible to start JACK before you run Ardour. This is not necessary, but will provide you with more control and options over JACK's operation.

If you open Ardour without specifying an existing session it will display the "New Session" dialog. If JACK is not already running, there will be an extra "Audio Engine" tab in that dialog to configure JACK, which Ardour will start automatically.

If you did specify an existing session but JACK is not already running, the "New Session" dialog will contain just the Audio Engine tab.

Basic GUI Operations

Basic GUI Operations

Ardour has a number of different techniques to offer when you interact with it. This chapter provides information on basic techniques for entering text, making selections, and using shortcuts.

This chapter covers the following:

Introducing the Editor Window

Introducing the Editor Window

Introducing the Mixer Window

Introducing the Mixer Window

Using Ardour Clock Displays

Using Ardour Clock Displays

Clocks in Ardour are the basic way of displaying time values precisely. In many cases, they are also one way to edit (change) time values, and in a few cases, the only way. All clocks share the same basic appearance and functionality, which is described below, but a few clocks serve particularly important roles.

Transport Clocks

In the transport bar of the editor window there are two (or, if you are on a very small screen, just one) clocks that display both the current position of the playhead, and additional information related to transport control and the timeline. These are called the "transport clocks"; the leftmost one is the primary transport clock and the rightmost one is the secondary transport clock. They look like this:

Editing the time in the transport clocks will reposition the playhead in the same way that various other editing operations will.

The Big Clock

Under the Windows item in the main menu you will find the "Big Clock" window, which also shows the playhead position in a big, fully resizable window. The big clock is very useful when you need to work away from the screen but still want to see the playhead position clearly (such as when working with a remote control device across, or in another, room). The big clock will also change its visual appearance to indicate when active recording is taking place. Below on the left is a screenshot showing a fairly large big clock window filling a good part of the display, and on the right, the same clock during active recording.

 

The Special Role of the Secondary Transport Clock

There are a number occasions when Ardour needs to display time values to the user but there is no obvious way to specify what units to use. The most obvious is in the big cursor that appears when dragging regions. For this and other similar cases, Ardour will display time using the same units as the secondary clock.

Why are there two transport clocks

Having two transport clocks lets you see the playhead position in two different time units without having to change any settings. For example, you can see the playhead position in both timecode units and BBT time.

Selection and Punch Clocks

The transport bar also contains a set of 5 clocks that show the current selection range and punch ranges. Clicking on the punch range clocks will locate to either the beginning or end of the punch range. Similarly, clicking on the range clocks will locate to either the beginning or end of the current selection. In this screen shot there is no current selection range, so the selection clocks show an "off" state.

Clock Modes

Every clock in Ardour has four different modes it can be set to, each of which displays time using different units. You can change the clock mode by right-clicking on the clock and selecting the desired mode from the menu. Some clocks are entirely independent of any other clock's mode; others are linked so that changing one changes all clocks in that group. The different modes are:

Timecode

Time is shown as Hours:Minutes:Seconds:Frames, measured from the timecode zero point on the timeline (which may or may not correspond to the session start and/or absolute zero on the timeline). The frames per second (FPS) value is dictated by either the session FPS setting, or, if slaved to an external timecode master, the master. In the transport clocks, the FPS value is shown below the time display, along with an indication of the current timecode source (INT means that Ardour is its own timecode source)

BBT

Time is shown as Bars:Beats:Ticks, indicating musical time measured from the start of the session. The transport clocks show the current tempo (as bpm) and meter below the time display

Minutes:Seconds

Time is shown as Hours:Minutes:Seconds.Milliseconds, measured from the absolute start of the timeline (ignoring the session start and any timecode offsets).

Samples

Time is shown as a sample count from the absolute start of the timeline (ignoring the session start and any timecode offsets). The number of samples per second is given by the current sample rate, and in the transport clocks, this rate is shown below the time display along with any pullup/pulldown adjustment.

Special Modes for the Transport Clocks

In addition to the time-unit modes mentioned above, each of the two transport clocks (if you work on a small screen, you may only have one) can be independently set to display "Delta to Edit Point" in whatever time units its current mode indicates. This setting means that the clock shows the distance between the playhead and the current edit point, and it may show a positive or negative value depending on the relationship between these two points. The clocks will use a different color when in this mode to avoid confusion about the displayed value.

To switch either (or both!) of the transport clocks into this mode, use Edit->Preferences->Transport and select or de-select the relevant check-button.

Note that when set into this "Delta to Edit Point" mode, the transport clocks cannot be edited.

Changing clock values with the keyboard

New values for the clock can be typed from the keyboard after clicking on the relevant clock. Clicking on the clock will show a thin vertical cursor bar just to the right of the next character to be overwritten. Enter time in the same order as the current clock mode - if the clock is in Timecode mode, you need to enter hours, minutes, seconds, frames. So, to change to a time of 12:15:20:15 you would type 1 2 1 5 2 0 1 5. Each number you type will appear in a different color, from right to left, overwriting the existing value. Mid-edit, after typing 3 2 2 2 the clock might look like this:

To finish the edit, press the enter/return or tab key. To exit an edit without changing the clock press the escape key. If you mis-type an entry so that the new value would be illegal (for example, resulting in more than 30 frames when Timecode is set to 30 frames per second), the clock will reset at the end of the edit, and move the cursor back to the start so that you may begin again.

To end an edit without changing the clock press the escape key.

Avoiding the mouse entirely

There is a shortcut available for those who wish to be able to edit the transport clocks entirely without the mouse. It can be found in the keybinding editor under "Transport" called "Focus On Clock". If bound to a key (the divide key on a keypad is the default at time of writing), then pressing that key is equivalent to clicking on the primary (left) transport clock, and editing can begin immediately.

Entering Partial Times

One detail of the editing design that is not immediately obvious is that it is possible to enter part of a full time value. Suppose that the clock is in BBT mode, and displaying 024|03|0029 and you want to alter the value to be the first beat of the bar. Click on the clock and type 0 1 0 0 0 0. Similarly, if it is in Minutes:Seconds mode, and displaying 02:03:04.456 and you want to get to exactly 2 hours, click on the clock and type 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 to reset the minutes, seconds and milliseconds fields.

Entering Delta Times

You can also type values into the clock that are intended as a relative change, rather than a new absolute value. Simply end the edit by pressing the + or - keys (the ones on any keypad will also work). Using the plus key will add the entered value to the current value of the clock; using minus will subtract it. For example, if the clock is in Samples mode and displays 2917839, you move it back 2000 samples by typing 2 0 0 0 and then the - key rather than enter/return/tab.

Changing clock values with the mouse

Using a scroll wheel

Position the mouse pointer over the clock, and move the scroll wheel. Moving the scroll wheel away from you will increase the value shown on the clock, moving it towards you will decrease the value shown on the clock. The step size is determined by which field of the clock you position the mouse over. If the clock is in Timecode mode and the mouse pointer is over the Seconds field, the clock value will increase or decrease by one second at a time. If you move the mouse point to the Hours field, the value will increase or decrease by one hour at a time. It works similarly in all other clock modes.

Dragging the mouse

Position the mouse pointer over the clock, press the left mouse button and drag. Dragging upwards will increase the value shown on the clock, dragging downwards will decrease the value shown on the clock. The step size is determined by which field of the clock you position the mouse over. If the clock is in Timecode mode and you begin dragging with the mouse pointer over the Seconds field, the clock value will increase or decrease by one second at a time. If you begin dragging with the mouse over the Hours field, the value will increase or decrease by one hour at a time. It works similarly in all other clock modes.

Looping the Transport

Looping the Transport

When the loop transport button is pressed, the playhead will jump the start of the loop range, and continue to the end of the loop range before returning to the start and repeating.

While looping, a light green area is displayed over the tracks to show the loop range.

Please see this section for more information on defining and altering the loop range.

Positioning the Playhead

The playhead is a vertical line with two arrows at each end that indicates the current position of playback.

Positioning the Playhead at the current pointer position

The command Editor/set-playhead (default binding: p) will set the playhead at the position of the pointer, if it is within the editor track area.

Positioning the Playhead on the timeline

An unmodified click anywhere on the timeline (rulers) will move the playhead to that position.

Positioning the Playhead with the transport clocks

Click on either the primary or secondary transport clock and edit the value to move the playhead to a specific position.

Positioning the Playhead at a marker

Context-click on the marker and select either Locate to here or Play from here.

Alternatively, position the pointer within the marker and press p to set the playhead at the marker.

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 command names.

Space

switch between playback and stop.

Home

Move playhead to session start marker

End

Move playhead to session end marker

Right Arrow

Left Arrow

0

Move playhead to start of the timeline

Commands without default bindings include:

Using the Nudge Controls

Using the Nudge Controls

If there are no selected objects, the nudge controls can be used to move the playhead by a fixed amount backward or forward. The left and right buttons move either backward or forward in time, and the small clock to the left of these buttons sets the amount of time to nudge by. As with all other clocks, you can right-click on the clock to choose the time representation you want to use.

Note that this is a secondary purpose of the nudge controls - it is usually used to move selected objects by specific distances, rather than the playhead.

Using the Transport Bar

Using the Transport Bar

Creating Location Markers

Creating Location Markers

You can create a location marker at any position in a session.

Create a location marker at the current position of the playhead

Create a location marker in a specific position on the timeline

Creating Range Markers

Creating Range Markers

Creating a Range on the timeline

Creating a Range in the Locations+Marks List

Getting To Know the Locations+Marks List

Getting To Know the Locations+Marks List

The Locations+Marks List is visible on a tab in the Editor Lists area. It can be used as a single point of control for all range and location markers (including the punch and loop ranges), or as a supplement to other methods of working with them.

First, there is the current loop and punch range; there are three clocks, being the start of the range, the end of the range and the length of the range. The start and end points have a ‘Use PH’ button beside them, which you can click to set the corresponding position using the current position of the playhead. Following this is a list of the session's markers, and finally there is a list of the range markers. At the bottom of the list are buttons to add new markers or ranges. The - button beside each marker and range allows that particular mark to be removed.

Moving Markers

To move a single marker

Click and drag it to a new location on the timeline.

To move multiple markers

Ctrl-click each marker you want to move, then drag one of the selected markers to a new location. All other selected markers will move with it, though bounded by the zero point on the timeline.

To move both ends of a range at once

drag one of the range markers (the start or end) and the other will in sync with it.

The Loop Range

The Loop Range

The loop range is a special range that defines the start and end points when loop-mode is enabled in the transport bar.

Defining the loop range on the timeline

Defining the loop range in the Locations+Marks list

The Marker Context Menu

The Marker Context Menu

Several operations on markers are available by right-clicking them to open the marker context menu. From this menu, you can:

Locate to Here

move the playhead to this marker's position.

Play from Here

start playback from this marker's position.

Move Mark to Playhead

move this marker to the current playhead position.

Create Range to Next Marker

create a range marker between this location and the next one along on the timeline.

Hide

hide this marker from the view. It can be re-shown from the Locations window

Rename

change the name of the marker.

Lock

if this is ticked, it will be impossible to drag the marker's position; useful if you want to prevent accidental movements.

Glue to Bars and Beats

if this is ticked, the marker will maintain its position in bars and beats even if there are changes in tempo and meter

Remove

removes the marker.

There are also a few options on the Active Mark submenu of the Transport menu. These options apply to the currently selected location marker, and move it to a nearby region boundary, region sync point, or to the playhead or mouse.

The Punch Range

The Punch Range

The punch range is a special range used to define where recording will start and/or stop during a punch.

Defining the punch range on the timeline

Defining the punch range in the Locations+Marks list

Backup and Sharing of Sessions

Backup and Sharing of Sessions

An Ardour session is stored in a single folder on your computer's filesystem. This makes backup very easy - any tool capable of backing up a folder (i.e. all of them) can be used to backup a session. You pick the location of a session when it is created - by default it will be in your default session location, which can be altered via Edit > Preferences > Misc > Session Management.

There is complication: a session may reference embedded media that are stored outside of the session folder. At this time (December 2012), there is no particularly good solution for this. Backing up a session with embedded files will not create a copy of the session containing those files.

The single folder approach also makes sharing a project easy. Simply copy the session folder (onto a storage device, or across a network) and another Ardour user (on any platform) will be able to use it. The limitation regarding embedded files applies to session sharing as well.

Interchange with other DAWs

Interchange with other DAWs

It has never been particularly easy to move sessions/projects created on one DAW to another. There are two "standards" that exist that have reasonably widespread support:

• OMF (Open Media Framwwork), also known as OMFI. Developed and controlled by Avid, never standardized
• AAF (Advanced Authoring Format). Developed by a consortium of media-related corporations.

but in practice both of these "standards" have such complex and/or incomplete specifications that different DAWs support them partially, differently or not at all.

Moving an Ardour session to another DAW

To move an Ardour session to another DAW, you have 3 basic choices:

• Stem exports
• Copy the interchange folder
• Use AATranslator

Moving another DAW session to Ardour

To move a session from another DAW to Ardour, you have 2 basic choices:

• Stem exports
• Use AATranslator

More details on these options are available:

Renaming a Session

Renaming a Session

Use Session > Rename to give your session a new name. A dialog will appear to ask you for the new name.

This operation does not make a new session folder - the existing session folder and relevant contents are renamed. If your session was not saved before a rename operation, it will be saved automatically and then renaming will continue.

Ardour has no "Save As" operation that actually makes a new copy of the session folder and its contents.

Session Templates

Session Templates

Session templates are a way to store the setup of a session for future (re)use. They do not store any data but do store (for example):

• The number of tracks and busses, along with their names
• The plugins present on each track or bus (if any)
• All I/O connections

Creating a Session Template

Choose Session > Save Template. A dialog will appear to ask you for the name of the new template.

Using a Session Template

In the New Session dialog, choose the desired template from the combo selector.

Note that you can also use an existing session as a template, without saving it as one. This is available as an option in the New Session dialog. Doing this will not alter the existing session at all, but will use its track, bus and plugin configuration just like a template.

See also Track & Bus templates for information on templates for individual tracks or busses.

Snapshots

Snapshots

Sometimes you will want to save the current state of a session for possible use in the future. For example, you may be about to change the entire arrangement of a piece, or drastically alter the signal processing, and want a reference to come back to should that not work out.

This is easily accomplished using Session > Snapshot. A small dialog will appear allowing you to enter a name for the snapshot. The default name is based on the current date and time.

Creating a snapshot does not modify your session, nor does it save your session. Instead, it saves an "alternate" version of the session, within the session folder. The snapshot shares all data present in the session. You can create any number of snapshots.

After creating a snapshot, you can continue working on the session and save it normally using Session > Save and any existing snapshots will remain unchanged.

Switching to a Snapshot

If you are already working on a session and want to to switch to an existing snapshot, navigate the Snapshots tab of the Editor Lists. Find the name of the snapshot in the list and click it. Ardour will switch to the snapshot. If the session has not been saved, you will asked what you want to do.

Starting Ardour With A Snapshot

Since a snapshot is just another session file stored within the session folder, you can specify that "version" when loading an existing session. The browser in the "Open Session" dialog will show an expander arrow for sessions that have more than 1 session file (i.e. snapshots) present - click on it to see the list, and then click on the name of the snapshot you want to load.

Saving And Switching to a Snapshot

Sometimes you want to create a snapshot and then have all future edits and modifications saved to that snapshot rather than the main session. This is easily done using Session > Save As. This does not create a new session folder, but saves your session as a new snapshot and then switches the "current snapshot" to the newly created one. All subsequent saves of the session will be stored in this new snapshot, and existing snapshots (and the main session) will be left unaffected.

The New Session Dialog

The New Session Dialog

New Session Tab

In this tab you can type in the name of a session to create in the Name: field. You can also select a folder for this session to be created in, and if desired a template to create the new session as a copy of.

Under the Advanced Options, you can select specific behaviors that occur by default. This includes settings whether you wish to create a Master Bus, or a Control Bus, and how many channels you wish either to have.

You can also select whether you want Ardour to automatically connect all inputs to the physical ports of your hardware. If you select this Ardour will do so sequentially, to give an example, the first input of a track or bus will be connected to the first input of your hardware. The second input of a track or bus will be automatically connected to the second input of your hardware, and so on. When Ardour reaches the limits of your hardware, it will circle around and begin connecting with the first physical input of your hardware again. You can limit the number of channels on your physical hardware Ardour uses if you desire, and if that is the case, Ardour will only connect that many physical inputs to your tracks. Useful if you only want to connect the first input to do some voice over recording for instance.

Just like you can tell Ardour not to automatically connect track inputs, you can also modify how it automatically connects the outputs of the track or bus. By default Ardour will connect all tracks and busses to the Master Bus if there is one. However you can also tell it to automatically connect each output to the physical outputs of your interface or sound card, and like inputs can also limit the amount of physical outputs used, so for instance if you only have stereo monitors attached to the first two outputs of your sound card, you would not want Ardour to automatically connect to the next 6 that may be there with nothing attached to them.

Open Session Tab

The Open Session Tab will allow you to open an already existing session. You can also open any snapshot of a particular session by clicking on the arrow next to the session name to display all snapshots, and then selecting a snapshot. If a session is not displayed by default in the dialog you can click on the button next to "Browse" in order to bring up a file selection dialog to navigate your hard drive to find the file.

Audio Setup Tab

More details on this dialog/tab can be found below. Note that this tab is not visible if JACK is already running when the New Session dialog is displayed.

What's In A Session?

What's In A Session?

The Session is the fundamental document type that is created and modified by the Ardour workstation. A "Session" is a folder on your computer filesystem that contains all the items that pertain to a particular project or "recording/editing/mixing session".

The Session folder includes these files and folders:

• The main session snapshot (session_name.ardour)
• Any additional snapshots (filenames ending in ardour)
• the auto-backup snapshot (session_name.ardour.bak)
• the undo history for the session (session_name.history)
• the instant file (instant.xml) which records the last-used zoom scale and other metadata
• a folder called "interchange" which holds your raw audio and MIDI files (whether imported or recorded)
• a folder called "export" which contains any files created by the "Export" function
• a folder called "peaks" which contains a waveform rendering of each raw audio file in the session
• a folder called "analysis" which contains transient and pitch information of each raw audio file
• a folder called "dead sounds" which contains sounds which Ardour has detected are no longer used in the session

A session combines some setup information (such as audio and MIDI routing, musical tempo & meter, timecode synchronization, etc.) with one or more Tracks and Buses, and all the Regions and Plug-Ins they contain.

Where are Sessions Stored?

Where are Sessions Stored?

Sessions are stored in a single folder on your computer's filesystem.

The first time you run Ardour, you will be asked where you would like the default location for sessions to be, with the initial choice being your home folder.

You can change it in that startup dialog, or later via Edit > Preferences > Misc > Session Management. You can also specify a particular (different) location for a session when creating it, in the New Session dialog.

Region Naming

Region Naming

Regions are initially named using either:

• the name of the playlist for which they were recorded
• the name of the track for wich they were recorded
• the name of the embedded/imported file they represent

Whole File Region Names

These are not audio files, but regions that represent the full extent of an audio file. Every time a new recording is done, or a new file is embedded/imported, a new region is created that represents the entire audio file(s) This region will have the name of the track/playlist/original file, followed by a "-" and then a number plus a dot and then a number.

For recorded regions, the number will increase each time a new recording is made. So, for example, if there is a playlist called "Didgeridoo", the first recorded whole file region for that playlist will be called "Digderidoo-1". The next one will be "Digeridoo-2" and so on.

For imported/embedded files, the region name will be based on the file name, but with any final suffix (e.g. ".wav" or ".aiff") removed.

Normally, whole file regions are not inserted into tracks/playlists, but regions derived from them are. The whole-file versions live in the editor region list where they act as an organizing mechanism for regions that are derived from them.

Normal Region Names

When a region is inserted into a track/playlist, its initial name will end in a version number, such as ".1" or ".103". For a recorded region, if the whole file region was "Hang drum-1", then the region in the track will appear with the name "Hang drum-1.1". For an imported/embedded region, if the whole file region was "Bach:Invention3", then the region in the track will appear with the name "Bach:Invention3.1".

Copied Region Names

If the region is a copy of another region, it will begin life with the same name as the original. When an operation is carried out that modifies one of the copies, that particular copy will be renamed by incrementing the version number.

Renaming Regions

You can rename a region at any time. Use the region context menu to popup the rename dialog. The new name does not need to have a version number in it (in fact, it probably should not). The region will retain its name until it is modified after being copied.

Region Selection Equivalence

Track Groups have a property titled "Select" which, if enabled, will cause Ardour to try to propagate a region selection in one of a group's member tracks to the other members of the group..

For example, let's assume you have used multiple microphones to record a drum kit to multiple tracks. You have created a track group, added all the drum tracks, enabled the group and enabled the "Select" property for the group. When you select a region in one of the drum tracks, Ardour will select the corresponding track in every other drum track, which in turn means that a subsequent edit operation will affect all the selected regions (and thus all the drum tracks) together.

How Ardour decides which regions are "equivalent"

Regions in different tracks are considered to be equivalent for the purposes of sharing "selection" if they satisfy all the following criteria:

1. Each region starts at the same offset within its source file
2. Each region is located at the same position on the timeline
3. Each region has the same length

Overlap Equivalence

Sometimes, the rules outlined above are too strict to get Ardour to do what you want. Regions may be slightly different lengths, or positioned slightly differently, and this will cause Ardour to not select regions in other grouped tracks that you would like it to.

In this case, enable Edit > Preferences > Editor > Use overlap equivalency for regions. With this option enabled, regions in different tracks will be considered equivalent for the purposes of selection if they overlap. This is much more flexible and will cover almost all of the cases that the fixed rules above might make cumbersome.

The Region Context Menu

In the editor window, context clicking on a region brings up a menu to provide access to many region operations. The menu begins with the name of the region, or "Selected Regions" if multiple regions are selected.

If there is more than 1 region layered at the point where you clicked, the menu will also contain an item "Choose Top" that if selected will show a dialog that allows you to adjust the layering of regions there. See Adjusting Region Layering for more details.

Below these items is the rest of the Track Context Menu, which provides access to track-level operations. To see the region context menu's contents, select the region name or "Selected Regions", and a submenu will appear with the following structure/contents:

Play

Loop

Properties

Rename

Edit

Combine

Uncombine

Split

Make Mono Regions

Opaque

Mute

Pitch Shift

Reverse

Close Gaps

Place Transients

Rhythm Ferret

Strip Silence

Position

Move To Original Position

Lock

Glue to Bars and Beats

Snap Position to Grid

Set Sync Position

Remove Sync

Nudge Later

Nudge Earlier

Nudge Later by capture offset

Nudge Earlier by capture offset

Trim

Trim Start at Edit Point

Trim End at Edit Point

Trim to Loop

Trim to Punch

Trim to Previous

Trim to Next

Layering

Raise to Top

Raise

Lower

Lower to Bottom

Ranges

Set Loop Range

Set Punch Range

Add Single Range Marker

Add Range Marker per Region

Set Range Selection

Gain

Normalize

Boost

Cut

Reset Envelope

Envelope Active

Fades

Fade In

Fade Out

Fades

Duplicate

Duplicate

Multi-Duplicate

Fill Track

Export

Bounce (without processing)

Bounce (with processing)

Spectral Analysis

Remove

Playlist Operations

Playlist Operations

All operations on playlists start by clicking on the playlist button (labelled p) in a track header in the editor window. Clicking the button will popup a menu with the following choices:

(Local Playlists)

Shows all of the playlists associated with this track, and indicates the currently selected playlist

Rename

Pops up a dialog that allows the current playlist to be renamed

New

Creates a new empty playlist, and switches this track to use it

New Copy

Creates a new playlist that is a copy of the current playlist, and switches this track to use it

Clear Current

Removes all regions from the current playlist

Select from All

pops up a playlist browser to manually choose which playlist this track should use ( you can even select playlists from other tracks here)

Renaming Playlists

Playlists are created with the name of the track of which they are associated, plus a version number. So, the first playlist for a track called "Cowbell" will be called "Cowbell.1". This name will be used to define the names of any regions added to the playlist by recording. You can change the name at any time, to anything you want. Ardour does not require that your playlist names are all unique, but it will make your life easier if they are. Suggested examples of user-assigned names for a playlist might include "Lead Guitar, 2nd take", "vocals (quiet)", and "downbeat cuica". Notice how these might be different from the associated track names, which for these examples might be "Lead Guitar", "Vocals" and "Cuica". The playlist name provides more information because it is about a specific version of the material that may (or may not) end up in the final version of the track.

If you are going to rename your playlists, do so before recording new material to them.

Sharing Playlists

It is entirely possible to share playlists between tracks. The only slightly unusual thing you may notice when sharing is that edits to the playlist made in one track will magically appear in the other. If you think about this for a moment, its an obvious consequence of sharing. One application of this attribute is parrallel processing, described below.

You might not want this kind of behaviour, even though you still want two tracks to use the same (or substantially the same) playlist. To accomplish this, select the chosen playlist in the second track, and then use New Copy to generate an independent copy of it for that track. You can then edit this playlist without affecting the original.

Using Playlists for "Parallel Processing"

One of the uses of Playlists is to apply multiple effects to the same audio stream. For example, let's say you have a track and you'd like to apply a second set of effects, at the same time to the original track. In this case you could make a new track, select the original track's Playlist, and then apply different effects to the second track than the first (including panning, inserts, and bussing changes). Now, if you edit either of the track's playlists, the changes will appear in both tracks.

Using Playlists for "Takes"

Using Playlists for takes is a good solution if you are going to need the ability to edit individual takes, and select between them, but you won't be "compositing" multiple takes together. This might be the case if you were recording multiple languages of a given track, and you want to use the same "track" for each language so that they get the same processing. Then you select each language before exporting the mix for each separate language.

You use the Clear Current operation each time you want to start a new take. This is a non-destructive operation that removes all existing regions from the current playlist. Although you won't lose any information doing this, its probably not appropriate unless the last take was so awful that you want to discard it (although without the finality of Remove Last Capture ). Finally, and probably most useful, you can use the New operation in the playlist button menu to create a new empty playlist, ready for the next take. Later, you can Select your way back to previous or later takes as desired, either in this or some other track.

If you want to record multiple takes and then "comp" between them, it is probably better to simply record each successive take on top of the others in "layers" and then edit them using the layer tools, explained later.

Understanding Playlists

Understanding Playlists

A playlist is a list of regions ordered in time. It defines which parts of which source files should be played and when. Playlists are a fairly advanced topic, and can be safely ignored for many types of audio production, however the use of playlists allows the audio engineer more flexibility for tasks like multiple takes of a single instrument, alternate edits of a given recording, parallel effects such as reverb or compression, and other tasks.

Each audio track in Ardour is really just a mechanism for taking a playlist and generating the audio stream that it represents. As a result, editing a track really means modifying its playlist in some way. Since a playlist is a list of regions, most of the modifications involve manipulating regions: their position, length and so forth. This is covered in the chapter about regions. Here, we cover some of the things you can do with playlists as objects in their own right.

Tracks are not Playlists

It is important to understand that a track is not a playlist. A track has a playlist. A track is a mechanism for generating the audio stream represented by the playlist and passing it through a signal processing pathway. At any point in time, a track has a single playlist associated with it. When the track is used to record, that playlist will have one or more new regions added to it. When the track is used for playback, the contents of the playlist will be heard. You can change the playlist associated with a track at (almost) any time, and even share playlists between tracks.

If you have some experience of other DAWs, then you might have come across the term "virtual track", normally defined as a track that isn't actually playing or doing anything, but can be mapped/assigned to a "real track". This concept is functionally identical to Ardour's playlists. We just like to be little more clear about what is actually happening rather than mixing old and new terminology ("virtual" and "track") into confusing terminology.

Playlists are Cheap

One thing you should be clear about is that playlists are cheap. They don't cost anything in terms of CPU consumption, and they have very minimal efforts on memory use. Don't be afraid of generating new playlists whenever you want to. They are not equivalent to tracks, which require extra CPU time and significant memory space, or audio files, which use disk space, or to plugins that require extra CPU time. If a playlist is not in use, it occupies a small amount of memory, and nothing more.

Track Types

Data Type

An Ardour track can be either ‘audio’ or ‘MIDI’. The only real difference between the two is the type of data that the track will record and play back. Either type of track can pass either type of data. Hence, for example, one might have a MIDI track that contains an instrument plugin; such a track would record and playback MIDI data from disk but would produce audio, since the instrument would turn the one into the other.

Nevertheless, when adding tracks to a session, you typically have an idea of what you need to use the new tracks for, and Ardour offers you three choices:

Audio Tracks

an Audio Track is created with a user-specified number of inputs. The number of outputs is defined by the master bus channel count (see "Channel Configuration" below for more on this), This is the type of bus to use when planning to work with existing or newly recorded audio.

MIDI Tracks

A MIDI track is created with a single MIDI input, and a single MIDI output. This is the type of track to use when planning to record and playback MIDI, whether or not the MIDI will be processed by instrument plugins or sent to other applications or external MIDI hardware. If/when you add an instrument plugin, the output configuration of a MIDI track will be changed to have audio outputs to deliver the signal from the instrument to other parts of Ardour.

Audio/MIDI Tracks

There are a few notable plugins that can usefully accept both audio and MIDI data (Reaktor is one, and various "auto-tune" like plugins are another example. It can be tricky to configure this type of track manually, so Ardour allows you to select this track type specifically for use when working with such plugins. It is not generally the right choice when working normal MIDI tracks, and a dialog will warn you of this.

Track Modes

Audio tracks in Ardour can have a "mode" which affects how they behave when recording.

Normal

Tracks using this mode will record non-destructively - new data is written to new files, and when overdubbing, new regions will be layered on top of existing ones (with or without crossfades. This is the recommended mode for most workflows.

Non-Layered

Tracks using this mode will record non-destructively - new data is written to new files, but when overdubbing if new regions overlap existing regions, the existing regions are trimmed so that there are no overlaps. This can be a very useful way of working with spoken word material, especially in combination with push/pull trimming.

Tape

Tracks using this mode do destructive recording: all data is recorded to a single file and if you overdub a section of existing data, the existing data is destroyed (irrevocably - there is no undo). Fixed crossfades are added at every punch in and out point. This mode can be useful for certain kinds of dubbing workflows, but it not suggested for normal use.

Below is a screenshot that shows the subtly different results of an overdub in normal and non-layered mode. Both tracks were created using identical audio data. The upper track is in normal mode, and the overdub (the middle shorter region) has created a new region which if you look carefully has been layered on top of the the existing (longer) region. The lower track is in non-layered mode, and rather than overlay the overdub region, it split the existing region and inserted the new one in between.

Channel Configuration

Ardour tracks can have any number of inputs and any number of outputs, and the number of either can be changed at any time (subject to restrictions caused by any plugins in a track). However it is useful to not have to configure this sort of thing for the most common cases, and so the Add Tracks dialog allows you to select "Mono", "Stereo" and few other typical configurations.

What does Mono or Stereo actually mean?

Given that tracks have a certain number of inputs and a certain number of outputs and that these numbers may not necessarily be the same, it is not immediately clear what terms like "Mono" or "Stereo" mean. Most people will know that they refer to "1 channel" and "2 channels" in some way, but this leaves room for interpretation. 1 input channel? 2 output channels?

If you are using Ardour's default mode of automatically connecting track (and bus) inputs and outputs, then the designation "Mono" or "Stereo" refers to the input of the track. A Mono track will have a single input and a Stereo track will have two inputs.

The number of outputs for each will be determined by the number of inputs of the master bus, to which the track outputs will be connected. So in the most common case, using a 2 channel master bus, a Mono track has 1 input and 2 outputs that are connected to the master; a Stereo track has 2 inputs and 2 outputs that are connected to the master.

However, if you choose not to have Ardour make connections automatically, then tracks will be left disconnected by default. In this scenario, a Mono track has 1 input and 1 output, and a stereo track has 2 inputs and 2 outputs. It is up to you to connect them as you wish. This is not a particularly useful way to work unless you are doing something fairly unusual with signal routing and processing. It is almost always preferable to leave Ardour to make connections automatically, even if you later change them manually.

Adding Tracks

Adding and removing tracks

A track or bus can be added to a session in various ways:

• Choose Add Track or Bus… from the Track menu.
• Right-click in an empty part of the track controls area.
• Click the + button underneath the list of tracks in the mixer.

Any of these actions will open the Add Track or Bus dialogue,

From here, you can select firstly the number of tracks or busses to add, and the type; audio track, MIDI track or bus. There are also some options, which vary depending on the type of thing you are creating.

These options are:

Configuration (for audio tracks and busses)

this is the number of input and outputs the track is set up with. You can always change these counts later.

Track mode (for audio tracks)

this can be ‘normal’, ‘non-layered’ or ‘tape’.

Group

tracks and busses can be put into groups so that a selected range of operations are applied to all members of a group at the same time (selecting record enable, or editing, for example). This option allows you to specify an existing group to add the new track(s) or bus(ses) to, or to create a new group to put the new things in.

Instrument (for MIDI tracks)

this is a short-cut to allow you to create a MIDI track with an instrument plugin already added to it. You can achieve the same effect by creating a MIDI track with no plugins and adding it yourself; this option just makes things slightly quicker.

Adding tracks will add them to both the editor and mixer windows; the editor window shows the timeline, with any recorded data, and the mixer shows just the processing elements of the track (its plugins, fader and so on).

Tracks and busses can be removed by selecting them, right-clicking and choosing ‘Remove’ from the menu. A warning dialogue will pop up, as track removal cannot be undone; use this option with care!

Selecting Tracks

Controlling Track Appearance

Ardour offers many options for controlling the specific appearance of tracks, including color, height, waveform style and more.

Global Options

These can all be found via Edit > Preferences > Editor

Show meters on tracks in the editor

By default, ardour will put meters in the track header in the editor window. Disable this option to avoid this.

Show waveforms in regons

By default, ardour will draw waveforms within audio regions. Disable this option to avoid this.

Waveform scale

Linear

Logarithmic

Waveform shape

Traditional

Waveforms are drawn as positive and negative heights above and below a "zero" line

Rectified

Waveforms are show as absolute heights above a "zero" line

Per-Track or per-group options are covered below:

Controlling Track Ordering

Ardour does not impose any particular ordering of tracks and busses in either the editor or mixer windows. The default arrangement is as follows:

Editor default arrangement

• Master bus on top
• Tracks in the order they are added below, including busses
• Even if you use a Monitor section, it is never visible in the editor window.

Mixer default arrangement

• Tracks in the order they are added, from left to right
• Master bus on the right, in its own pane so that it is always visible no matter how other mixer strips are scrolled.
• If a Monitor section is used, that is at the right edge of the mixer window (it can be torn off, too)

Synchronizing Editor and Mixer Window Ordering

By default the ordering within the editor and mixer windows is synchronized: if you reorder in one window, the ordering in the other window will change. You can disable this via Edit > Preferences > Editor > Synchronize Editor and Mixer Track Order. When disabled, the ordering both both windows is totally indepedent of the other.

Reordering Specific Tracks...

... in the Editor Window, via the Keyboard

Select the tracks you want to move. Then use Track > Move Selected Tracks Up (↑) or Track > Move Selected Tracks Down (↓) to move the selected track(s) up or down in the editor window.

... in the Editor Window, via Drag-n-Drop

Make the Editor Lists visible. Select the Tracks & Busses tab. In the browser there, you can freely drag-and-drop tracks and busses into any order you prefer.

... in the Editor Window, via Drag-n-Drop

Within the "Strips" browser in the upper left area of the Mixer window, you can freely drag-and-drop tracks and busses into any order you prefer.

"Collecting" Group Members together

Tracks and Busses that are members of a group can be reordered so that they display contiguously within the Editor and Mixer windows. Context-click on the group tab and choose "Collect".

Bus Controls

A typical control area for a bus is shown below:

At the top-left of the controls is the name of the bus. This can be edited directly to whatever is suitable, although the name must be unique within the session. Underneath the name is a copy of the bus' main level fader. The control buttons to the right-hand side are:

m

mute. left-click to mute the bus. Right-click to display a menu which dictates what particular parts of the bus should be muted.

s

solo — solo the bus. The behaviour of the solo system is described in detail in the section called “Mute and solo”.

a

automation — click to open a menu related to automation for the bus. Automation is covered in Chapter 9, Automation.

g

group — click to open a menu related to the bus group, as discussed in the section called “Track and bus groups” above.

 

Audio Track Controls

A typical control area for an audio track is shown below:

An audio track has the same controls as a bus, with the addition of two extras. The red button with the pink circle is the track's record enable. When this is clicked it will gain a bright red outline, and the track will then be recorded onto when the main session record enable is turned on with the transport rolling.

The ‘p’ button below the record enable will open a playlist menu when clicked. The menu offers various operations related to the track's playlist. This, as you will recall, is simply a list of the regions that the track should play. Playlists may be swapped on a given track, and may be used by more than one track at the same time. They are often useful to keep different takes, for example, or to allow one set of regions to be played off two tracks with different processing.

MIDI Track Controls

A typical control area for a MIDI track is shown below:

The MIDI track example is shown at a greater height than the other examples, as with MIDI tracks there are some control elements which only appear when there is sufficient vertical space to fit them in.

A MIDI track has the same basic controls as an audio track, with the addition of two extra elements. The set of buttons below the main track controls controls the MIDI channels that should be visible in the editor. A MIDI track's data may span any number of the 16 available MIDI channels, and sometimes it is useful to view only a subset of those channels; different instruments may, for example, be put on different MIDI channels. Clicking on a channel number toggles its visibility.

To the right of the MIDI track controls is a representation of a piano keyboard called the ‘scroomer’. This performs a couple of functions. Firstly, the scroll-bar controls the range of pitches that are visible on the track. Dragging the scroll-bar body up and down scrolls up and down through the visible pitches, and dragging the scroll-bar ‘handles’ zooms in and out, so that more or fewer pitches are visible. The piano keyboard gives a reference for the pitches that the track is displaying. In addition, clicking on the notes will generate the corresponding MIDI note in the track.

The Track Context Menu

Within the editor window, context-clicking on either a region or empty space within a track will popup the track context menu, which provides easy access to many track-level operations.

If you click on a region, the first item in the menu will the name of the region. If there are more than one regions stacked where you clicked, this will be followed by an item called Choose Top. If selected, you will see a dialog that allows you to reorder the stacking of layers at that point. See Adjusting Region Layering for more details.

The rest of the track context menu is structured as follows:

Play

Play from Edit Point

Play from the location of the current edit point.

Play from Start

Play from the start of the session

Play Region(s)

Plays the duration of the session from the start of the earliest selected region to the end of the latest selected region

Select

Select All in Track

Select All

Invert Selection in Track

Invert Selection

Set Range to Loop Range

Set Range to Punch Range

Select All After Edit Point

Select All Before Edit Point

Select All After Playhead

Select All Before Playhead

Select All Between Playhead and Edit Point

Select All Within Playhead and Edit Point

Select Range Between Playhead and Edit Point

Edit

Cut

Copy

Paste

Align

Align Relative

Insert Selected Region

Insert Existing Media

Nudge

Nudge Entire Track Later

Nudge Track After Edit Point Later

Nudge Entire Track Earlier

Nudge Track After Edit Point Earlier

Freeze

 

Track and Bus Groups

Tracks and busses can be put into groups. The members of a group can be set to share various settings, which can be useful for managing tracks which are closely related to each other. Examples might include tracks that contain multiple-microphone recordings of a single source (an acoustic guitar, perhaps, or a drum-kit).

You can put tracks and busses into groups in various ways. In the editor window, a track's controls might look like these:

The green tab to the left of the track header indicates that this track is in a group called ‘Fred’. These tabs can be dragged in the editor window to add to or remove tracks from groups.

Creating New Groups

There are several ways to create track/bus groups:

Context-click on the group tab and use one of the "Create..." options there. You can create a group with no members, or one that starts with the currently selected tracks, or record-enabled tracks, or soloed tracks as it members.

Alternatively, clicking the ‘g’ button on a track header opens a menu which gives a list of the available groups; selecting one of these groups will add the track or bus to that group. This menu also allows a new group to be created.

Finally, the Groups tab of the Editor Lists or the Mixer Window has a "+" button at the bottom of the list that can be clicked upon to create a new group.

Removing Groups

Context-click on a group tab and select Remove Group from the menu. Removing a group does not remove the members of a group.

You can also remove groups by selecting them in the Groups tab of the Editor Lists or Mixer Window and then pressing the "-" button at the bottom of the list.

Adding/Removing Tracks and Busses to a Group

Clicking the ‘g’ button opens a menu which gives a list of the available groups; selecting one of these groups will add the track or bus to that group. Selecting "No Group" will remove it.

You can also drag a group tab to add or remove tracks from the group.

Activating/Deactivating Groups via the group tab

Clicking on a group tab will toggle the group between being active and inactive. An inactive group will have no effect when editing its members. An active group will share 1 or more properties across its members. Tabs for disabled groups are coloured grey.

Modifying Group Properties

The properties of a group can be edited by right-clicking on its tab and choosing Edit Group…. This will open the track/bus group dialogue, which is also used when creating new groups:

Group Color

Clicking on the color selector button allows the group's colour can be changed. This affects the colour of the group's tab in the editor and mixer windows. The color does not affect the color of the group members unless you also enable the shared Color property.

Following these options are a list of the things that the members of the group can share.

Shared Properties

Gain means that the track faders will be synced to always have the same value; ‘Relative’ means that the gain changes are applied relative to each member's current value. If, for example, there are two tracks in a group with relative gain sharing, and their faders are set to -3dB and -1dB, a change of the first track to a gain of -6dB will result in the second track having a gain of -4dB (so that the difference in gains is the same).

Muting, soloing, record enable, route active state, colour and monitoring are all straightforward; they simply mean that all member tracks or busses will share the same settings in these respects. See Working With Tracks for more on these properties.

Selection means that if a region is selected or deselected on one constituent track, corresponding regions on other member tracks will be similarly selected. Corresponding regions are those that are at the same position and have the same length. Since region editing operations are applied to all currently selected regions, this is the way to make edits apply across all tracks in the group.

Group Tab Context Menu

Context-clicking on the group tab offers a further menu of group-related actions.

Create a New Group

create a new group

Create New Group from...

create a new group and automatically add ...

Selected

all currently selected tracks and busses

Rec-enabled

all currently record-enabled tracks

Soloed

all currently soloed tracks and busses

Collect Group

moves all the member tracks so that they are together in the editor window

Remove Group

removes the group (and only the group, not its members).

Add New Subgroup Bus

creates a bus (giving it the name of the group) and connects the output of each member to the new bus.

Add New Aux Bus

adds a bus and gives each member a send to that bus. There are two options for this, specifying whether the sends should be placed pre- or post-fader.

Fit to Window

will zoom the member tracks so that they fill the editor window.

Enable All Groups

makes all group active, including any hidden groups.

Disable All Groups

makes all groups inactive, including any hidden groups.

 

Managing Plugin Presets

All plugin editors, whether they are created by Ardour or by the plugin, have a common set of controls at the top of their window. These include 4 controls for managing plugin presets.

What is a Plugin preset?

A preset for a plugin is simply a saved set of values for all of a plugin's parameters. If you load a preset, you are restoring all the parameters within that plugin to the values stored in the preset. This is an easy, fast way to manage your preferred settings for particular plugins.

The Preset Selector

The preset selector is a regular selector that can be clicked to display a list of all known presets for this plugin. This will include presets that you have created yourself, and for some plugin formats, presets that come with the plugin itself.

To load a new preset

Click on the preset selector to popup a menu showing the names of all available presets. Click on the name of the preset you wish to load. The preset will be loaded - you may see various controls in the plugin editor change to reflect the new value of some or all parameters.

Creating Presets

To save the current plugin settings as a new preset, click on the "Add" button at the top of the window. A dialog will appear to ask for the name of the preset. Enter the desired name, and then click the "OK" button in the dialog. The preset selector will now show the name you have just entered.

Saving a Preset

If you wish to modify the settings in an existing preset, use the preset selector to load the preset. Then adjust the settings as you wish. When done, click the "Save" button and the new values will be stored, overwriting the previous version of this preset.

To delete a preset

To delete an existing preset, use the preset selector to load the preset. Click the "Delete" button, and the preset will be removed. The preset selector will be blank, showing that no preset is currently loaded (although the settings will stay as they were).

The Plugin Manager

The Processor Box

A ‘processor’ is a thing which treats the signal in some way. Ardour provides several builtin processors, such as the "fader" processor which controls the gain (volume) of a track or bus. Processors can also be plugins used for effects or as instruments, as well as sends/inserts which are used to change signal routing. The arrangement of processors is arbitrary, and there is no limit to how many there can be.

The main box in the top half of a mixer strip shows the processor list. Processors are shown as coloured rectangles, with a small ‘LED’ beside them; this indicates whether or not the plugin is enabled, and can be clicked to enable or disable a processor. The colour of the processor depends on its location in the sequence; processors that occur before the fader are coloured in red, and those after are coloured green (in the default theme).

The processor box will always contain a blue processor called ‘Fader’. This indicates where in the processor chain the main volume fader is located — this is the fader shown in the lower half of the strip.

To Reorder (Move) Processors

Processors can be re-ordered using drag-and-drop. Dragging a processor allows it to be moved around within the chain, or copied to another processor list on another track or bus.

To Enable/Disable a Processor

To the left of the name of each processor is a small LED symbol; if this is lit-up, the processor is active. Clicking on it will deactivate the processor. It will still pass audio or MIDI signals, but they will not be affected.

Adding Processors

Finally, processors can be added to or removed from the chain. Right-clicking the processor list does three things:

• A gap is opened up to indicate the location of the click. The gap shows where any new processors will be inserted.
• The processor under the click is selected.
• A menu is presented giving options of what to do.

From the menu, some new processors can be inserted.

Removing Processors

Context-click on the processor you want to remove.

Windows VST Support

Thanks to the combined work of Torben Hohn, Kjetil Mattheusen, Paul Davis and a few other developers, it is possible to use Windows VST plugins (that is, plugins in VST format built and distributed for the Windows platforms) on Ardour running on Linux. (Note: there is no VST support of any kind on OS X).

However, doing so has three substantial downsides:

• It requires a special build of Ardour that is fundamentally very different from normal builds.
• Support is reliant on Wine, a Windows "emulator".
• As usual with plugins, crashes in the plugin will crash Ardour. And crashes in Windows VST plugins are more likely when used in this way.

The dependence on Wine makes it almost impossible for the Ardour project to support this feature. Wine's functionality generally improves over time, but any given release of Wine may behave worse with some or all Windows VST plugins. It may even just crash Ardour completely.

Step back and think about what "using Windows VSTs" really means: taking bits of software written with only one idea in mind - running on the Windows platform - and then trying to use them on an entirely different platform. It is a bit of a miracle (largely thanks to the incredible work done by the Wine project) that it works at all. But is this the basis of a stable, reliable DAW for a non-Windows platform? Getting Ardour on Linux to pretend that its really a Windows application running on Windows?

We understand that there are many outstanding plugins available as Windows VSTs and that in many cases, no equivalent is available for Ardour's Linux-based users. If your workflow is so dependent on those plugins, then remain on Windows (or potentially consider using an actual Windows VST host running inside of Wine). If you can make the effort, you will get a better environment by using a normal build of Ardour and exploring the world of plugins built to run on Linux natively. This covers LADSPA, LV2 and Linux VST formats, and even some outstanding proprietary plugins such as those from LinuxDSP and Loomer.

Working with Ardour-built Plugin Editors

If a plugins does not have its own editor/GUI, Ardour will construct one from a small set of common control elements. Ardour will do this even for plugins that have their own, if you disable Edit > Preferences > GUI > Use Plugins' own interface instead of Ardour's

To view a plugin editor, double-click on the plugin within the processor box. A new window will appear showing the editor/GUI for the plugin.

Adjusting parameter sliders

Resetting a value to its default

Shift-click on the controller.

Automation Controls

Importing versus Embedding

Importing versus Embedding

Importing and embedding are two different methods of using existing audio files on your computer (or network file system) within a session. They differ in one key aspect:

Importing

An existing media file is copied to the session's audio folder, and if necessary is converted into the session's native format.

For audio files, you can control the choice of this format (eg. WAVE or Broadcast WAVE). Audio files will also be converted to the session sample rate if necessary, which can take several minutes for larger files.

MIDI files will already be in SMF format, and are simply copied into the session's MIDI folder.

Embedding

An existing media file is used as a the source for a region, but is not copied or modified in any way.

You can choose to import or embed the files in your session selecting or de-selecting the "Copy file to session" option in the Import dialog window.

the file will be imported in the audio/MIDI folder of your session

the file won't be copied.

If it doesn't work you can uncheck Preferences > Misc > Session Management > Always copy imported files.

Searching and Importing From Freesound

Searching and Importing From Freesound

http://www.freesound.org is an online repository of searchable sound files. The “Search Freesound” of the Import dialog tab allows you to search the Freesound database, download & audition files from within the Import dialog.

Tags: enter the “tags” that you would like to search. You may enter multiple search terms separated by spaces. For example “drums 120bpm” will search for files that are tagged “drums” OR “120bpm”.

Sort: Choosing one of the sort options will cause Freesound to order the files before returning the list of available files. This can save time if you know (for example) the sound you need is very short.

Search: Click this button to initiate the search. Freesound will begin returning pages of information, with 20 items per page. You may click “Stop” to stop downloading.

The file list: Click on a file to download it from Freesound. Double-click the file to auto-play it in the auditioner.

Files imported with Freesound will automatically include any Tags that are associated with the file, and these tages will be included in a search when you use the “Search Tags” tab.

Searching for Files Using Tags

Searching for Files Using Tags

A "tag" is bit of information, or metadata, that is associated with a data file. Specifically, tags are keywords or terms that you feel have some relevance to a particular soundfile. Ardour can store these tags in a searchable database so that you can quickly search for sounds based on the tags that you have assigned to them. For example you can assign the term "120bpm" to a sound, and then when you search for this tag, the file will appear in the search list. Tags are independent of the filename or anything else about the file. Tags, and the file paths that they are associated with, are stored in a file called "sfdb" in your Ardour user folder.

Supported File Formats

Supported File Formats

The list of audio file formats that Ardour can import/embed is quite long. It is based on the functionality offered by libsndfile, an excellent and widely used software library by Australian programmer Erik de Castro Lopo. As libsndfile's capabilities expand, so will Ardour's abilities to import (and export) new formats. Ardour supports all common audio file formats, including WAV, AIFF, AIFC, CAF, W64 and BWF. with all typical sample formats (8,16,24,32 bit integer, floating point, and more).

You can find a full list of libsndfile's supported formats here.

For MIDI import, Ardour will read any Standard MIDI Format (SMF) file.

The Import Dialog

The Import Dialog

The Soundfile Information Box

Previewing Files Before Import

Importing Files as Tracks or Regions

Importing versus Embedding

Monitoring

An Introduction to Monitoring

When recording, it is important to hear yourself, and to hear any pre-recorded tracks that you are performing with.

Audio recorders typically have the ability to "monitor" (i.e. listen to) the tracks that are armed for recording, while playing back the tracks that aren't. In the days of analog tape recording, this was performed with relays and other analog audio switching devices. Digital recorders have the same feature, but may impart some "latency" (delay) between the time you make a noise and the time that you hear it come back from the recorder.

The latency of any conversion from analog to digital and back to analog is about 1.5-2 milliseconds. Despite common listening conditions creating 3 millisecond delays, some musicians claim that even the basic A/D/A conversion time is objectionable. However it is commonly believed that a latency below 5 milliseconds is suitable for a professional recording setup. Because 2 milliseconds have already been used in the A/D/A process, you must use extremely low "buffer sizes" in your workstation I/O setup to keep the overall latency below 5ms. Not all computer audio systems are able to work reliably at such low buffer sizes.

For this reason it is sometimes best to use an external device to monitor yourself while recording to digital medium. Many professional studios use a mixing console for this feature. Many computer I/O devices have an "monitoring" function built-in (although this is typically only for 1 or 2 channels). In either case, the monitoring hardware may be digital or analog. And in the digital case you will still have the A-D-A conversion latency of 1-2ms.

Different ways of monitoring

There are three basic ways in which monitoring may be approached:

External Monitoring

With this approach, Ardour plays no role in monitoring at all. Perhaps the recording set-up has an external mixer which can be used to set up monitor mixes, or perhaps the sound-card being used has some ‘listen to the input’-style feature. This approach often has the advantage of zero or near-zero latency. On the other hand it requires external hardware, and the monitoring settings are not saved with the session.

JACK-based hardware Monitoring

Some sound cards have the ability to mix signals from their inputs to their outputs with zero- or low-latency. Furthermore, on some cards these features can be controlled by JACK. This is a nice arrangement, if the sound card supports it, as it combines the convenience of having the monitoring controlled by Ardour with the low latency operation of doing it externally.

Software Monitoring

With this approach all monitoring is performed by Ardour; it makes track inputs available at track outputs, under the influence of various controls. This approach will almost always have more routing flexibility than JACK-based monitoring. The disadvantage is that there will be a latency between the input and the output which will depend mainly on the JACK buffer size that is being used.

Setting up Monitoring

There are three main settings which affect how monitoring is performed. The first is Edit > Preferences > Audio > Record monitoring handled by. There are two or three options here, depending on the capabilities of your hardware:

The other two settings are more complex; one is ‘Tape machine mode’, in the same dialogue, and the other is ‘Monitoring automatically follows transport state (‘auto-input’)’ setting in Session Properties.

Monitoring is also somewhat dependent on the state of the track's record-enable button, the session record enable button, and whether or not the transport is rolling.

Monitoring in software or hardware monitoring modes

If Ardour is set to ‘external monitoring’, the explanation of Ardour's monitoring behaviour is simple: it does not do any. In the other two modes, things are more complex.

Monitoring in non-tape-machine mode

This section describes what happens when Ardour is not set to tape-machine mode.

Consider first the case when a track is record-enabled. In this situation, it will always monitor the live input unless the session is not record-enabled, auto-input is enabled, and the transport is rolling.

When a track is not record-enabled, the track will play back its contents from disc unless the transport is stopped and auto-input is enabled. In this case, the track monitors its live input.

Monitoring in tape-machine mode

In tape-machine mode, things are slightly simpler; when a track is record-enabled, its behaviour is the same as in non-tape-machine mode: it will always monitor the live input unless the session is not record-enabled, auto-input is enabled, and the transport is rolling.

When a track is not record-enabled, however, the track will always just play back its contents from disk; the live input will never be monitored.

Track Recording Modes

"Recording mode" is a per-track property (audio tracks only) that affects the way that recording new material on top of existing material ("overdubbing") operates in that track. Ardour offers 3 different recording modes:

Normal

overdubs write to new files, new regions are layered on top of existing regions (with or without crossfades)

Tape mode

overdubs destructively write to an existing file, single region per track (fixed crossfades at every punch)

Non-Layered mode

overdubs write to new audio files, new regions are created but if they overlap with existing regions, the existing regions are trimmed so that there no overlaps

To change the recording mode of a track, right click on its track header to get the context menu:

Below is a screenshot that shows the subtly different results of an overdub in normal and non-layered mode. Both tracks were created using identical audio data.

The upper track is in normal mode, and the overdub (the middle shorter region, selected) has created a new region which if you look carefully has been layered on top of the the existing (longer) region.

The lower track is in non-layered mode, and rather than overlay the overdub region, it split the existing region and inserted the new one in between.

Non-layered mode is extremely useful when combined with push/pull trimming.

Aux Sends

What is an Aux

Using auxes involves two distinct components of Ardour's mixer. One is an aux bus, which is just a normal Ardour bus that has no inputs arriving from the outside world. The other is an aux send, which is a secondary signal routing out of a track (or bus) that delivers the signal it receives to a separate aux bus. The output of the aux bus may be delivered to entirely separate hardware outputs (e.g. for headphone or monitor wedge mixes), or returned to the main mix after some common FX are applied to the signal on the bus.

Common uses for aux sends include:

• Applying real time FX (either with plugins or external FX) to a submix
• Creating headphone or monitor wedge mixes for performers to listen to
• Consolidating volume control of a submix under a single fader (though there are other ways to do this)

It may be useful to compare and contrast the use of aux sends with subgrouping.

Adding a new aux bus

Choose Session > Add New Track or Bus. In the New Track & Bus dialog, select "Busses" in the Track/Bus selector at the upper right.

Adding a send to an aux bus

Context-click on the processor box for the track you want to send to the bus, and choose New Aux Send. From the submenu, choose the bus you want to send to. A send will be added (and will be visible in the processor box). Note that the submenu may be empty if there are no aux busses.

Pre-fader and Post-fader Aux Sends

Depending on whether you context-click above or below the fader in the processor box, the new aux send can be placed before or after the fader in the channel strip. Post-fader aux sends are typically used when using an aux for shared signal processing (FX), so that the adjusting the main fader on a channel alters how much signal goes to the FX bus. Aux sends are placed pre-fader so that the level sent to the bus is controlled only by the send, not the main fader - this is typical when constructing headphone/monitor wedge mixes.

Adding a new aux bus and sending a Track Group to it

You can add aux sends to all members of a group and connect them to a new aux bus with a single click. After creating the track group (and adding tracks to it), context-click on the group tab and choose either Add New Aux Bus (pre-fader) or Add New Aux Bus (post-fader). A new aux bus will be created, and a new aux send added to every member of the track group that connects to the new aux bus.

Altering Send Levels

You can alter the amount of the signal received by a send that it delivers to the bus it connects to. There are two approaches to this:

Use the Send Fader

Every send has a small horizontal fader that can be adjusted in the usual way. It is not very big and so this can be a little unsatisfactory if you want very fine control over the send level.

Mapping the Main Fader

Double-clicking on the send in the processor box will allow you to use the "big" fader of the mixer strip to control the send. The visual appearance of the mixer strip will change to reflect this. Double-click the send again to revert back to normal function for the strip.

Map Aux Sends To Main Faders

Pressing the button marked "Aux Sends" on a aux bus will alter the channel strip for every track/bus that feeds the aux bus. Many aspects of the strip will become insensitive and/or change their visual appearance. More importantly, the main fader of the affected channel strips will now control the send level and not the track gain. This gives a larger, more configurable control to alter the level. Click the "Aux Sends" button of the aux bus again to revert the channel strips to their normal use.

Bypassing Sends

Clicking on the small "led" in the send display in the processor box of the channel strip will enable/disable the send. When disabled, only silence will be delivered by this track to the aux bus. When enabled, the signal arriving at the send will be delivered to the aux bus.

Send Panning

In the current version of Ardour, sends share the same panning as the main outs of a track. This is scheduled to change in the future.

Comparing Aux Sends and Subgroups

Auxes and Subgroups do share a common concept - they both provide a way for 1 or more tracks (or busses) to send their signal to a single bus so that common signal processing can be applied to the mix of their signals.

An aux send leaves the existing signal routing to the main mix inplace, and is typically used to create a separate mix to send to (for example) monitors or headphones (for performer monitor mixes).

Subgroups remove the original signal routing to the main mix, but create a new one that delivers the output of the subgroup bus to the main mix instead.

The following two diagrams compares the signal flow when using subgroups and when using aux sends:

Subgroup signal routing

Aux send signal routing

External Sends

An external send is a way to send the signal from within a channel strip to an external application or piece of hardware. By itself, an external send has no effect whatsoever on the audio signals within Ardour - it is a one-way signal routing that leaves all existing signal processing just as it was.

Most people will not have much use for this, but it can be useful if you want to experiment with external applications or hardware signal processing applications.

Adding an External Send

Context-click on the processor box in a channel strip and choose Add new External Send. A dialog will appear containing the standard Ardour patchbay to allow you to connect the send to the desired destination. After you are done (or immediately, if you don't know where you want to send to at this point), close the window.

The send will appear in the processor box. Depending on whether you context-clicked above or below the fader, it will either before or after the fader.

Removing an External Send

You can remove an external send in several ways:

• Shift-right-click the send in the processor box
• Position the pointer over the send and press the Delete key
• Position the pointer over the send and press x
• Context-click the send and choose either Cut or Delete

Altering Send Levels

Just below the send in the processor box is a small fader that can be used like all other faders in Ardour to control the gain applied to the signal delivered by the send. Drag it to alter the level, Shift-click to restore to unity (0dB) gain.

Bypassing Sends

Click the small "led" in the send display within the processor box to turn it on and off. When turned off, silence will be delivered to the send. When turned on, the signal within the channel strip will be delivered.

Editing Send Routing

Double-clicking or Edit-clicking on the send in the processor box will redisplay the patchbay dialog that allows you full control over the routing of the send.

Inserts

Returns

Subgrouping

Subgrouping (sometimes known as "Grouping" or "Audio Grouping") is a way to collect related signals together, before they progress to the main mix.

When to use subgrouping

blah blah blah

To create a subgroup from an existing Track/Bus group

Context-click on the relevant group tab, and choose Add new subgroup bus. A new bus will be created and every member of the track group will have its outputs disconnected from other destinations and then connected to the new bus inputs. The bus outputs will feed the master bus unless you have selected manual connections for the session. Ths bus will be named based on the track group name,

To create a subgroup from a set of Tracks and Busses

Put them in a Track Group first, then follow the steps above.

Arbitrary (manual) subgrouping

The steps taken by the options above can all be done by hand if your needs are too specialized:

1. Add a new bus, which we will call the "subgroup bus"
2. For each track you want to feed the subgroup bus, connect its outputs to the inputs of the subgroup bus and disconnect them from the any other destinations. You can do this in the global audio patchbay or a track by track basis via the output button of each track's channel strip.

To remove a subgroup (bus)

Context click on the track group tab, and select Remove subgroup bus. You can also simply delete the bus itself. Note that this operation will not restore signal routing to the way it was before the addition of the subgroup bus - tracks that had been subgrouped will be left with their main outputs disconncted; you will need to manually connect them again in order to be able to hear the signal from their main outputs.

The Patchbay

The patchbay is the main way to make connections to, from and within Ardour's mixer.

Notable exceptions are aux sends and connections to the monitor bus (if you are using one): these cannot be controlled from a patchbay, and are basically not under manual control at all.

The patchbay presents two groups of ports; one set of sources (which produce data), and one of destinations (which consume data). Depending on the relative number of each, the sources will be placed on the left or the top of the dialogue, and the destinations on the right or the bottom. Thus, in general, signal flow is from top or left to right or bottom.

Both sources and destinations are divided up into groups, with each group being given a tab. Click on the appropriate tab to show the ports in each group (‘Ardour Busses’, ‘Ardour Tracks’ and so on).

The groups that are used are as follows:

Hardware

ports which are connected to a physical piece of hardware (a sound card or MIDI interface).

Ardour Busses

ports belonging to busses.

Ardour Tracks

ports belonging to tracks.

Ardour Misc

other ports that do not fit into the previous two categories; for example, the ports on which the metronome click is output, and MIDI ports for things like control surfaces and timecode.

Other

If you have other JACK clients running, their ports will be found here. If there are no such ports, the tab will not exist (on one or both axes of the grid).

The main body of the patchbay is a grid. Within this grid, green dots represent connections, and you can click in any of the squares to make or break connections. You can also click and drag to draw a line of connections, which is sometimes useful for making many connections at once.

In the example patchbay shown above we can note various things. We are using the ‘Ardour Tracks’ sources tab, so we see the output ports of the three tracks in our session: Fred, Jim and Foo. Our destinations are from the ‘Ardour Busses’ tab, so we have the inputs of a session bus, Sheila, and the inputs of the master bus. Fred and Jim have stereo outputs, so have L and R connections. Foo is a MIDI track, so it only has one connection, and its squares in the grid are coloured light grey to indicate that no connection can be made between Foo (a MIDI output) and our busses (which are all audio-input).

The green dots in the example show that both Foo and Bar are connected to the master bus, left to left and right to right.

Variants on the Patchbay

Slightly different versions of the patchbay are available from different places in Ardour. For a global view of all JACK audio connections, use the Audio Patchbay which can be opened from the Window menu, or by using Alt+P. A corresponding MIDI Connection Manager can be opened using Shift+Alt+P.

There is also a patchbay available when connecting individual tracks; clicking on the input or output buttons of a mixer strip will open a connection manager which has the corresponding track input or output as the only destination or source, with all other ports available for connection to it.

Other patchbay features

Context-clicking on a port name in the connection manager opens a menu which provides a few handy options:

Add audio port and Add MIDI port

these options add audio or MIDI ports to the thing that you opened the menu over, if this is possible. In this way, for example, tracks and busses can be extended to have more inputs or outputs.

Remove

removes the given port, if possible.

Disconnect all from…

disconnects everything from the given port.

Rescan

Ardour will try to keep abreast of any changes to the JACK ports on your system, and reflect them in any connection managers which are open. If for some reason this fails, choosing Rescan will re-scan the list of ports and update the manager.

Show individual ports

if you have a session which has lots of multi-channel tracks or busses, it may be an unnecessary detail that you have to connect left to left and right to right every time you make a connection. This obviously gets worse with higher channel counts (such as for 5.1 or ambisonics). To make life easier with such sessions, you can untick Show individual ports. After that, the channels of tracks and busses will be hidden, and any green dots you add in the connection manager will automatically connect each channel of the source to the corresponding channel of the destination (left to left, right to right and so on). In this mode, a half-circle in the connection grid indicates that some (but not all) of the source's ports are connected to the destination.

Flip

this will flip the visible ports on the vertical axis with those on the horizontal. If, for example, the top of the connection manager is showing ‘Ardour Busses’ and the right is showing ‘Hardware’, flip will swap the view to the opposite so that the top of the manager displays ‘Hardware’ and the right ‘Ardour Busses’. You can also flip by pressing f. Note that if there are no matching tabs on both axes, flipping will be impossible.

 

The Role of JACK

The Edit Point

Editing operations in a DAW like Ardour can be broken down according to how many points on the timeline are required to carry the operation out. Splitting a region for example, requires just one position on the timeline (the one where the split will happen). Cutting out a time range requires two positions, one for the start of the cut and one for the end.

In Ardour the edit point is the location where most single-point editing operations take place. It can be defined as one of the 3 possibilities:

• the playhead
• the position of the pointer (mouse or touch)
• the selected marker

The default edit point is the location of the pointer.

There are 2 keybindings available to cycle through the edit point options; the most common workflow tends to involve just switching back and forth between edit point = playhead and edit point = mouse (default `). Another binding ^ will cycle through all three choices (including the selected marker). You can also switch the edit point using a combo-selector just right of the snap/grid unit selector.

The Implict Range

In addition to explicit range selections made with the Range tool, Ardour also provides an implicit edit range. This edit range can be very useful if you want to edit by ear, rather than by mouse. If there is no regions selected, and no explicit range selection, then any editing operations that require a range (such as separate) will use the implicit edit range.

The implicit range is the area between the current edit point and some other position. In most cases it is either:

• The area between the mouse and the playhead OR
• The area between a selected marker and the mouse or playhead

Which of these is true depends on which edit point setting you are using (Mouse, Playhead or Marker) and whether
there is a selected marker at that time.

Selecting Regions

Many editing operations in Ardour require you to first select one or more regions that you want to change in some way. You can select a single region, or multiple regions, including regions in different tracks. When you select a region, it will appear in a darker color than unselected regions.

Note that if a track is a member of a group that is active and has the "Select" property enabled, then Ardour will attempt to match whatever selections you make in one track across every other track of the group. See Selection Equivalence for more information on precisely how selections will be propagated to other tracks.

Region Selection and Track Selection

Please read Region & Track Selection for more information on how selecting regions and selecting tracks interact.

To select a region

Click on the region. If smart editing is enabled, click in the lower half of the region.

To deselect a region

click the region. If smart editing is enabled, click in the lower half of the region.

Note that click simply toggles the selected status of an object, so it can be used to select unselected regions too

To select multiple regions in the same track

Do one of the following:

• click each region
• drag from a point in "empty space" in track before the first region you wish to select to a point within or after the last region you wish to select. You can use drag to do this multiple times
• if the regions are all adjacent to one another, click the first region you wish to select, then Shift-click the last region you wish to select

To select multiple regions in different tracks

click or Shift-click the regions you wish to select.

To select a region from the region list

Click the name of the region in the region list. Note that this will do nothing for whole-file regions, since they do not exist anywhere in a playlist or track.

To select all regions in a track

Context-click the track, and in the context menu, navigate to Select > Select All In Track

See the Track Context Menu for more information on other per-track selection operations that are available.

What Regions Are Affected?

What Regions Are Affected?

This section explains the rules used to decide what regions are affected by editing operations. You don't really have to understand them - hopefully things will Just Work - but it may be useful to understand the rules some of the time.

Ardour divides operations up into those that operate on a single point in time (Split being the obvious example) and those that operate on two points (which can also be considered to be a range of sorts), Separate is a good example of this.

Most operations will operate on the currently selected region(s), but if no regions are selected, the region that the mouse is in will be used instead. Single-point operations will generally pick a set of regions to use based on the following rules:

1. If the edit point is `mouse':
   • if the mouse is over a selected region, or no region, use all selected regions.
   • if the mouse is over an unselected region, use just that region.
2. For all other edit points
   • use the selected regions and those that are both under the edit position
     and on a selected track, or on a track which is in the same active edit-enabled route group
     as a selected region.

The rationale here for the two different rules is that the mouse edit point is special in that its position indicates both a time and a track; the other edit points (Playhead,Marker) indicates only a time.

Snapping To The Grid

Snapping To The Grid

Ardour's editor utilizes a grid to assist in the placement of regions on the timeline, or with editing functions that need to happen on a specific time. With these buttons you can choose if you want the cursor and various objects to snap to this grid, and how you want the snapping to act. You can also modify what units the grid measures as well to fit your needs.

With grid mode set to "No Grid", all kind of objects can be moved freely along the timeline. "Grid" will restrict the positions to certain grid units (i.e. beats), "Magnetic" will snap to grid units, but it is still possible to move objects to other places.

Syncing Regions to the Grid

By default a region's beginning will snap to points along the timeline, but you can change this behaviour by setting a sync point in the region. Select the region(s) and press v . This will set the sync point to your edit point.

Grid Units

The selector next to the grid mode selector defines the size of the grid elements. The most useful settings are "Bars" and "Beats", but you can set your grid to several different units:

CD Frames

a CD Frame is 1/75th of a second. Snapping to CD Frames can be used to avoid issues with CD track lengths

Timecode Frames/Seconds/Minutes

These duration depend on the timecode settings for the session

Seconds/Minutes

These are absolute time units, unaffected by sample rate or timecode settings

Beats/N

Sets the grid to units of 1/N beats, where N can be 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. The duration of a grid unit will depend on the tempo and meter in effect at that point in the timeline.

Beats

Sets the grid to whole beats. The duration of a grid unit will depend on the tempo and meter in effect at that point in the timeline.

Bars

Sets the grid to whole bars. The duration of a grid unit will depend on the tempo and meter in effect at that point in the timeline.

Markers

Snaps positions to the nearest marker

Region Starts

Snaps positions to the nearest region start (see below)

Region Ends

Snaps positions to the nearest region end

Region Syncs

Snaps positions to the nearest region sync point

Region Bounds

Snaps positions to the nearest region start or end

To use Region starts/ends/syncs/bounds as snap choices, you must have either (a) NO tracks selected, which means that Ardour will snap to regions on any track, or (b) several tracks selected, and Ardour will only snap to regions on those selected tracks. If you are moving items on a track, and only the current track is selected, then you will only be able to snap to other regions on the same track. This means that enabling Edit > Preferences > Editor > Link Selections of Regions and Tracks will make the "Region" grid units unusable. Avoid the use of this option if you are going to use any of the Region grid units.

Snap Modes

Ardour supports three different types of snapping to the grid:

No Grid

disables the grid. All objects can be moved freely in this mode.

Grid

activates normal snapping, all positions of objects are restricted to points of the grid. (See Grid Units on how to change these points) If you try to move an object in "Grid"-mode, it will not change its position until you move the mouse far enough for the object to reach the next grid point. New objects will always be created at grid points, too.

Magnetic

is a less strict type of snapping. Objects can still be moved to any position, but positions close to grid points will snap to the grid point. In order to move an object very close to a grid point, it may be necessary to zoom in to prevent snapping to that point.

 

Common Region Editing Operations

Common Region Editing Operations

This section covers a set of region editing operations that you will likely use again and again while working on a session. Depending on your working habits (and experience of other DAWs) some of them will be critical while others may be more rarely used.

All of these operations can be carried out from the keyboard. Default keybindings can be found in the list. Equivalent operations can be done with mouse in most cases.

You may want to review your understanding of the edit point/range and which regions will be affected by region operations.

Spot (Align)

move selected regions to the edit point

Split

split selected regions at the edit point

Trim Start

Adjust the start of selected regions to the edit point (or as close as possible)

Trim End

Adjust the end of selected regions to the edit point (or as close as possible)

Duplicate

Make a copy of each selected region and position it immediately after the original

Crop

Truncate selected regions to the edit range

Separate

Split selected regions at both ends of the edit range

Set Fade In

Adjust selected audio regions' fade in to end at the edit point

Set Fade Out

Adjust selected audio regions' fade out to end at the edit point

Toggle Fade In

Turn selected audio regions' fade in on or off

Toggle Fade Out

Turn selected audio regions' fade out on or off

Play Region

Play session from the start of the earliest selected region

Zoom To Region

Zoom horizontally so that the selected regions span the editor track view

Set Sync Point

Set the sync point of all selected regions to the edit point

Insert

Inserts the currently selected regions in the Region List at the edit point

 

Changing Region Lengths

Changing Region Lengths

Changing the length of a region is a very common editing operation, often known as "trimming". There are several ways to accomplish this with Ardour, and some very useful specialized trimming operations.

Drag-Trimming with the mouse

In object mode, move the pointer near the beginning or end of the region. The cursor will change to indicate that trimming is possible, and you then Left-click-and-drag the edge of the region.

Trimming will obey Snap settings.

Click Trimming with the mouse

Left-click in the colored bar at the bottom of a region. If you are nearer to the start of a region, this will trim the start time to the position of the pointer. If you are nearer to the end of a region, it will trim the end time.

Keyboard bindings for Trimming

There are several commands for region trimming. Some use the edit point to determine where to trim to. Some are not bound to any keys by default (but could be via the Keybindings Editor).

Region/trim-front j

trim selected region(s) start to edit point

Region/trim-end k

trim selected region(s) end to edit point

Trim to Next/Previous Region

Sometimes you just want to extend the start or end of region so that it reaches the end or start of an adjacent region. There is now an operation accessible from the region context menu, under Edit >Trim > Trim to Next or Edit > Trim > Trim to Previous. This will extend the selected regions so they directly adjoin their neighbours, unless their source files are not long enough, in which case they will be extended to the maximum possible. Trim to Next will extend the end of the selected regions to the start of the next region; Trim to Previous will extend the start of the selected regions to the end of the previous region.

Region/trim-to-previous-region j

trim the start of selected region(s) to the end of the previous region

Region/trim-to-next-region k

trim the end of selected region(s) to the start of the following region

Other Possible Commands for Trimming

These are not bound to any keys by default, but could be via the Keybindings Editor. They can also be sent via OSC or other control protocols.

Region/trim-region-to-loop

Trim region to match the current loop range

Region/trim-region-to-punch

Trim region to match the current punch range

 

Copying Regions

To Copy A Region

To copy a region, make sure you are in object mouse mode. Move the mouse pointer into the region Left-click and drag. A new region is created and will follow the mouse pointer as it moves. See "moving Regions" for more details on moving the copied region around.

Copying more than one region

To copy multiple regions, select them before copying. Then click+drag on one of the selected regions. All the regions will be copied and as they move, the will keep their positions relative to each other.

Fixed-time copying

If you want to copy region(s) to other track(s) but keep the copies at the exact position on the timeline as the originals, simply use Middle-click-drag instead.

Moving Regions

Moving and Copying Regions

Moving and copying regions may be affected by the current edit mode. Ardour has the following edit modes:

Slide

Regions can be freely moved, and overlaps will be created when necessary

Lock

No region motion is possible at all

Splice

Regions can be moved freely, but Ardour will close all gaps between regions after any movement has occured

The edit mode is set via a combo selector at the left of the editing toolbar.

If "Snap To Grid" is enabled, then regions can only moved so that they align with locations determined by the current snap settings (beats, or seconds, or other region boundaries, etc). See Snapping To The Grid.

Separation

Separation

Stripping SiIence from Audio Regions

Stripping SiIence from Audio Regions

Selecting Edit > Strip Silence from the region context menu will detect silence (based on a user-chosen threshold in dBFS), split a region based on the boundaries of the silent segments, and remove the silence. You can also specify a minimum length for silence, which can useful when editing very percussive material and just needing to automatically trim the ends of a region. The dialog looks like this:

The edit will be carried out on all selected regions, allowing batch processing. You can also see in the screenshot how the main editor window is used to show silent segments and report the number and durations of the shortest segments.

Editing MIDI

Editing MIDI

Ardour's handling of MIDI editing is a bit different from most other DAWs and MIDI sequencers.

Key features of Ardour MIDI handling

• All editing is done in-place, in-window. There is no separate piano roll window or pane. Edit notes right where you see them.
• All MIDI I/O is done via JACK for sample accurate timing and maximal efficiency when communicating with external software synthesizers
• Every MIDI track has its own JACK MIDI port for input; it may have an arbitrary combination of audio and MIDI outputs, depending on the signal processing in the track; the full flexibility of JACK connectivity is present for MIDI just as it is for audio.
• Full automation for MIDI tracks, integrated with the handling of all MIDI CC data for each track
• Controllers (CC data) can be set to discrete or continuous modes (the latter will interpolate between control points and send additional data)
• Normal or Percussive mode for note data editing
• The "scroomer" (a combination scroll/zoom tool) for altering the zoom level and range of visible MIDI data

Notable Differences

• As mentioned above, all editing is done in-place
• Fader (volume) control currently operates on transmitted MIDI data, not by sending CC #7
• All note/data editing is per-region. There are no cross-region operations at this time
• By default, copying a MIDI region creates a "deep link" or "cloned copy" - both regions share the same data source, and edits to the contents of one will affect the other. To break this link, select MIDI > Unlink from other copies from the region context menu, after which the selected region(s) will have their own copies of only the data that they visually display on screen. You will not be able to trim the region back its "original" length after an Unlink operation, and the operation cannot be undone.

Muting and Soloing

Each track and bus has two buttons which have important implications for signal flow: mute and solo. The behaviour of these buttons is configurable in Ardour, so that they can behave in one of a few different ways to suit different studio set-ups.

Without a monitor bus

If you are using Ardour without a monitor bus, there is only one way in which mute and solo will work. Without a monitor bus:

• Mute on a track or bus will mute that track on the master bus, so that it will not be heard.
• Solo on a track or bus will solo that track or bus and mute all others except that soloing a bus will also solo any tracks or busses that feed that bus.

With a monitor bus

For setups with a monitor bus, you have more options, mostly governed by the setting of the ‘Solo controls are Listen controls’ option in the Solo / mute tab of ‘Ardour Preferences’.

With ‘Solo controls are Listen controls’ unticked, behaviour is almost exactly the same as the situation without a monitor bus. Mute and solo behave the same, and the monitor bus is fed from the master bus, so it sees the same thing.

With ‘Solo controls are Listen controls’ ticked, things change; the master and monitor busses behave differently. In this mode, solo controls are more properly called ‘listen’ controls, and Ardour's solo buttons will change their legend from ‘S’ to either ‘A’ or ‘P’ (we'll come to that shortly) to reflect this.

Now, without any mute or listen, the monitor bus remains fed by the master bus. Also:

• Mute will mute the track or bus, so that it will not be heard anywhere (neither on the master nor monitor busses), much as before.
• Listen will disconnect the monitor bus from the master bus, so that the monitor bus now only receives things that are ‘listened’. Listen will not perform any muting, and hence the master bus will not be affected by a listened track or bus.

There are further options with when solo controls are listen controls: the part of the track or bus from which the listen signal is obtained can be configured. Underneath the ‘Solo controls are Listen controls’ option in ‘Ardour Preferences’ is an option for ‘listen position’, which can be either After-Fade Listen (AFL) or Pre-Fade Listen (PFL). AFL, as its name suggests, obtains its signal from some point after the track or bus’ fader, and PFL from before it. The precise point to get the signal from can further be configured using the ‘PFL signals come from’ and ‘AFL signals come from’ options.

The solo-mute arrangement with a monitor bus is shown below:

Here we have a number of tracks or busses (in orange). Each one has an output which feeds the master bus. In addition, each has PFL and AFL outputs; we have a choice of which to use. PFL/AFL from each track or bus are mixed. Then, whenever anything is set to AFL/PFL, the monitor out becomes just those AFL/PFL feeds; the rest of the time, the monitor out is fed from the master bus.

In this scheme Solo has no effect other than to mute other non-soloed tracks; with solo (rather then listen), the monitor out is fed from the master bus.

Other solo options

There are a few other configuration options related to the behaviour of solo. They can be found in the Solo / Mute tab of Ardour Preferences dialogue.

Solo-in-place mute cut

When using ‘solo-in-place’ (SiP), in other words when soloed tracks are being listened to on the master bus, this fader specifies the gain that will be applied to other tracks in order to mute them. Setting this level to -∞dB will mean that other tracks will not be heard at all; setting to some higher value less than 0dB means that other non-soloed tracks will be heard, just reduced in volume compared to the soloed tracks. Using a value larger than -∞dB is sometimes called "Solo-In-Front" by other DAWs, because the listener has the sense that soloed material is "in front" of other material. In Ardour, this is not a distinct mode, but instead the mute cut control offers any level of "in-front-ness" that you might want to use.

Exclusive solo

If this is enabled, only one track or bus will ever be soloed at once; soloing track B while track A is currently soloed will un-solo track A before soloing track B.

Show solo muting

If this is enabled, the mute button of tracks and busses will be drawn outlined to indicate that the track or bus is muted because something else is soloed. This is enabled by default, and we recommend that you leave it that way unless you are extremely comfortable with Ardour's mute/solo behaviour

Soloing overrides muting

If this is enabled, a track or bus that is both soloed and muted will behave as if it is soloed.

Mute affects…

These options dictate whether muting the track will affect various routes out of the track; through the sends, through the control outputs (to the monitor bus) and to the main outputs.

Panning Control

Panning Control

Mnemonic Bindings for Linux

Mnemonic Bindings for Linux

A printable cheat-sheet with these bindings is available for downloading.

Transport & Recording Control

destroy last recording

Control+Delete

engage record

Shift+r

fast forward

Shift+→

loop play (the loop range)

l

rewind

Shift+←

set playhead position

p

start recording

Shift+space

stop (keep loop/range play)

Control+Alt+space

stop and destroy

Control+space

toggle auto play

5

toggle auto return

6

toggle click (metronome)

7

toggle playhead follows edits

Shift+f

toggle playhead tracking

Control+f

toggle roll

space

toggle track rec-enable

Shift+b

toggle track solo status

Alt+s

transition to reverse

Shift+↓

transition to roll

Shift+↑

Session & File Handling

add track(s) or bus(ses)

Control+Shift+n

export session

Win+e

import audio files

Control+i

open a new session

Control+n

open a recent session

Control+Shift+o

open an existing session

Control+o

quit

Control+q

save session

Control+s

snapshot session

Control+Shift+s

toggle sel. track MIDI input

Alt+i

Changing What's Visible

fit tracks vertically

f

move selected tracks down

Control+↓

move selected tracks up

Control+↑

scroll down (page)

PageDown

scroll down (step)

↓

scroll up (page)

PageUp

scroll up (step)

↑

toggle editor window mixer

Shift+e

toggle last 2 zoom states

Shift+z

zoom (x) to selected region(s)

Control+Alt+z

zoom (x+y) to selected region

Alt+z

zoom in

=

zoom out

-

Window Visibility

toggle locations dialog

Alt+l

focus on main clock

KP_Divide

maximise editor space

Control+Alt+f

rotate editor & mixer window

Alt+m

show rhythm ferret window

Alt+f

toggle big clock

Alt+b

toggle color manager

Alt+c

toggle editor window

Alt+e

toggle global audio patchbay

Alt+p

toggle global midi patchbay

Alt+Shift+p

toggle key bindings editor

Alt+k

toggle preferences dialog

Alt+o

toggle preferences dialog

Control+Shift+p

Editing with Edit Point

Most edit functions operate on a single "Edit Point". The edit point can be any of: playhead (default), the mouse or an active marker. The choice of Edit Point (by default) also sets the Zoom Focus.

EP to next region sync

;

EP to prev region sync

'

cycle to next grid snap mode

2

cycle to next zoom focus

1

insert from region list

i

insert time

Control+t

move EP to playhead

Alt+Return

next EP w/marker

Control+^

next EP w/o marker

`

trim back

k

trim front

j

trim region end to edit point

Shift+}

trim region start to edit point

Shift+{

trim region to end of prev region

Control+j

trim region to start of next region

Control+k

use next grid unit

3

use next grid unit

4

use next musical grid unit

Control+4

use previous grid unit

Control+3

Aligning with the Edit Point

Align operations move regions so that their start/end/sync point is at the edit point. "Relative" operations
just align the first region and moves other selected regions to maintain relative positioning.

align end(s)

Alt+a

align start(s)

Control+Win+a

align start(s) relative

Win+a

align sync points

Shift+a

align sync points (relative)

a

range end to next prev edge

Control+>

range end to next region edge

>

range start to next region edge

Control+<

range start to prev region edge

<

Edit Point Playback

play edit range

Alt+space

play from EP & return

Win+space

play selected region(s)

h

Region Operations

duplicate region (multi)

Shift+d

duplicate region (once)

Alt+d

export selected region(s)

Control+Win+e

increase region gain

^

move to original position

Alt+o

mute/unmute

Control+m

normalize

n

nudge backward

KP_Subtract

nudge forward

KP_Add

quantize MIDI notes

q

reduce region gain

&

reverse

Alt+r

set fade in length

/

set fade out length

\

set region sync point

v

split

s

toggle fade in active

Control+/

toggle fade out active

Control+\

transpose

Alt+t

Edit Range

There are only a few functions that refer to an "Edit Range". The current edit range is defined using combinations of the possible edit points: Playhead, Marker or Mouse.

copy

Control+c

cut

Control+x

delete

Delete

paste

Control+v

redo

Control+r

undo

Control+z

Selecting

all after playhead

Shift+Control+p

all before playhead

Control+p

all enclosed by edit range

Control+u

all present in edit range

u

convert edit range to range

F6

invert selection

Shift+i

select all after EP

Control+Shift+e

select all before EP

Control+e

select all in loop range

Control+l

select all in punch range

Control+d

select everything

Control+a

select next track/bus

Alt+↓

select previous track/bus

Alt+↑

Defining Loop, Punch Range and Tempo Changes

set loop range from edit range

]

set loop range from region(s)

Alt+]

set punch range from edit range

[

set punch range from region(s)

Alt+[

set tempo (1 bar) from edit range

0

set tempo (1 bar) from region(s)

9

 

Mnemonic Bindings for OS X

Mnemonic Bindings for OS X

A printable cheat sheet for these bindings is available for download.

Transport & Recording Control

destroy last recording

Cmd+Delete

engage record

Shift+r

fast forward

Shift+→

loop play (the loop range)

l

rewind

Shift+←

set playhead position

p

start recording

Shift+space

stop (keep loop/range play)

Cmd+Control+space

stop and destroy

Cmd+space

toggle auto play

5

toggle auto return

6

toggle click (metronome)

7

toggle playhead follows edits

Shift+f

toggle playhead tracking

Cmd+f

toggle roll

space

toggle track rec-enable

Shift+b

toggle track solo status

Control+s

transition to reverse

Shift+↓

transition to roll

Shift+↑

Session & File Handling

add track(s) or bus(ses)

Cmd+Shift+n

export session

Mod1+e

import audio files

Cmd+i

open a new session

Cmd+n

open a recent session

Cmd+Shift+o

open an existing session

Cmd+o

quit

Cmd+q

save session

Cmd+s

snapshot session

Cmd+Shift+s

toggle sel. track MIDI input

Control+i

Changing What's Visible

fit tracks vertically

f

move selected tracks down

Cmd+↓

move selected tracks up

Cmd+↑

scroll down (page)

PageDown

scroll down (step)

↓

scroll up (page)

PageUp

scroll up (step)

↑

toggle editor window mixer

Shift+e

toggle last 2 zoom states

Shift+z

zoom (x) to selected region(s)

Cmd+Control+z

zoom (x+y) to selected region

Control+z

zoom in

=

zoom out

-

Window Visibility

toggle locations dialog

Control+l

focus on main clock

KP_Divide

maximise editor space

Cmd+Control+f

rotate editor & mixer window

Control+m

show rhythm ferret window

Control+f

toggle big clock

Control+b

toggle color manager

Control+c

toggle editor window

Control+e

toggle global audio patchbay

Control+p

toggle global midi patchbay

Control+Shift+p

toggle key bindings editor

Control+k

toggle preferences dialog

Control+o

toggle preferences dialog

Cmd+Shift+p

Editing with Edit Point

Most edit functions operate on a single "Edit Point". The edit point can be any of: playhead (default), the mouse or an active marker. The choice of Edit Point (by default) also sets the Zoom Focus.

EP to next region sync

;

EP to prev region sync

'

cycle to next grid snap mode

2

cycle to next zoom focus

1

insert from region list

i

insert time

Cmd+t

move EP to playhead

Control+Return

next EP w/marker

Cmd+^

next EP w/o marker

`

trim back

k

trim front

j

trim region end to edit point

Shift+}

trim region start to edit point

Shift+{

trim region to end of prev region

Cmd+j

trim region to start of next region

Cmd+k

use next grid unit

3

use next grid unit

4

use next musical grid unit

Cmd+4

use previous grid unit

Cmd+3

Aligning with the Edit Point

Align operations move regions so that their start/end/sync point is at the edit point. "Relative" operations
just align the first region and moves other selected regions to maintain relative positioning.

align end(s)

Control+a

align start(s)

Cmd+Mod1+a

align start(s) relative

Mod1+a

align sync points

Shift+a

align sync points (relative)

a

range end to next prev edge

Cmd+>

range end to next region edge

>

range start to next region edge

Cmd+<

range start to prev region edge

<

Edit Point Playback

play edit range

Control+space

play from EP & return

Mod1+space

play selected region(s)

h

Region Operations

duplicate region (multi)

Shift+d

duplicate region (once)

Control+d

export selected region(s)

Cmd+Mod1+e

increase region gain

^

move to original position

Control+o

mute/unmute

Cmd+m

normalize

n

nudge backward

KP_Subtract

nudge forward

KP_Add

quantize MIDI notes

q

reduce region gain

&

reverse

Control+r

set fade in length

/

set fade out length

\

set region sync point

v

split

s

toggle fade in active

Cmd+/

toggle fade out active

Cmd+\

transpose

Control+t

Edit Range

There are only a few functions that refer to an "Edit Range". The current edit range is defined using combinations of the possible edit points: Playhead, Marker or Mouse.

copy

Cmd+c

cut

Cmd+x

delete

Delete

paste

Cmd+v

redo

Cmd+r

undo

Cmd+z

Selecting

all after playhead

Shift+Cmd+p

all before playhead

Cmd+p

all enclosed by edit range

Cmd+u

all present in edit range

u

convert edit range to range

F6

invert selection

Shift+i

select all after EP

Cmd+Shift+e

select all before EP

Cmd+e

select all in loop range

Cmd+l

select all in punch range

Cmd+d

select everything

Cmd+a

select next track/bus

Control+↓

select previous track/bus

Control+↑

Defining Loop, Punch Range and Tempo Changes

set loop range from edit range

]

set loop range from region(s)

Control+]

set punch range from edit range

[

set punch range from region(s)

Control+[

set tempo (1 bar) from edit range

0

set tempo (1 bar) from region(s)

9

 

Preferences Dialog

Preferences Dialog

Seession Properties Dialog

Session Properties Dialog

Controlling Ardour with OSC

Controlling Ardour with OSC

Ardour is probably one of the most OSC-controllable audio applications around, but as with all OSC-controllable apps, you can't do much without knowing what messages can be sent. This document describes the various categories of messages that Ardour understands. It is subject to change, particular the "Actions" part below, since this relates to the GTK GUI for Ardour rather than the backend.

Connecting to Ardour via OSC

OSC support is not enabled by default, but can be turned on via Edit > Preferences > User Interaction. Once enabled, Ardour will listen on port 3819 by default. This port number can be changed by editing $ARDOUR_CONFIG and adding this line within the <Config> section:

  <Option name="osc-port" value="YourChoiceHere"/>

Transport Control

/ardour/transport_stop

/ardour/transport_play

/ardour/set_transport_speed [transport_speed]

where [transport_speed] is a float rangin from -8 to 8.

/ardour/ffwd

/ardour/rewind

/ardour/goto_start

/ardour/goto_end

/ardour/add_marker

(adds marker to the current transport position)

/ardour/next_marker

/ardour/prev_marker

/ardour/locate [sample_pos] [with_roll]

where [sample_pos] is the target position and [with_roll] is a bool/integer (whether you want transport to be kept rolling or not).

/ardour/loop_toggle

Editing-related

/ardour/undo

/ardour/redo

/ardour/save_state

(this is regular Session _> Save operatio)

Recording control

/ardour/toggle_punch_in

/ardour/toggle_punch_out

/ardour/rec_enable_toggle

/ardour/toggle_all_rec_enables

(toggles all tracks recording state). !currently toggles on but not off for 2.0 branch.

Track specific operations

For each of the following, [remote_id] is the remote_id or the track

/ardour/routes/mute [remote_id] [mute_st]

where [mute_st] is a bool/int representing the desired mute state of the track

/ardour/routes/solo [remote_id] [solo_st]

where [solo_st] is a bool/int representing the desired solo state of the track

/ardour/routes/recenable [remote_id] [rec_st]

where [rec_st] is a bool/int representing the desired rec state of the track

/ardour/routes/gainabs [remote_id] [gain_abs]

where [gain_abs] is a float ranging from 0 to 2 (0 being -infinite, 1 being 0dB and 2 being +6dB).

/ardour/routes/gaindB [remote_id] [gain_db]

where [gain_db] is a float ranging from -400 to 6 representing the desired gain of the track in dB.

Menu actions

Every single menu item in Ardour's GUI is accessible via OSC. There is
a single common syntax to trigger the action as if it was selected
with the mouse (or keyboard):

/ardour/access_action [action_name]

The list below shows all available values of [action-name] as of
mid-March 2010 for Ardour 2.X. You can get the current list at any
time by running Ardour with the -b flag.

• Common/About
• Common/goto-editor
• Common/Quit
• Common/Save
• Common/toggle-editor-mixer-on-top
• Common/ToggleBigClock
• Common/ToggleColorManager
• Common/ToggleInspector
• Common/ToggleKeyEditor
• Common/ToggleLocations
• Common/ToggleMaximalEditor
• Common/ToggleOptionsEditor
• Editor/add-location-from-playhead
• Editor/addExistingAudioFiles
• Editor/align-regions-end
• Editor/align-regions-start
• Editor/align-regions-start-relative
• Editor/align-regions-sync
• Editor/align-regions-sync-relative
• Editor/audition-at-mouse
• Editor/Autoconnect
• Editor/boost-region-gain
• Editor/brush-at-mouse
• Editor/center-edit-cursor
• Editor/center-playhead
• Editor/crop
• Editor/Crossfades
• Editor/CrossfadesFull
• Editor/CrossfadesShort
• Editor/cut-region-gain
• Editor/cycle-edit-point
• Editor/cycle-edit-point-with-marker
• Editor/cycle-snap-choice
• Editor/cycle-snap-mode
• Editor/duplicate-region
• Editor/Edit
• Editor/edit-cursor-to-next-region-sync
• Editor/edit-cursor-to-previous-region-start
• Editor/edit-cursor-to-previous-region-sync
• Editor/edit-cursor-to-range-end
• Editor/edit-cursor-to-range-start
• Editor/edit-to-playhead
• Editor/EditCursorMovementOptions
• Editor/editor-copy
• Editor/editor-cut
• Editor/editor-delete
• Editor/editor-paste
• Editor/EditSelectRangeOptions
• Editor/EditSelectRegionOptions
• Editor/export-region
• Editor/extend-range-to-end-of-region
• Editor/extend-range-to-start-of-region
• Editor/finish-add-range
• Editor/finish-range
• Editor/fit-tracks
• Editor/goto-mark-1
• Editor/goto-mark-2
• Editor/goto-mark-3
• Editor/goto-mark-4
• Editor/goto-mark-5
• Editor/goto-mark-6
• Editor/goto-mark-7
• Editor/goto-mark-8
• Editor/goto-mark-9
• Editor/goto-visual-state-1
• Editor/goto-visual-state-2
• Editor/goto-visual-state-3
• Editor/goto-visual-state-4
• Editor/goto-visual-state-5
• Editor/goto-visual-state-6
• Editor/goto-visual-state-7
• Editor/goto-visual-state-8
• Editor/goto-visual-state-9
• Editor/goto-visual-state-10
• Editor/goto-visual-state-11
• Editor/goto-visual-state-12
• Editor/insert-region
• Editor/insert-time
• Editor/invert-selection
• Editor/jump-backward-to-mark
• Editor/jump-forward-to-mark
• Editor/LayerAddHigher
• Editor/Layering
• Editor/LayerLaterHigher
• Editor/LayerMoveAddHigher
• Editor/MeterFalloff
• Editor/MeterHold
• Editor/Monitoring
• Editor/move-selected-tracks-down
• Editor/move-selected-tracks-up
• Editor/multi-duplicate-region
• Editor/mute-unmute-region
• Editor/naturalize-region
• Editor/normalize-region
• Editor/nudge-backward
• Editor/nudge-forward
• Editor/nudge-next-backward
• Editor/nudge-next-forward
• Editor/nudge-playhead-backward
• Editor/nudge-playhead-forward
• Editor/pitch-[Shift]-region
• Editor/pitch-shift-region
• Editor/play-edit-range
• Editor/play-from-edit-point-and-return
• Editor/play-selected-regions
• Editor/playhead-backward-to-grid
• Editor/playhead-forward-to-grid
• Editor/playhead-to-edit
• Editor/playhead-to-next-region-boundary
• Editor/playhead-to-next-region-boundary-noselection
• Editor/playhead-to-next-region-sync
• Editor/playhead-to-next-region-sync
• Editor/playhead-to-previous-region-boundary
• Editor/playhead-to-previous-region-boundary-noselection
• Editor/playhead-to-previous-region-sync
• Editor/playhead-to-range-end
• Editor/playhead-to-range-start
• Editor/PullupMinus1
• Editor/PullupMinus4
• Editor/PullupMinus4Minus1
• Editor/PullupMinus4Plus1
• Editor/PullupNone
• Editor/PullupPlus1
• Editor/PullupPlus4
• Editor/PullupPlus4Minus1
• Editor/PullupPlus4Plus1
• Editor/redo
• Editor/RegionEditOps
• Editor/remove-last-capture
• Editor/reverse-region
• Editor/save-visual-state-1
• Editor/save-visual-state-2
• Editor/save-visual-state-3
• Editor/save-visual-state-4
• Editor/save-visual-state-5
• Editor/save-visual-state-6
• Editor/save-visual-state-7
• Editor/save-visual-state-8
• Editor/save-visual-state-9
• Editor/save-visual-state-10
• Editor/save-visual-state-11
• Editor/save-visual-state-12
• Editor/scroll-tracks-down
• Editor/scroll-tracks-up
• Editor/select-all
• Editor/select-all-after-edit-cursor
• Editor/select-all-after-playhead
• Editor/select-all-before-edit-cursor
• Editor/select-all-before-playhead
• Editor/select-all-between-cursors
• Editor/select-all-in-loop-range
• Editor/select-all-in-punch-range
• Editor/select-all-within-cursors
• Editor/select-next-route
• Editor/select-prev-route
• Editor/select-range-between-cursors
• Editor/selected-marker-to-next-region-boundary
• Editor/selected-marker-to-previous-region-boundary
• Editor/separate
• Editor/set-edit-point
• Editor/set-fade-in-length
• Editor/set-fade-out-length
• Editor/set-loop-from-edit-range
• Editor/set-loop-from-region
• Editor/set-playhead
• Editor/set-punch-from-edit-range
• Editor/set-punch-from-region
• Editor/set-region-sync-position
• Editor/set-tempo-from-edit-range
• Editor/set-tempo-from-region
• Editor/show-editor-mixer
• Editor/Smpte24
• Editor/Smpte25
• Editor/Smpte30
• Editor/Smpte30drop
• Editor/Smpte60
• Editor/Smpte2997
• Editor/Smpte5994
• Editor/Smpte2997drop
• Editor/Smpte23976
• Editor/Smpte24976
• Editor/snap-magnetic
• Editor/snap-normal
• Editor/SnapMode
• Editor/SnapTo
• Editor/Solo
• Editor/split-region
• Editor/start-range
• Editor/step-tracks-down
• Editor/step-tracks-up
• Editor/Subframes
• Editor/Subframes100
• Editor/Subframes80
• Editor/tab-to-transient-backwards
• Editor/tab-to-transient-forwards
• Editor/temporal-zoom-in
• Editor/temporal-zoom-out
• Editor/Timecode
• Editor/toggle-auto-xfades
• Editor/toggle-edit-mode
• Editor/toggle-fade-out-active
• Editor/toggle-fade-out-active
• Editor/toggle-follow-playhead
• Editor/toggle-internal-edit
• Editor/toggle-rhythm-ferret
• Editor/toggle-xfades-active
• Editor/toggle-xfades-visible
• Editor/toggle-zoom
• Editor/ToggleGeneric MIDISurface
• Editor/ToggleGeneric MIDISurfaceFeedback
• Editor/ToggleGeneric MIDISurfaceSubMenu
• Editor/ToggleMeasureVisibility
• Editor/ToggleWaveformsWhileRecording
• Editor/ToggleWaveformVisibility
• Editor/track-record-enable-toggle
• Editor/trim-back
• Editor/trim-from-start
• Editor/trim-front
• Editor/trim-to-end
• Editor/undo
• Editor/View
• Editor/zoom-to-region
• Editor/zoom-to-region-both-axes
• Editor/zoom-to-session
• Editor/ZoomFocus
• JACK/JACK
• JACK/JACKDisconnect
• JACK/JACKReconnect
• JACK/JACKLatency32
• JACK/JACKLatency64
• JACK/JACKLatency128
• JACK/JACKLatency256
• JACK/JACKLatency512
• JACK/JACKLatency1024
• JACK/JACKLatency2048
• JACK/JACKLatency4096
• JACK/JACKLatency8192
• Main/AddTrackBus
• Main/AudioFileFormat
• Main/AudioFileFormatData
• Main/AudioFileFormatHeader
• Main/CleanupUnused
• Main/FlushWastebasket
• Main/Close
• Main/ControlSurfaces
• Main/Export
• Main/ExportRangeMarkers
• Main/ExportSelection
• Main/ExportSession
• Main/Help
• Main/KeyMouse Actions
• Main/Metering
• Main/MeteringFallOffRate
• Main/MeteringHoldTime
• Main/New
• Main/Open
• Main/Options
• Main/Recent
• Main/SaveTemplate
• Main/Session
• Main/Snapshot
• Main/TransportOptions
• Main/Windows
• MouseMode/set-mouse-mode-gain
• MouseMode/set-mouse-mode-object
• MouseMode/set-mouse-mode-range
• MouseMode/set-mouse-mode-timefx
• MouseMode/set-mouse-mode-zoom
• options/DoNotRunPluginsWhileRecording
• options/FileDataFormat24bit
• options/FileDataFormatFloat
• options/FileHeaderFormatBWF
• options/FileHeaderFormatCAF
• options/FileHeaderFormatWAVE
• options/FileHeaderFormatWAVE64
• options/GainReduceFastTransport
• options/InputAutoConnectManual
• options/InputAutoConnectPhysical
• options/LatchedRecordEnable
• options/LatchedSolo
• options/MeterFalloffFast
• options/MeterFalloffFaster
• options/MeterFalloffFastest
• options/MeterFalloffMedium
• options/MeterFalloffOff
• options/MeterFalloffSlow
• options/MeterFalloffSlowest
• options/MeterHoldLong
• options/MeterHoldMedium
• options/MeterHoldOff
• options/MeterHoldShort
• options/OutputAutoConnectManual
• options/OutputAutoConnectMaster
• options/OutputAutoConnectPhysical
• options/RegionEquivalentsOverlap
• options/SendMMC
• options/SendMTC
• options/ShowSoloMutes
• options/SoloInPlace
• options/SoloViaBus
• options/StopPluginsWithTransport
• options/StopRecordingOnXrun
• options/StopTransportAtEndOfSession
• options/UseExternalMonitoring
• options/UseHardwareMonitoring
• options/UseMMC
• options/UseSoftwareMonitoring
• options/VerifyRemoveLastCapture
• redirectmenu/activate
• redirectmenu/activate_all
• redirectmenu/clear
• redirectmenu/copy
• redirectmenu/cut
• redirectmenu/deactivate
• redirectmenu/deactivate_all
• redirectmenu/deselectall
• redirectmenu/edit
• redirectmenu/newinsert
• redirectmenu/newplugin
• redirectmenu/newsend
• redirectmenu/paste
• redirectmenu/rename
• redirectmenu/selectall
• RegionList/RegionListSort
• RegionList/RegionListSort
• RegionList/rlAudition
• RegionList/rlHide
• RegionList/rlRemove
• RegionList/rlShowAll
• RegionList/rlShowAuto
• RegionList/SortAscending
• RegionList/SortByRegionEndinFile
• RegionList/SortByRegionLength
• RegionList/SortByRegionName
• RegionList/SortByRegionPosition
• RegionList/SortByRegionStartinFile
• RegionList/SortByRegionTimestamp
• RegionList/SortBySourceFileCreationDate
• RegionList/SortBySourceFileLength
• RegionList/SortBySourceFileName
• RegionList/SortBySourceFilesystem
• RegionList/SortDescending
• ShuttleActions/SetShuttleUnitsPercentage
• ShuttleActions/SetShuttleUnitsSemitones
• Snap/snap-to-asixteenthbeat
• Snap/snap-to-bar
• Snap/snap-to-beat
• Snap/snap-to-cd-frame
• Snap/snap-to-edit-cursor
• Snap/snap-to-eighths
• Snap/snap-to-frame
• Snap/snap-to-mark
• Snap/snap-to-minutes
• Snap/snap-to-quarters
• Snap/snap-to-region-boundary
• Snap/snap-to-region-end
• Snap/snap-to-region-start
• Snap/snap-to-region-sync
• Snap/snap-to-seconds
• Snap/snap-to-smpte-frame
• Snap/snap-to-smpte-minutes
• Snap/snap-to-smpte-seconds
• Snap/snap-to-thirds
• Snap/snap-to-thirtyseconds
• Transport/focus-on-clock
• Transport/Forward
• Transport/GotoEnd
• Transport/GotoStart
• Transport/GotoZero
• Transport/Loop
• Transport/PlaySelection
• Transport/Record
• Transport/record-roll
• Transport/Rewind
• Transport/ToggleAutoInput
• Transport/ToggleAutoPlay
• Transport/ToggleAutoReturn
• Transport/ToggleClick
• Transport/TogglePunchIn
• Transport/TogglePunchOut
• Transport/ToggleRoll
• Transport/ToggleRollForgetCapture
• Transport/ToggleRollMaybe
• Transport/ToggleTimeMaster
• Transport/ToggleVideoSync
• Transport/TransitionToReverse
• Transport/TransitionToRoll
• Zoom/zoom-focus-center
• Zoom/zoom-focus-edit
• Zoom/zoom-focus-left
• Zoom/zoom-focus-playhead
• Zoom/zoom-focus-right

Devices using Mackie/Logic Control Protocol

Devices using Mackie/Logic Control Protocol

This will walk you through the process of configuring and using a MIDI control surface with Ardour that uses the Mackie Control protocol or the Logic Control protocol. Devices that have been tested and are known to work include the SSL Nucleus, Mackie Control Pro (plus extenders), Behringer devices in Mackie/Logic mode, and Steinberg CMC devices.

See the bottom of this page for links to device-specific information.

Preparing your device for use with Ardour

Each interface model probably has some necessary setup so it's in the state Ardour expects to identify it. See your control surface page to see what's necessary. If there is no page about your control surface, create one!

Preparation

Please see the platform specific pages for:

• Linux
• OS X

Enabling Mackie Control in Ardour

Navigate to Edit > Preferences > User Interaction. Double-click on "Mackie Control" to see the setup dialog:

From the selector at the top, choose the type of device you are using. (What do do if your device is not listed).

Once your setup is complete, click "OK" to close the dialog. Now click on the enable checkbox for "Mackie Control".

Connecting control surface and Ardour MIDI ports

If you are using a device that uses ipMIDI such as the SSL Nucleus, no MIDI port connections are required - Ardour and your control surface will be able to talk to each other automatically.

If you are using a device that uses "normal" MIDI (via a standard MIDI or USB cable), you need to connect Ardour's Mackie Control ports to the MIDI ports corresponding to the control surface.

Now that you have both control surface and Ardour MIDI ports available, cross connect the control surface MIDI ports and the two mackie ports.

Once you have made these connections once, Ardour will recreate them when it is started in the future (as long as you leave Mackie Control enabled as a control protocol).

Customizing your control surface

Every possible Mackie Control button can be bound to any action present in Ardour's GUI.

Please check your control surface page for suggestions.

MIDI Binding Maps

MIDI Binding Maps

Ardour 2.X supported MIDI learning for more or less any control. This was a nice feature that quite a few other DAWs have now provided, but it didn't allow Ardour to work "out of the box" with sensible defaults for existing commercial MIDI controllers. In Ardour 3 and later versions, we have augmented the MIDI learn feature with the ability to load a MIDI binding map for a given controller, which can set up an arbitrary number of physical controls with anything inside Ardour that can be controlled. At this time, these binding maps need to be created with a text editor, but we currently have presets for

• Behringer BCF 2000
• Korg_nanoKONTROL
• M-Audio Oxygen 8 v2
• Roland SI-24
• Behringer DDX3216
• M-Audio Axiom 25

MIDI binding maps are accessible by double clicking on the "Generic MIDI" line in the Control Surfaces tab of the Ardour preferences dialog. Ardour will retain your chosen map after you choose one.

The information below describes in great detail how to create a new MIDI binding map.

The Basic Concept

Since the beginning of time (well, sometime early in the 2.X series), Ardour has had the concept of identifying each track and bus with a remote control ID. This ID uniquely identifies a track or bus so that when messages arrive from elsewhere (MIDI or OSC), we can determine which track or bus they are intended to control. Ardour has a number of ways of assigning remote control IDs, but they don't really matter very much when creating MIDI binding maps, so we won't discuss that here. You just need to know that there is a "first track" and its remote control ID is 1, and so on.

Getting Started

MIDI bindings are stored in files with the suffix ".map" attached to their name. The minimal content looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ArdourMIDIBindings version="1.0.0" name="The name of this set of bindings">
</ArdourMIDIBindings>

So, to start, create a file with that as the initial contents.

Finding out what your MIDI control surface sends

This is the most complex part of the job, but its still not very hard. You need to connect the control surface to an application that will show you the information that the device sends each time you modify a knob, slider, button etc. There are a variety of such applications (notably gmidimon and kmidimon, but you can actually use Ardour for this if you want. Start Ardour in a terminal window, connect MIDI ports up, and in the Preferences window, enable "Trace Input" on the relevant MIDI port. A full trace of the MIDI data received will show up in the terminal window. (Note: in Ardour3, you get a dedicated, custom dialog for this kind of tracing)

Types of Bindings

There are two basic kinds of bindings you can make between a MIDI message and something inside Ardour. The first is a binding to a specific parameter of a track or bus. The second is a binding to a function that will change Ardour's state in some way.

Binding to Track/Bus controls

A track/bus binding has one of two basic structures

  <Binding msg specification  uri="... control address ..."/>
  <Binding msg specification  function="... function name ..."/>

Message specifications

You can create a binding for either 3 types of channel messages, or for a system exclusive ("sysex") message. A channel message specification looks like this:

   <Binding channel="1" ctl="13" ....

This defines a binding for a MIDI Continuous Controller message involving controller 13, arriving on channel 1. There are 16 MIDI channels, numbered 1 to 16. Where the example above says ctl, you can alternatively use note (to create binding for a Note On message) or pgm (to create a binding for a Program Change message).

You can also bind sysex messages:

  <Binding sysex="f0 0 0 e 9 0 5b f7" ....
  <Binding sysex="f0 7f 0 6 7 f7" ....

The string after the sysex= part is the sequence of MIDI bytes, as hexadecimal values, that make up the sysex message.

Finally, you can bind a totally arbitrary MIDI message:

  <Binding msg="f0 0 0 e 9 0 5b f7" ....
  <Binding msg="80 60 40" ....

The string after the msg= part is the sequence of MIDI bytes, as hexadecimal values, that make up the message you want to bind. Using this is slightly less efficient than the other variants shown above, but is useful for some oddly designed control devices.

Control address

A control address defines what the binding will actually control. There are quite a few different things that can be specified here:

/route/gain

the gain control ("fader") for the track/bus

/route/solo

a toggleable control for solo (and listen) of the track/bus

/route/mute

a toggleable control to mute/unmute the track/bus

/route/recenable

a toggleable control to record-enable the track

/route/panwidth

interpreted by the track/bus panner, should control image "width"

/route/pandirection

interpreted by the track/bus panner, should control image "direction"

/route/plugin/parameter

the Mth parameter of the Nth plugin of a track/bus

/route/send/gain

the gain control ("fader") of the Nth send of a track/bus

Each of the specifications needs an address, which takes various forms too. For track-level controls (solo/gain/mute/recenable), the address is one the following:

a number, eg. "1"

identifies a track or bus by its remote control ID

B, followed by a number

identifies a track or bus by its remote control ID within the current bank (see below for more on banks)

one or more words

identifies a track or bus by its name

For send/insert/plugin controls, the address consists of a track/bus address (as just described) followed by a number identifying the plugin/send (starting from 1). For plugin parameters, there is an additional third component: a number identifying the plugin parameter number (starting from 1).

One additional feature: for solo and mute bindings, you can also add momentary="yes" after the control address. This is useful primarily for NoteOn bindings - when Ardour gets the NoteOn it will solo or mute the targetted track or bus, but then when a NoteOff arrives, it will un-solo or un-mute it.

Bindings to Ardour "functions"

Rather than binding to a specific track/bus control, it may be useful to have a MIDI controller able to alter some part of Ardour's state. A binding definition that does this looks like this:

  <Binding channel="1" note="13" function="transport-roll"/>

In this case, a NoteOn message for note number 13 (on channel 1) will start the transport rolling. The following function names are available:

transport-stop

stop the transport

transport-roll

start the transport "rolling"

transport-zero

move the playhead to the zero position

transport-start

move the playhead to the start marker

transport-end

move the playhead to the end marker

loop-toggle

turn on loop playback

rec-enable

enable the global record button

rec-disable

disable the global record button

next-bank

Move track/bus mapping to the next bank (see Banks below)

prev-bank

Move track/bus mapping to the previous bank (see Banks below)

Binding to Ardour "actions"

You can also bind a sysex or arbitrary message to any of the items that occur in Ardour's main menu (and its submenus). The best place to look for the (long) list of how to address each item is in your keybindings file, which will contain lines that look like this:

(gtk_accel_path "<Actions>/Editor/temporal-zoom-in" "equal")

To create a binding between an arbitrary MIDI message (we'll use a note-off on channel 1 of MIDI note 60 (hex) with release velocity 40 (hex)), the binding file would contain:

   <Binding msg="80 60 40" action="Editor/temporal-zoom-in"/>

The general rule, when taken an item from the keybindings file and using it in a MIDI binding is to simply strip the <Action> prefix of the second field in the keybinding definition.

Banks and Banking

Because many modern control surfaces offer per-track/bus controls for far fewer tracks & busses than many users want to control, Ardour offers the relatively common place concept of "banks". Banks to allow you to relatively easily control any number of tracks and/or busses regardless of how many faders/knobs etc. your control surface has. To use banking, the control addresses must be specified using the bank relative format mentioned above ("B1" to identify the first track of a bank of tracks, rather than "1" to identify the first track).

One very important extra piece of information is required to use banking: an extra line near the start of the list of bindings that specifies how many tracks/busses to use per bank. If the device has 8 faders, then 8 would be a sensible value to use for this. The line looks like this:

   <DeviceInfo bank-size="8"/>

In addition, you probably want to ensure that you bind something on the control surface to the next-bank and prev-bank functions, otherwise you and other users will have to use the mouse and the GUI to change banks, which rather defeats the purpose of the bindings.

A Complete (though muddled) Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ArdourMIDIBindings version="1.0.0" name="pc1600x transport controls">
  <DeviceInfo bank-size="16"/>
  <Binding channel="1" ctl="1"   uri="/route/gain B1"/>
  <Binding channel="1" ctl="2"   uri="/route/gain B2"/>
  <Binding channel="1" ctl="3"   uri="/route/send/gain B1 1"/>
  <Binding channel="1" ctl="4"   uri="/route/plugin/parameter B1 1 1"/>
  <Binding channel="1" ctl="6"   uri="/bus/gain master"/>

  <Binding channel="1" note="1"  uri="/route/solo B1"/>
  <Binding channel="1" note="2"  uri="/route/solo B2" momentary="yes"/>

  <Binding channel="1" note="15"  uri="/route/mute B1" momentary="yes"/>
  <Binding channel="1" note="16"  uri="/route/mute B2" momentary="yes"/>

  <Binding sysex="f0 0 0 e 9 0 5b f7" function="transport-start"/>
  <Binding sysex="f0 7f 0 6 7 f7" function="rec-disable"/>
  <Binding sysex="f0 7f 0 6 6 f7" function="rec-enable"/>
  <Binding sysex="f0 0 0 e 9 0 53 0 0 f7" function="loop-toggle"/>

  <Binding channel="1" note="13" function="transport-roll"/>
  <Binding channel="1" note="14" function="transport-stop"/>
  <Binding channel="1" note="12" function="transport-start"/>
  <Binding channel="1" note="11" function="transport-zero"/>
  <Binding channel="1" note="10" function="transport-end"/>
</ArdourMIDIBindings>

Please note that channel, controller and note numbers are specified as decimal numbers in the ranges 1-16, 0-127 and 0-127 respectively (the channel range may change at some point)