The Preferences window
The Preferences window

Global preferences control general workflow and system configuration, and should apply to all sessions. They are located in Edit > Preferences and stored in Ardour's user configuration file in the user's home directory.

Preferences are conveniently grouped by category:

General

Session

Translation

Editor

Modifiers

This page allows to choose how things are done in the editor. This is a very flexible way for Ardour to match an existing workflow, or speed up the editing process based on the user's most used actions.

The Reset to recommended defaults button at the bottom provides a way to revert any user made change to its default value.

Mixer

Signal Flow

Audio

MIDI

Metronome

Metering

Transport

LTC

MIDI

Control Surfaces

This tab contains settings for control surfaces.

It lists all the Control Surface protocols Ardour knows. To enable a Control Surface Protocol, the Enable checkbox next to its name should be ticked. Editing the settings related to this protocol can be done by double-clicking its name or clicking the Show protocol settings (only for Generic MIDI and Open Sound Control).

Plugins

The content of this preference page varies heavily between versions or Ardour: both the platform and the build-time options can make Ardour support some types of plugins and not others. While this documentation tries to show all possible options, most systems will only show a subset of the options hereunder, e.g. AudioUnits are macOS only…

VST

Audio Unit

Appearance

Editor

Mixer

Toolbar

Theme

Colors

Quirks

Video